Some people find themselves clueless, annoyed and confused as to where did the time go and why they could not finish that important report inspite of sitting in front of the computer all day long. If somebody asks them if they spent too much time standing around the coffee machine or kept gossiping even after the lunch time was over, they act mystified and say, “I did not even leave my desk – not for a moment!” The problem is that you don’t have to leave the desk to waste your time, you could have spent a few minutes here and there on facebook and twitter and it could all add up to 2-3 hours during the entire work day. When at work, you must manage your time efficiently, either through the help of an efficient secretary or through some programs like Motivate Clock.
Motivate Clock is a simple Windows application that makes use of Adobe Air to show you how exactly you have utilized your time during a work day. It can give you accurate details about the programs used and windows opened and how much time you have spent on each of these.
Motivate Clock starts in the manual mode – where you have to manually choose work or rest to count your working and resting times. If you want it to choose the work and rest automatically, then you have click on New Project and choose the applications that should be counted as work applications. For example, if you are working in Microsoft Word or Libre Office, then you have to select the related applications from the list. As long as you these programs’ windows are in focus, the time is counted as “working”, for all the other windows, the time is counted as “resting”.
If you work with websites or through web applications, then you can install the Motivate Clock browser extensions. After this you can choose which websites should be taken as work sites. For example, working on your WordPress blog could be work, while engaging on Twitter would be taken as resting time.
After you have used the Motivate Clock application for some hours or throughout the day, you can view the statistics from the application window itself. You can also generate a PDF document containing your report for much detailed information.
Verdict: Motivate Clock is an effective time management utility for Windows. It can work both in the automatic or manual modes to find out how much time you invest in actual working and how much time you waste doing some other things.
You can download the Motivate Clock from http://motivateclock.org/en/.