Whilst it is school holidays, for me this first week will be preparation for next term. My plan was to spend four days preparing, but with a pile of procrastination on Monday, I’ll probably add an extra day.
On Tuesday morning I was frustrated that I had wasted Monday, so I turned to the internet to find a tool that would time what I was doing, and keep an eye on breaks. It’s ironic that to help reduce procrastination, I went web surfing.
I had previously tried the procrastination hack, splitting my time into smaller chunks with regular, but small, breaks. But it didn’t really fit with what I’m doing (creating lesson plans).
So, I went searching for a tool that I could time each task and breaks. I found Time Tracker. You add a task, start the timer, flick between tasks by starting the timer on the second task. Tasks can be grouped, marked as completed. You can see how much stopping and starting occurred whilst completing a task.
In the image above (actual class name removed), you can see the grouping, tasks marked “done”. Yes, I considered writing this as a “break” not “TimeWasting”.
Time Tracker hasn’t fixed my procrastination, but it is helping me to concentrate and be accountable for my time.
Updated 5/10/06: Seems that there’s a bug with the timing mechanism. I have marked tasks as completed, but they are still being timed. The bug is listed in the forums, but no response from the developer.
Further update 5/10/06: I’m now using SlimTimer, a more complicated looking, but simple enough tool. May review further later.