Do you track your time?

@Noel_Howell1 That’s great feedback! Would you be open to creating a separate post that shares more detail about how you set up the Harvest <> Asana Integration for your team?

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Sure! There’s also readily available how-to guides in both Asana and Harvest websites.

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I am trialling methods of planning my day with time estimates and actuals. I currently use pencil estimates and pen actuals on my day planning diary, which works well.
Time estimates and actual time spent as Asana custom fields seems like one way to do this, but I mostly use Asana only for myself at work and it doesn’t seem worth the AU$367/yr to get this functionality.
Hourstack looks like it could work, but it takes some getting used to. I haven’t quite got the hand of how estimates translate to actuals just yet.
Are there any other alternatives out there?

@Scott_Dellar you’re in luck! There are several time tracking tools that are integrated with Asana. You can find all of them on the Asana integrations page: Asana Apps and Integrations • Asana

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Toggl integrates well with Asana and many other web-based tools such as Google Calendar, and looking back at my day, it is easy to see where I spent my time.
I am more concerned with planning how I will spend my day looking forward - whether I have allocated enough time to my most important things (MITs) but left enough time for the shallow stuff that comes along. HourStack is pretty good, though I am always looking for better alternatives for time-blocking to support the kind of Deep Work (re: cal Newport’s book). Is anybody using any other methods?

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Can anyone save me an entire day of researching and tell me which of the integrations mentioned above by @Alexis work without having to leave Asana?

I do love the custom field options (as explained by @Kaitie in the fantastic video she linked above) but I’d still love to find the golden egg of time tracking which would be free for our team (not just 1 person) and be able to be used without leaving Asana.

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:slight_smile:

“Track time for any Asana activity, and see estimates and total hours spent on it without even leaving the task.”

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Hi Chrystal,
I am using Harvest for some time, and it works out of Asana. It is also great for creating automatic invoices based on your time spent on certain projects.

Best

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Thank you @Alexis and @Sebastian_Paasch

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Thanks @Alexis :blush:

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I completely agree that a simple timer on Tasks is really needed. I’ve spent a lot of time testing the Time Keeping integrations and haven’t found one yet that would be as functional and simple as just having a timer on tasks. Toodledo has this field and it’s really great.

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I’m using Harvest these days. Its a good fit for my current workflow; the cross platform timers are nice to have. The idle time detection and “start time” tracker has saved me more than once.
I think timer choice is going to depend on your use case.
I don’t use the integrated Harvest timer in Asana because, for now, I time by project instead of by task.

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Hi @Scott_Dellar , I think this is my question as well.

I’m a solo freelancer and juggle multiple projects all the time. I’m trialing Asana premium because I saw they had custom fields and dependencies-- I was hoping there would be some feature that might be able help me rank tasks based on time estimates, dependencies, and due dates.

How have you been managing your deep work time blocks?

Hi @Oren,
I schedule my day in HourStack by broad categories (not tasks) - Morning Checks, BAU, Lunch, Afternoon Checks - and then the main focus of my day - deep work. I fit deep work between all the routine stuff. HourStack reminds me when I’ve hit my limit for the shallow stuff so I know when I’ve got to get into the deep stuff.
I keep a deep work scoreboard by tagging my Toggle time entries as Deep Work (diligently kicked off using the Toggl Start Timer button in Asana). I can plan forward and look back on deep work blocks this way.
I hope this answers your question.
Cheers,
Scott

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It’s a good question! Time tracking should be an essential part of project management.

My team is using our own time tracker that is integrated with Asana - it’s called TimeCamp and we’re really happy to offer this integration to our customers.

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I am using Toggl’s Asana integration to track time and like it, especially the reports which club tasks by projects and even by tags. Viewing time in day, week & month view is useful to see where the effort is going.

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Hello. Thanks for the wonderful conversation.

I was looking for something more simple, like a timecard based on project. It wouldn’t need to track in real-time, but would need some simple reporting options. I just need a place for a timesheet and hopefully it integrates with Asana. We currently use Basecamp for hours spent in specific projects, but are looking to move away from Basecamp.

Any suggestions would be great and less monthly expenses would be better.

Thank you.

I’ve been using ManicTime with great success. It’s designed for tracking timecards/billable hours.

Once you add your projects it’ll automatically track them for you.

Also very powerful for tracking related activities without necessarily the same keywords as your project name. So if, for example, you were researching online for an article/paper, you could easily identify and associate your web browsing as part of the research phase for that paper.

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https://timemanager.yaware.ca/ is similar.

Toggl integrates directly into asana and has the timer + all other reporting, desktop app and all other staff, but you have to pay some extra for it. I saw some other one that alos gets a timer directly into asana, but I didn’t like it so much as toggle.