4 Steps To Better Manage Tasks, Time On A Mac

I have this little problem with time. I don’t know where it goes. For whatever the reason, I cannot associate a task with a specific amount of time. That causes problems at work because I cannot accurately track my time on specific projects.

My Mac to the rescue. I’ve been trying out various timers to track my tasks and projects. The timer has to be simple, handy, and calculate time spent on a task, and calculate the totals.

Time Tasks With Task Timer

Why is timing tasks and projects important? Sure, time is money. But money comes from my boss, and he wants to know how much time I spend on each task, and the totals for a project.

It makes sense. Clients get billed based on task and project completion, and it helps to know the time of each so I get paid appropriately, and the client gets billed appropriately.

My search to task timers on the Mac has been fruitful. If you need to track time, for whatever the purpose, but especially for a money trail, there are plenty of Mac utilities to do the job.

The creatively named Task Timer is an attractive and affordable alternative to the stop watch and a notepad.

Tasks And Projects

There was a time when I was intimidated by project management. It all seemed so hyper pretentious. Tasks. Resources. Time tracking. Projects. Who has time for all that tracking?

Task Time takes an elegant approach to managing time by tracking tasks. Projects are made up of tasks. Tasks added together achieve milestones. Short of a full-fledged project management tool like the enormously expensive and complicated Microsoft Project, what do you really need?

Take a look. Tell me how self explanatory this is. Projects and tasks. Click on any task and click to start the timer for that task (click the images for a larger, pop up view).

Task Timer features a place for comments and notes. It times multiple tasks at once or a single task in sequence. If necessary, you can modify the start time of an event or task.

Once you’ve created projects, added specific tasks, and done the work, you’ll want a quick and easy report which highlights the details. Reports are a click away, and, visually, self explanatory, too. Select the date range, filter to a specific set of tasks or projects, click to get the report.

The Basics And A Big Surprise

Task Time is that simple. It creates a database of your projects, tasks associated to a particular projects, even sets up tasks which can be shared on multiple projects.

Reports can be exported to CSV file, PDF file, Microsoft Excel or tab delimited data file.

There’s even a visual cue in the Dock icon for the elapsed time on a specific task (great for when your Mac screen is clutter with windows).

And, there’s a surprise. Task Timer works on a Mac. And on a Windows PC. That’s handy for me because I spend a lot of time on both platforms during projects.

Keep it basic and simple. Enter a project, enter tasks for the project, click on a task, start the timer, work on the task, stop the timer. Repeat as necessary. At the end of the day your time and tasks are all neatly associated with the right project. Task Time is something of a one trick pony, but the tricks are worth it.