The guys at Blue Flavor have created awesome paper-based time-tracking worksheets.

If you’ve ever worked at a place that requires timesheets, you may have been struck by the extra bit of tedium they add to your work week. Normal time sheets are tedious because they require re-transcription of hour data, and don’t lend themselves to hour-by-hour use. They also do a terrible job of giving you an “at a glance” feel for how productive (e.g. billable or company-building) a particular week was. At most places I’ve worked, I have maintained my hours separately using an Excel spreadsheet so I could pull meaningful project-related data from my historical data in addition to meeting the timesheet requirement.

The Blue Favor design is inspired in part by the concepts behind The Printable CEO™, and neatly addresses the issues I’ve had with timesheets in the past. The timesheets (there are two variations) are excellent examples of workflow-oriented practical design thinking, targeting the needs of weekly hour accounting in a format that supports “on-the-job” use. When I first made the PCEO form, I was concerned about how “Management” could wrongfully apply the concepts. Perhaps I needn’t have worried; this is a kick-ass application of the PCEO.

I wish I’d thought of it :-)