Timely

What do you like best?

The time commitment to use Timely is low, and the UX of their product makes it very quick to learn. It provides enough task-level detail to satisfy the most data-driven of people but won't overwhelm those who want to consume the information at a higher level. I can't say enough positive things about this application!

What do you dislike?

This is a minor peeve, but sometimes the reminders to log my time feel a little bit oppressive, and an unfortunate side effect of ignoring them seems to be that those tasks are placed on ignore, requiring me to resurrect them from that bucket prior to logging them. I've also found that I have to scan the ignore list at the end of every day to fish other random things out, and I haven't been able to figure out why this happens. The effort required to do this is minimal in comparison to the time it saves me, so I've just chosen to accept this as an idiosyncrasy of the product thus far.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

You'll be up and running so quickly it's hardly worth debating whether or not to give Timely a try.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

I struggle with symptoms from ADHD, which have not been helped by the time dilation of living alone through a global pandemic. Not only do I tend to toggle between tasks for different clients often throughout the day, but I also tend to lose track of the time I've spent working for each of them. My typical Sunday has consisted of an hour or two piecing together how I spent my time that week for as long as I've been an independent consultant. It was becoming so tedious as to make me avoidant of the task, which is entirely counter-productive to having gone into business for myself.

Then, along came Timely. I don't remember which random blog I learned about it on (inevitably during one of my billing-avoidant rabbit holes), but I immediately knew this product was something I needed to try. I took advantage of their introductory two-week trial and was up and running inside of five minutes.

I wasn't prepared for the degree to which Timely would be a value add to my process. It literally lifts all of the burden of time tracking off my my plate and I no longer have to spend those hours at the end of every week deciphering bread crumb trails to figure invoicing out. Its accuracy provides an insurance policy for both me and my clients, and adding this tool to my arsenal has alleviated a great deal of anxiety I wasn't even conscious of having. This has freed up brain-cycles that I can now actually use to enrich the work I do for my clients.