How do YOU use BubbleTimer?
Tijl started a thread on the Get Satisfaction forums asking everyone how they use BubbleTimer. It's great to hear how other people use the same tools you do, it can give you new ideas and validate what you are doing.
Here is an extract of a few points from the thread so far:
Tijl-
"Usually I fill out the bubbles every 45 minutes to an hour when I think of it. At home I usually have Bubble timer open in a google chrome window together with my gmail inbox and calendar."
"I have one activity called 'Survival' which encompasses everything from showering, eating, cleaning dishes to travelling and taking a little break."
gicard-
"What I am finding out works best for me (a non-single type) is to mainly focus on keeping track of the things that tend to get overdone or underdone. The rest can be filed under Broad categories so I don't spend too much time over analyzing stuff, which I tend to do to a flaw."
"Now I know where I can make the time so I can get to the other activities that do need to be singled out and nurtured. Things like: Exercise, Reading, Business Project"
me-
"I don't bubble in all my time. For me, it's about making sure the time during the "work day" is well spent. The "work day" for me is 4AM to 7PM, give or take an hour. I don't track time outside of those hours because I'm either with the wife or family or sleeping. I do have an activity called "Personal" that I use for many things during the 4AM-7PM block."
cephyr-
"As a reaction to the results, I am now using BubbleTimer to motivate myself to spend more time on productive stuff and less time on surfing, doing nothing, watching tv."
Qrystal-
"I use BubbleTimer to track the zone my mind is in. If I'm not sure where my time has gone, the activity gets classified as "frivoling", because that's usually what has happened."
"Paymo.biz is the timer I use to track the intricate details of what I'm doing. It helps me make sure I'm not spending too much time, say, researching instead of writing, or preparing my grading scheme instead of actually doing the grading. But within those groupings, there is no distinction on my BubbleTimer chart!"
Qrystal also weighed in via Twitter to let me know how important BubbleTimer is to her as a source of motivation to spend time well. I probably have not emphasized enough how important motivation is to effective time management. I blame my overly left-brained nature on that ommission, but it is worth noting it here because I hear motivation come up a lot when people tell me how they are using BubbleTimer.
I encourage you to leave a comment here on the blog (no registration required) or on the Get Satisfaction thread with your own story about how you use BubbleTimer.
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I use a hybrid Covey/GTD system i.e. Roles and Projects, which I've placed into BT. So as a Podcaster (Role), I have to do interviews (Projects), Editing audio (Projects), etc. So my BT looks something like this:
podcaster - interview
podcaster - audio
podcaster - research
etc.
And to be more mindful of my procrastination habit(s), I have a "quad 4" (Covey lingo for "lacking off") category which I measure.
Love the program.
Abe,
Neat. It seems everyone struggles with what to name their "wasting time" activity. I'm not so creative so mine just goes in the "Personal" bucket along with showering, eating, etc. Qrystal gave us the much too British sounding "frivoling". But "quad 4" is a good one. I'm not enough of a Covey-ite that I would have gotten hat without the explanation but it makes a lot of sense now.
My new favorite activity... a few minutes ago I added "Rat Training" with a goal of 15 minutes a day. Sounds like something from a Personal Productivity guru, no? Some clever phrase to describe a habit you should develop? Nope. I just want to spend more time with my 2 blue rats, Carolina and Savannah.
Sean
More on Covey's quadrants:
http://tinobox.com/wordpress/2007/11/30/todo-sorting-by-coveys-quadrant/
Hey Sean... how much would you charge for a service - whereby if an individual surpassed their daily goal of procrastinating - a BubbleTimer staff would fly over to my house and boink me on the head?
@ Abe and Sean,
Love that last idea! >.< I had never thought of adding in one activity that would cover up all of the little tiny things that you should normally do, like brushing teeth and showering. Just another thing to love about BubbleTimer - the smart users who come up with new ways to utilize it ^_^
Wolfie
See, I'm such a procrastinator that I need to make the distinction between the good miscellany (Personal stuff like toothbrushing, which I categorize as "Caring for Self" or Home-related stuff like cleaning and finances, which I categorize as "Home & Life") and bad miscellany (time-wasters or "Frivoling").
But there's also some Personal stuff that I find worth in tracking separately, like Sleeping and Exercise, because I really want to know how much time I spend on those things.
I also track some individual Recreational things, partly out of curiosity and partly because I don't feel right classifying them as frivolous... things like reading and socializing, both of which can get out of hand if I'm supposed to be doing other things, but they also aren't bad at all if I'm not scheduled to be doing other things.
The outright frivoling is really mostly web-surfing or gaming, or anything else that doesn't actually *accomplish* anything. I don't want to waste even my free time by doing too much of nothing, because I have things I want to accomplish!
I am truly astounded at how motivational BubbleTimer is. I will definitely help spread the word however I can. :)
"I am truly astounded at how motivational BubbleTimer is."
The print function will be an asset during my weekly review. In the past, I'd ponder how my week went - mostly draw a blank - and then plan the next week with great optimism, but without "lessons learned" from the week past. I'm hoping this will be less of an issue.
By the way, I'm using BT along with TaskPaper. Two great simple, yet powerful, ways to keep focused, and capture what needs to be, and what has been, done.
@Abe - I don't think such a service would be very affordable. Maybe some sort of electro-shocking keyboard or mouse? That has some potential....