Getting Organized With Toggl

I've been really busy the past few weeks trying to get ready for my new job and wrapping up projects at my previous job -- needless to say free time has been pretty limited.

Up until now I've managed my time and projects using 'The Notepad System'... or basically I just write stuff down, get it done and then check it off... not really something that is going to cut it going forward. Having personal projects, work projects and contract work all being merged into a single list is going to quickly get out of control.

My solution? Toggl!

This, my friends, is a masterpiece of web design and functionality. The devs (and designers) at Toggl have done an incredible job at taking something difficult like time tracking and making it not only super simple... but also hosted on the web!

Toggl makes it simple to create multiple clients, projects and tasks and manage time for each of them. Even better, if you try to enter the name of a client or project that doesn't exist, it will create it for you on the fly! Every action seems to have been streamlined so that it doesn't interfere with you doing your actual work!

Tracking time spent on tasks can be handled using the menu on the right hand side by simply clicking the red button (you can even close the window and the timer keeps going). This starts the timer for that task so you know how much time is spent doing something. To take it a step further, if you start a timer for another task, Toggl automatically stops any running timers for you!

Toggl also allows you to open the timer management in a separate window called 'Nano' -- Which works perfectly with Chrome Applications. (If you do this just make sure you point the url for your Chrome app to http://toggl.com/nano)

And to take it a step further, I wrote a script with jsshell to add some buttons to the view (of course, you can reach them in a menu but I wanted them along the top as well @html.smile()).

Toggl also works with a variety of the mobile platforms as well, which is really handy if you aren't always sitting at a computer.

If you manage a lot of projects at the same time or just simply need to keep track of where your time is going, then I highly recommend Toggl. Signup takes almost no time at all and you get 30 days to try it for free (then it is only $5 a month after that).

I could ramble on about how awesome Toggl is but I've already spent 36 minutes and 26 seconds on this task - time to move on to something else!