Comments on: Round-up: Tracking time, your boss’s marriage, etc.

By: Christina

Christina — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 01:41:49 +0000

I do the “estimate how much time a task will take” with my at-home to do lists (with my pen and paper list). I don’t use it to keep from over-scheduling myself but to motivate myself to actually get the work done. (One of those cases where stuff you don’t want to do looms so much bigger than it is. When I look at a task and figure that it’s only going to take 30 minutes (or whatever), it’s easier to make myself tackle it.)

By: Linda M

Linda M — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 20:32:56 +0000

Amen and Amen to The Frugal Girl! I quit my part time nursing job when we moved out of state and the kids were 5 and 3. I ended up staying home for 12 years before returning to work when they both were in high school. Now I’m an empty nester and have a nursing career that I enjoy. I didn’t homeschool but I did a lot of volunteering in the classrooms,didn’t have to worry about days when they were sick and took long summer trips to visit our extended family without having to worrry about getting time off from work. Fortunately, I have a husband whose income could support us and we definitely adjusted our lifestyle. I feel like I have had the best of both worlds but it was our CHOICE. Maybe having it all means having choices on how with combine family with part time work, full time work or no work.

By: oilandgarlic

oilandgarlic — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 16:39:51 +0000

I have noticed the correlation between the boss’s marriage and their view on taking time off for kids. Bosses with working wives definitely seem to be more understanding since they also have to help more around the home!

By: Cloud

Cloud — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 04:33:49 +0000

If people are just looking for software/apps to let them assign time to different “projects”, they should look at time charging tools used by freelance developers. I’ve never done a search, because I don’t need such a thing right now, but I know such tools are out there because some of my contractors use them.

My two most recent exercises, I just used a spreadsheet. I describe the format I used in this post:
http://www.wandering-scientist.com/2010/09/time-for-reorg.html

But honestly, this is one thing where I don’t think it matters HOW you do it. The act of tracking your time will tell you a lot, no matter what tools you use.

I have toyed with the idea of finding a non-intrusive app and doing a long term time tracking exercise, and then publishing the results, annotated with what was going on during various peaks and valleys. But I’m not sure that even I find my time usage that interesting! I doubt it would be interesting enough for other people to make it worth the effort.

By: ARC

ARC — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 02:46:52 +0000

Interesting idea re: boss’s marriage. It’s one of the things I’ve noticed anecdotally at work – men with SAH wives tend to view kid-related commitments of their team members as distractions/not important, vs. men whose wives also work. In general they seem less sensitive and less likely to get “the juggle”.

I’ve never worked for a woman so I can’t say if it works the other way around too 🙂