Toggl is a free app that keeps track of your time. You click the “Play” buttom in the app, add what work you are doing and what project it is for (i.e. your business), and it starts keeping track of the time. It stops tracking when you press the “Stop” button.
There are apps that kind-of do this automatically, but one of the major ones is made by a company that also sells user data to advertisers, employs key loggers, and is ripe for hacking. These “automatic” time trackers also are sloppy in their time tracking. These automatic time trackers could track a user using the Chrome browser as work when the user is playing games on Facebook. It could also count Facebook as personal and not business even though you are answering customer questions on Facebook. You can adjust what these “automatic” time trackers say is business or personal, but if you have to continually adjust the automatic time tracker then it is not automatic and is more work than the few seconds Toggl takes to implement.
I find Toggl’s simplicity makes it accurate and reliable, if you use it. It cannot track time if you do not set it. You can adjust the starting and ending time of your activity if needed, so forgetting to start Toggl doesn’t mean that time was lost and cannot be tracked.
Toggl is basic and does exactly what you need it to do. If you do not currently track your time this is a great way to see inefficiencies in your business and correct them. I realized I was spending almost 2 hours a day on email after using Toggl. I have this down to about 30 minutes a day now. That is a huge time savings by simply realizing the inefficiency and implementing autoresonders and bots to handle the bulk of it.
They do have paid versions that help with billable rates and team time tracking, but if that does not apply to you the free version is simple and effective. It is available on almost every operating system. They have an:
Android app
iPhone app
Windows desktop app
Mac desktop app
Linux desktop app
Chrome extension
I highly recommend it, especially if you are one of those people that feels always busy. This can help you focus on what is most important and see areas where you are misusing time or plain wasting it. Download for free at: Toggl.com
