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Organizing Time and Thoughts

When you’re in constant motion, it can be difficult to keep track of your time. It can also be a challenge to keep your mind focused on the ideas and strategies important to your business.

Thanks to a growing array of time and thought-organizing programs and apps, you have more options than ever before to keep your schedule on track and capture those brainstorms when they occur.

It’s About Time

If you track your time, either for billable hours or to monitor your own productivity, it helps to have an easy-to-use tracking program. Toggl works with both mobile and desktop devices to keep your own online timesheet. Even better, it integrates with Basecamp, Quickbooks, and Freshbooks to translate your time into billable hours, and it can handle multiple rates by client or team member, as well as different currencies. Toggle also can give you reports and graphic summaries to show you where your time is being spent. It’s scalable for teams of up to 200 people.

Log into Tickspot.com and you can manage your time by client and project. You can create a time budget for each task, and see how you’re doing against the budget.

Elance has a time-tracking option that enables employers to get a more detailed view of how their virtual providers are spending their time. Providers also have the ability to upload status reports that can range in detail from short recaps to more complete time tracking.

Other options include Easy Time Sheet, which can track time, hourly rate, and notes. It might be just what you need if you aren’t heavily dependent on tracking multiple jobs. ClockedIn is another app that not only manages projects, but it can help you stay on task for your personal goals as well. Timely.is takes an incentive approach and lets you know how much you’ve earned as you complete your project. It takes the “time is money” approach to a new motivational level. Timely works for groups as well as individuals, and can also handle non-billable projects.

Keeping Your Thoughts Straight

Mind-mapping is a technique that allows users to capture their thoughts and place them in a spoke-and-wheel graphic that shows how each concept relates to other concepts on a topic. If you’re a big fan of mind-mapping, check out SimpleMind+, a smartphone app that makes it easy to create and store mind maps on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.

OmniGraffle is another mobile app that supports mind mapping and a whole lot more. It not only helps you diagram, but it can do 3D shapes, a variety of fonts, and supports freehand drawing. When you’re done, you can share your creative vision with teammates via PDF.

For the verbally inclined, Dragon Dictation, which I’ve discussed previously, is another way to capture thoughts on the go. The app is a modern twist on familiar technology, making any smartphone a voice recorder. Dragon not only captures your voice, but it also converts the spoken word into text or e-mail.

iPro Recorder records your voice, and it records in enough clarity that you can use it to create Web audio and podcast interviews. Recorder is another iPhone app that makes it easy to speak your mind and remember later what you were thinking about.

If your goal is not just to save your recording on your smart-phone but to send it via e-mail, Note2Self has what you’re looking for. iRecorder and YouNote are two other low-priced apps that provide no-frills basic recording. YouNote also lets you send drawings, typed notes, or photos, as well as recordings, making it a little more versatile than the voice-only recorders.

Your time is precious, so tracking it makes sense when you’re out of the office. Brilliant ideas can slip away if you don’t grab them right away. Those are two good reasons to consider using apps and cloud programs to manage both time and thoughts.