Oh, the joy of the iPhone!!!
This is not, however, yet another article extolling the genius of this wonderfully integrated device, but rather singing the praises of the applications store, and one app in particular… Whereisthetime!
If you (like many of us!) are constantly rushing from pillar to post trying to cram in as much as possible, balancing work and home life, this little app helps you work out if you’ve got the balance right! Easy!
You get a neat little pie chart showing how much time you spent in meetings, dealing with email, writing reports, playing with your kids or even meeting friends down the pub 🙂 All depends how you want to set up the tags and how frequently you are prepared to change ‘tasks’
So for those that are interested during my first week with the app my time was roughly split into thirds for work, sleep and other categories – I’m pretty happy with that balance. The other categories include very boring practical household tasks (my wife can’t believe that one!) as well as more fun activities, such as playing with our kids… and getting resoundingly thrashed on the Wii 😦
It helps if you’re a bit of a stats geek, but the one thing I’ve noticed is that simply by measuring this I’ve cut down on time wasted on time browsing music sites or blogs and tried to spend time doing more useful stuff instead!
Probably easy to become a bit obsessive with this app if constantly updating tasks, but useful as a periodic check to see if you’ve got the balance right for you.