BubbleTimer
Sep 20, 08:49 AM by Eric Allen
Every fall, the Learning Assistants (LAs) at RPI teach the freshmen how to manage their time. The cornerstone of this program is the week schedule. Everybody gets an 8.5“x11” sheet of paper with a week schedule on it. Each day is a column, and each hour is a row. You’re supposed to sit down with colored pencils and plan out how every week for the entire semester will go by blocking out particular times in this calendar. As far as I know, nobody actually does this.
How, then, does one efficiently manage time? I’ve found that the time my various activities demand can vary greatly from week to week, so a static schedule is out the window. I’ve gotten good at using Tracks to manage what needs to get done, but I still need something to budget my time with and ensure I’m following that budget. Aggressive proactive scheduling doesn’t work (at least not for me), but I’ve found a better solution: BubbleTimer.
BubbleTimer is a simple web application that lets me enter in a set of activities and then retroactively fill in what I spent time on in 15-minute blocks. I fill in my BubbleTimer as the day goes, and by the end of the day I have a pretty good picture of how my productive time was spent. I don’t track everything (that would be crazy!), but I track pretty much all productive time, as well as time I spend “chilling,” or recuperating when I could potentially be productive. This tracking functionality isn’t all that great by itself, but that’s where Daily and Weekly Goals come in. After reviewing my BubbleTimer data from last semester, I know I have about 15 hours a week to spend on non-school productive activities. I parceled those hours out into my different tasks with Weekly Goals, often with a range of acceptable time spent. During the week, I can see at a glance how I’m doing with respect to my budget, and plan accordingly.
While it’s not free, BubbleTimer is certainly worth the price for me. Without it, I tend to spend too much time on fun coding projects and not enough time on my other activities. Thanks to BubbleTimer, I have a much more balanced set of activities, and I can keep my more fun activities (like investing) to a reasonable level. Yes, I can go ahead and violate my budget any time I want, but without self-control what solution would work? BubbleTimer’s simple, flexible approach to time management is a critical piece of my workflow.
