The brain has its limits as anybody who has ever been asked to recall what he did last Tuesday can vouch. You suppose you will remember all the jobs, all the meetings, all the five-minute jobs, and so on, that two hours–you will not. That is where a work diary app discreetly comes to the rescue. It is just a small helper that can be carried around in your pocket, recording all the details without glancing over the shoulder or taking a coffee break.
A work diary application is not merely time tracking. It records the beat of your day. You crack it, write down what you are doing, you could leave a note about that client call that went awry, and get on with it. With time, it is possible to see patterns–how much time tasks actually involve, what projects are sucking your energy, and where you continue to lose minutes that would otherwise be hours. It is not glamourous, yet it is eye opening. Almost as though you are looking at your own work habits through a magnifying glass.
One of the accountants whom I interviewed replied simply: That app knows me better than I do. He wasn’t wrong. When you begin to log you find the truths that make a smart. Perhaps these breaks last half-hours on social media. Perhaps what you swear is six hours long when it is really not more than two. The app does not judge, it simply informs the truth.
The ease with which they are made is what makes these digital diaries so useful. You do not have to be trained and you do not have to be a technical person. Tap, type, done. All are safely stored awaiting reports, audits or even sanity tests. No coffee on your papers, no pages lost, no chicken-scratch handwriting of half-awakening at your desk.
In the case of teams, it is a silent revolution. Progress comes without nagging on the part of managers. Employees monitor their productivity without the feeling of being spied on. It is openness that does not have side eyes. And in the case of freelancers or contractors, digital evidence of your hours can be the difference between being paid with ease and spending weeks of spam mails attempting to sort out fumbling inquiries.
Of course, no app is perfect. Others fail to sync, others eat up battery life like a toddler. But those are small hiccups. The reward, transparency, reduced stress, is worth a thousand taps.
And there is something strangely pleasing about the end of the day with a tidy digital log looking back at you. It’s proof you did something. Evidence that time did not simply burn away into thin air. It is gold to any one who is attempting to maintain a distinction between his or her workdays.
A work diary application, in a busy, hectic job life, offers some silence and sanity. It transforms the messiness into clarity, days into facts, and who knows–who knows, maybe you can even use the moments of time that are then falling through the cracks.