Quickie Emergent Task Tracker Variation 2A
Posted on April 26, 2006 in Productivity
(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:28 am)
(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:28 am)
Lazlo commented:
I’ve been using the Emergent Task Timer for several days now and am loving it but have one request: could you maybe add two (very faint) horizontal lines to each bubble, breaking them up into three five-minute sections for those times when a million things are happening at once? It’d be a helpful data point to keep track of when things seem to get a little scattered.
After almost convincing myself it was a bad idea, I realized that it wasn’t! So here you go, Lazlo! There were some other suggested mods scattered around in other comments…when I get some more time I’ll see what looks good.
ASIDE: It seems that the ETT is a hit with college students. I have some theories on this from my own grad school days, but I’m curious what current students have to say about this.
» Download The Emergent Task Timer (Wide, 5 minute resolution)
» PCEO-ETT02A-StandardWide.pdf
4 Comments
Wow, I was actually thinking about sending you a comment asking for such a division in the bubbles! I find often that I do an extra five minutes in a task, or I get interrupted at 5 or 10 minutes. I’m very excited about this new form.
As for the grad student stuff – I’ve been finding it helpful for the past 5 days or so, since I started using it. I’ve been having trouble getting started on stuff, and spending too much time on the web, etc. This time tracker is the perfect way for me to see where I’m spending my time. There’s also a certain visceral satisfaction in filling in a dot on a good line (as opposed to a line with email as a title ;). My plan is to play with the tracker for a few more days and then blog about my experiences with it. So far, I think it’s great – I’m just waiting to see if I can stick with it.
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You might want to ask for feedback on the http://www.phinished.org/ website. It’s a support forum for grad students of all kinds, and most people there work in bouts of 15 minutes. On the Daily Board, people will even post their goals for the day so they can be kept accountable by their peers. I found it invaluable when I was in the deepest, darkest parts of my Masters degree.
What application are you guys using to make these forms? I bet it is for the Mac…. :)
Using the ETT for a week now and it was a huge help in doing my timesheet for the week.
thanks for the link, kena! I’ll check it out!
Richard: I’m using Illustrator CS2…for Windows ;-) Glad that the ETT was useful for ya! Check out the timesheets that Blue Flavor made too…they might be even more suitable for your timesheet application!