Based on some pretty awesome feedback that I've received from people who apparently find Time Tracker v1.0 very useful, I'm adding a few new features and improvements to the user interface.

Time Management experts will tell you an individual only has 24 hours in a single day; proper time management isn't finding time in your day, but rather discovering and dealing with inefficiencies in your day. The best way to discover those inefficiencies - at least as recommended to me as part of the AMA Time Management Strategies seminar which I recently attended - is to document how you spend your day.

With that, I introduce Time Tracker, an Open Source Efficiency Tracking Utility for the Lotus Notes Client.

The idea is simple. At the start of your day - upon completion of your first task - create an entry highlighting what you did and whether you feel it was an efficient or inefficient use of your time. Based on several requests, you can also select the priority, apply categories, or even align your time against a project.

For Lotus Notes Client v8.0 and above, you can use the Time Tracker Widget to make this process even easier!

Based on the feedback I got from here, on Twitter, and on Facebook regarding my upcoming Time Tracker application, I've made a few simple changes:

Priorities, Categories, and Projects

So you not only want to know how efficient your time is, but also what it's spent on?! Yeah -- that actually makes sense. So I've added Priorities, Categories, and Projects to not only the Lotus Notes Client UI document Form Design Element, but also the widget Form Design Element which can be loaded in the Lotus Notes Client Sidebar and allow for always-on, quick entries in the Time Tracker.

After all - and speaking for myself here - if it's not easy, it won't get used.

Configuration-based widget

Not wanting to have form-bloat should you not want to track Priorities, Categories, or Projects -- I've given you the ability to disable/enable those fields from the application Preferences.

So, if you don't want to track anything but the description, timestamps, and the status (efficient/inefficient), you can "remove" everything else at will.

More Views...

This was kind of a given: adding more categorization options (Priority, Category, and Project), I needed to add more views.

... upcoming changes and publication!

There are a few things that I want to add in here, at least for version 1.0.

The biggest one is adding Readers fields to the entries and having them defined by the application Preferences. Nothing major, but this will allow you to deploy a single instance in a project team, group, business unit, etc. and allow everyone to track their time against a common instance of the Lotus Notes Application.

Eventually, I'd like to create a mobile device client - which I'm thinking will be a version 2.0 feature - and am shooting for a Blackberry device Java client.

I'm shooting for a Monday - October 12th, 2009 - release of version 1.0, so if you have any suggestions for features and functionality that you'd like to see in this release, please let me know ASAP!

I've made it no secret that the blog template that I use relies on my hand-writing the HTML markup that you see in each post. Sure, I could go with a WYSIWYG editor, but I really think that writing out the markup by hand keeps me more up-to-speed on coding for the web.

The only problem that I run into - and it's not really a problem as much as it's an annoyance - is when I need to display markup within a post. See, if I want to display a <, I need to write &lt;.

This makes the following line:

<h1><span class="greeting">Hello<span> <span class="location">World</span><span class="punctuation">!</span></h1>

this:

<h1><span class="greeting">Hello<span> <span class="location">World</span><span class="punctuation">!</span></h1>

Now, to do this, I typically open a new Notepad instance, write out the code, then run a series of Find & Replaces until I get the publish-ready markup, which I then paste back into my blog post.

After installing the Lotus Notes 8.5.1 Client, and with it's improvements on the Lotus Notes Client Sidebar Widget handling of Google Gadgets, I found a different - and much preferred - approach: Donato Furlani's Post-Code code converter.

And this Google Gagdet now sits as a sidebar widget in my Lotus Notes Client sidebar, just waiting for me to have to write out some XHTML that I need blog post-ready... which based on a few things that I have coming up, this will really come in handy!

Feel free to download and add this Sidebar widget into your Lotus Notes Client Sidebar!

The other day, I took a 2-day course on Time Management, where I basically learned that my procrastination and misuse of time causes me to be inefficient.

I also learned something that we may all know, but it (at least for me) didn't really hit home: we all get the same number of hours in a day, and time is a finite resource.

One of the take-aways from this course was that I should be using technology to make me more efficient. Notice I didn't say productive, but rather efficient. See, smashing my head against a wall for an hour will produce a bloody mess... it certainly doesn't make that hour an efficient use of my time.

So I've started using more and more of the Calendaring & Scheduling capabilities in Lotus Notes... and not just for meetings and appointments. One of the things I learned is that I need to start allocating time within my schedule to do the things that I need to do - if I need 2 hours to put together a project plan for an upcoming project, I should be blocking out 2 hours from my daily schedule solely for that activity, and treat that allocated time the same way I would a normal meeting: focus on the task at hand, and use the time as efficiently as possible.

I've also started to better leverage the To Do functionality in Lotus Notes - I am tracking individual tasks, marking them complete as I go.

I learned that - for procrastinators like me - creating and well-documenting a task list (making sure to put priorities against each task and ensure that each works towards the project goals) is the best way to both keep focused and ensure I do the items that must be done, not the ones that look like the most fun.

So every morning I have 30 minutes blocked out of my schedule to put together and/or review my daily task list.

Another exercise that is intended to help me see my time wasters - which was recommended both in the training literature and by the instructor - is to keep a time diary. The idea is simple - write what you're doing, when you're doing it, and whether that was an efficient or inefficient use of my time.

At the end of a given day, I should have all of my time for the day accounted for - allowing me to see (when compared against my calendar and task list) where I succeeded and where I failed to make the most out of my time.

... so why am I bringing this up here? Well, aside from the fact that I don't think I'm the only procrastinator here and thought that sharing this information could prove invaluable... I honestly couldn't see myself keeping an ongoing diary of my time.

At first, it felt really weird; like I was spending more time working on the diary than working on... work.

Then I remembered - I'm a developer. There's gotta be a better, easier way of doing this.

So I created Time Tracker, a personal time-tracking productivity application for the Lotus Notes client.

This is a simple Lotus Notes Client Application that allows me to create time log entries, categorize each as Efficient or Inefficient, and mark the start and stop times of the given activity.

Where this really comes in handy is Sidebar Widget:

Again, simple: enter a description for the time, and hit the Efficient or Inefficient buttons. If it's the first entry of the day or if you check off the checkbox on the right-hand side of the description, you're presented with a dialog prompt asking you to set the start and end times.

No check in the checkbox or if this isn't your first of the day? It uses the last time entry as your start time and Now() as your end time, and tracking your efficiency becomes a 1-click task!

I plan on publishing this application once I work out a few kinks (mostly in the Calendar View - nothing major, just not quite there yet from a UI standpoint). It will be a freeware/Open Source application, and I'm thinking of wiring some Readers fields into the backend - defined/toggled via the Preferences - that will allow you to easily put this on a Domino server and have multiple people enter their entries into a single application instance.

Thoughts? Features you'd like to see? I have some time available in my schedule coming up next week where I plan on finalizing the v1.0 release, so let me know what you'd like to see!