Hey you! Yes you!
Where is your time going every day? Is it being spent on productive tasks? Are you using your time to build successful outcomes for your life?
Or are you…. Surfing? Watching TV? Chatting over IM?
Bah! Let’s get going in the right direction already!
One sure-fire way to find out where your time is going is to track it. And what many of us consider the best way to track our time is through using TaskBlaze. If you haven’t heard of Taskblaze before, let me tell you a bit about it.
Really it’s simple. Just launch Taskblaze and put in the task you are working (or *cough* playing on) and hit the start button. It will time how long you’ve been working on your task. But not only that, once you click the stop button, it automatically exports the task and time spent to your Outlook calendar – so you’ll have a fast convenient record of everything. Pretty cool eh?
Yes, I am the creator, but I’m definately not the only one who loves Taskblaze. Last week I got a note from a TaskBlaze user who wrote to tell me that his firm had dumped thousands of dollars into time tracking software that never really met expectations and this little freeware app. is the best he’s seen yet.
Here are the latest enhancements for TaskBlaze Beta 0.8:
- Hover over the Stop button to get a readout of what task you are working on and how long you’ve been working.
- There is a blue bar above the button you can use to activate TaskBlaze and reposition it on your desktop
So how do you get TaskBlaze?
1. Download and install yourself a copy of Microsoft’s .NET Framework (free) if you don’t have it already.
2. Download and unzip a copy of Download Taskblaze_B8.zip (194.4K) to a handy place on your Windows computer.
Then launch TaskBlaze and you will be well on your way to productivity utopia! Can it be any more simple? I think not…
Taskblaze is tell-a-friendware. No charge, just send it on to a friend. No sense in you hogging all the success right? And while you’re at it..be sure and tell ‘em about my little blog here.
FAQ:
Q: Gee Brad, you mean I can get TaskBlaze for Free if I share the wealth by sending a copy to a friend or two?
A: Yes indeedy..take it with my compliments, live long and prosper…
Q: Thanks! But I’d still like to do something for you to return the favor, any ideas?
A: You are so kind. You can either send me a tip or put your goals into warp speed by getting a copy of Achieve-IT! Goal Software. A portion of all donations and Achieve-IT! purchases will go towards maintaining the blog and for future software enhancements.
Q: I downloaded TaskBlaze but it doesn’t run, I get an error!
A: You probably didn’t install the Microsoft’s .NET Framework. Please download and install it.
Q: I am getting pop up ads for casinos, p0rn and "enhancement" drugs did you put spyware in TaskBlaze?
A: Absolutely NOT! You need a copy of Firefox or Opera browser. You’ve probably picked up spyware while surfing. TaskBlaze has absolutely no spyware or virii.
Technorati Tags: taskblaze, productivity, gtd
{ 24 comments }
Just when I thought you had stopped working on this…
Thanks for the update!
Does it have a version for ppc?
No version for Pocket PC yet. I had asked a few months ago if anyone was interested and I think I got 3 people who said they were.
Yeah thats not a very big response. It would be difficult for me to use because I run my calendar off my phone. Great idea nonetheless.
I like taskblazer would like it beter if it created a journal Item I share my calander at work and i dont want the time items public
and if it could intergreget with PI Jornal for pda Sweet
How about if you could just mark your calendar items private?
Basically, one of the reasons I created Taskblaze was to bypass Outlook’s Journal entirely.
Any chance of incorporating with google desktop?
Any chance of supporting open source or freeware calendars like Mozilla Sunbird?
Personally, I would love to see this on ppc. It would give the most accurate reflection of where you spend your time. Would this be tough to do?
Good idea but for some reason I can’t move the stop button everywhere on the screen.. It seems to be restricted to a small square in the middle of my screen. Any ideas? Btw this might be perfect with our software 1time at the end of the day you can enter timesheets based on what you record.
Would an Excel or tabular data export option be feasible? (for those who don’t use Outlook)
Great app! I’ve been looking for something similar to this but only coming across things way to bloated than what I actually need!
Only a couple of suggestions. When you press Stop to end a task the application just quits. Is there any way you just just tell it to go back to the start screen again? I usually have multiple tasks during the day, one after another so I’d have to start the program up each time.
Also, it would be great to have the app run in the taskbar as an icon. Could be a green icon at the start, click on it and it’d open up the main window. Then icon would turn red and when you finished your task just hit the icon in the taskbar and it’d stop the task and turn green again ready for the next task
Nice tool; one issue – it doesn’t honor my mouse accelleration when being dragged. I suspect that’s not a problem with the app, but just in case…
When I click to drag the window, my mouse sails way, way ahead of the window. The window appears to be moving at “normal” speed, and it is certainly moving in response to the mouse motion.
- Bryan
I still would like to see this for pocket pc as well. I am not at my desktop all day and need some way to track tasks on the go.
Hi and thanks for TaskBlaze. A couple of suggestions to make the program even better
.
Is it possible for a setting to retain Task and Category information?
Is it possible to calculate the time for the task and add it to what is entered into Outlook?
I thought about a “Pause” button but not sure how you would implement. It would be useful if you calulated the “Actual” time of the task (minus the Pause)
Regards
David Jacobs
I’d like to second the request for an export to Excel or tabular data. Also, how about an option to mark the time as something other than “busy” in my Outlook calendar?
Is it possible to use this in a multi-tasking sense? I’m often working on multiple tasks at the same time
@David Jacobs, thanks for the suggestions. I don’t know about a Pause button though because you’d just stop the task and resume it later.
@Mike Jones, changing up the “busy” to free or something can be done, but if you aren’t busy during that time, what are you doing?
@Prejay, yeah, just launch another instance of Taskblaze and multi-task to your hearts content
Right now though, I am booked solid with programming stuff so it’s going to be a short wait for the next version of Taskblaze.
Could I install it on a flash drive?
I don’t see why not. The only issue would be if you put the flash drive into a computer that doesn’t have Microsoft’s .NET framework installed. So if you have room, you might want to put the installer for that on your flash drive as well.
@Brad and Kelly,
I run it daily from a USB drive, as I’m not allowed to install software on my work PC, works great, makes compiling my timesheet a breeze.
Thanks Brad!
dcypl
Thanks for the follow up. It is good to know how well it is working for you!
Two quick comments:
1) I’d love a pocket pc version – and will help beta test
2) Any chance of being able to enter what task you *were* working on?
I’m trying to find a way to log what I actually was working on, rather than what I had planned on working on. – ie. it asks for the task when you press the stop button, rather than when you press the go button.
Right now, I manually go back and change the calendar entry to achive this.
Beyond that, thank’s for providing this incredibly useful program. I have ADD, and this is one of my vital tools in helping to keep me on track and organized.
Great app! I’ve been looking for something similar to this but only coming across things way to bloated than what I actually need!
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