Why I stopped relying on traditional time trackers

I have never had a problem understanding time tracking.

The concept is excellent.

Do work. Record time. Invoice correctly.

My problem was the middle bit.

I kept forgetting the timer

Not every time.

Just often enough to make the system annoying.

I would start working, get absorbed in something and realise 25 minutes later that the timer was still at zero.

Or I would start it and forget to stop it.

Or a call would interrupt one client while the timer kept happily billing another.

All fixable.

All irritating.

The problem got worse as the work became more fragmented

A single three-hour task is easy.

Several clients, calls, tasks and small interruptions are not.

The more the day changed shape, the more the tracker demanded attention.

That started to feel backwards.

The work should be the thing demanding attention.

I still wanted a record

I did not stop caring about time.

I still needed to invoice.

I still wanted to know whether projects were profitable.

I just wanted the timesheet to meet me halfway.

My tasks already knew what I completed.

My calendar already knew which meetings were scheduled.

Those seemed like useful clues.

So I changed the order

Instead of:

Track first, work second.

I wanted:

Work first, review later.

Not for everything.

Timers are still useful.

Manual entries are still necessary.

The point was simply to stop treating the timer as the only legitimate entrance to a timesheet.

That became Tidst

Tidst grew from that frustration.

It is not trying to watch every second of the day.

It is trying to make the review easier by starting with work signals that already exist.

That is a much better fit for how I actually work.

Which, conveniently, is the person I had available for product research.