A Short Horror Story: Navigating Your Workday Without a Time Tracker

As soon as you log into your work laptop, all the balls are in the air.?

You struggle to navigate your day as the constant surge of emails reminds you that each task you’re assigned is a priority.?

If this sounds even remotely like you, you may be stuck in a workplace nightmare. The never-ending one, where the option to track the time you spend on tasks isn’t possible.?

But see for yourself: how close are the following lines to your own typical real-life workday??

Morning: Multitasking your way to completion

You start your day with optimism — the birds are chirping, and you’re just about to drink your morning coffee.?

But, a glance at your phone breaks all hell loose.

You’ve already received 47 notifications, and each of them is an urgent task.

So you decide to address them in the order of their arrival.?

But then, your manager gives you a call. They ask if you could cover for them and attend a few meetings today.

There’s nothing else to do but tackle a couple of things simultaneously.

It’s not like things could get any worse.

Or could they?

Afternoon: Spreadsheets save the day?

As you’re only halfway through your tasks, you realize you’ll have to finish the leftover work tomorrow.

You spent 3 hours in meetings, and you’re yet to begin going over your to-do list.?

However, you’re quite aware that tomorrow may not be any different. You’ll probably wake up to dozens of urgent tasks again.

But what if you came up with a system??

While going over your to-do list, you could measure exactly how long your tasks take and, based on your findings, time block tomorrow's schedule.?

So, this is where you open up a spreadsheet and start adding different columns for each work project.?

But all of a sudden, an irresistible urge to color-code all your projects takes hold of you. Keeping your spreadsheet beautiful and neat-looking will surely help things run more smoothly tomorrow, right??

Right?

So, while you’re busy prettying up your spreadsheet, 2 more hours go by.?

Now it’s almost time to call it a day.?

Evening: Despair takes over

The moment you clock out, you realize how gullible you were.

You truly believed that making a time tracking system from scratch would be a no-sweat process.?

But then, you got sucked into this distracting process and completely self-sabotaged your productivity by trying to make things perfect instead of focusing on getting them done.?

One thing after another — you wasted an entire workday.?

It’s time to admit it —? tomorrow will go down the drain, too.?

Now that all your illusions are shattered, it’s time to break free from this horrifying nightmare as fast as you can and try not to look back.?

Leap into reality: Clockify to the rescue

Now that you’re fully awake from this fever dream, you immediately spot that you’re actually dealt with much better cards than you may have thought.

Sure, you wake up to dozens of notifications each morning.

But you can always open up a time tracking app and see exactly how long each of your tasks may take.?

Immediately after you log in, everything you need to prioritize your tasks successfully is right at your fingertips.?

You just head on to Clockify , start the timer whenever you’re about to tackle a task, and stop it once you’re done.

Then, all you have to do is take a quick look at your Dashboard and see how long your tasks have previously taken you from start to finish.?

From there on, you simply structure your day and focus on getting things done.?

Sign up for Clockify for free today