Thanks, everyone- these are some wonderful suggestions.
@paulminors to your question, I’m tracking my time on tasks in order to know where I’m spending my time across projects and work categories to make sure I’m spending my time in the most leveraged areas depending on my goals.
@FATBOY we’ll definitely pass the suggestion of an internal timer along to the team.
In the meantime, I’ve started using a project with custom fields for time and then inputting actual and estimated time by 15 minute increments on the task. I also have a drop-down category in the project for category of work (i.e. Calls, webinars, newsletter, strategy, logistics/admin, etc.). This has allowed me to track my time DoD and WoW by pulling an export of the project, throwing into a pivot table and graphing. I’ve attached an example graph below:
Hourstack has a free version, and with Asana Premium you could use a custom field to track the estimated and/or actual time spent on tasks. You would then use this field in key projects to input time on each task.
I used HourStack for several months and LOVED it. I recently moved away to dogfood tracking time in Asana custom fields, but I would highly recommend HourStack if you’re looking for a straightforward way to track where you are spending your time and want to integrate with Asana and/or Google Calendar where you can easily drag and drop items from each onto your time for the day.
For the Asana integration, I found that using the search area for specific tasks was the easiest way to find them and bring them onto my calendar. I’ll include a few screenshots below of how I was able to track my time with HourStack and then report on it in excel from an export:
@Noel_Howell1 That’s great feedback! Would you be open to creating a separate post that shares more detail about how you set up the Harvest <> Asana Integration for your team?
I am trialling methods of planning my day with time estimates and actuals. I currently use pencil estimates and pen actuals on my day planning diary, which works well.
Time estimates and actual time spent as Asana custom fields seems like one way to do this, but I mostly use Asana only for myself at work and it doesn’t seem worth the AU$367/yr to get this functionality.
Hourstack looks like it could work, but it takes some getting used to. I haven’t quite got the hand of how estimates translate to actuals just yet.
Are there any other alternatives out there?
@Scott_Dellar you’re in luck! There are several time tracking tools that are integrated with Asana. You can find all of them on the Asana integrations page: Asana Apps and Integrations • Asana
Toggl integrates well with Asana and many other web-based tools such as Google Calendar, and looking back at my day, it is easy to see where I spent my time.
I am more concerned with planning how I will spend my day looking forward - whether I have allocated enough time to my most important things (MITs) but left enough time for the shallow stuff that comes along. HourStack is pretty good, though I am always looking for better alternatives for time-blocking to support the kind of Deep Work (re: cal Newport’s book). Is anybody using any other methods?
Can anyone save me an entire day of researching and tell me which of the integrations mentioned above by @Alexis work without having to leave Asana?
I do love the custom field options (as explained by @Kaitie in the fantastic video she linked above) but I’d still love to find the golden egg of time tracking which would be free for our team (not just 1 person) and be able to be used without leaving Asana.
Hi Chrystal,
I am using Harvest for some time, and it works out of Asana. It is also great for creating automatic invoices based on your time spent on certain projects.