I promised to try out a time management tool. As always, I start by googling. As usual, lifehacking sites offer a plethora of Top 10 X app -lists, but first I'll need to know what I'm actually searching for.

Requisites

I want a light-weight app that I will actually have to use to program my days. Trello could be used for this, but I might like something that's built just for this.

I want to be able to add tasks and sort of decide when I'll be doing them and how much time I'll be spending on them. Tracking how things turn out would be a bonus.

I'm hoping that I'll be increasing productivity and saving up enough time, to offset the overhead of updating the app/tool constantly.

Potentials

Thing thing is slightly harder to google than most, so I'm getting a lot of noise in the results, but some apps start to approach what I had in mind. It's a real boon to have both android and iOS devices available an in constant use, as I can choose from basically all apps available. iOS seems to have better apps in general for lifehacking, btw. As a long-time android user, this annoys me a bit, but what can you do.

Still:

• My Minutes (iOS)
  This seemed to do everything I wanted. Put in blocks of time and then track how they happened. It costs a couple of bucks though, so I'll be testing a free service first.

• Timely (desktop + API)
  This seems like a fun tool, aimed mostly for freelancers. You can fill in all sorts of stuff and then track how it goes. I might want to be able to plan at what time I'm going to do each task, but that might not be necessary. As I like the UI, I'll be trying this out. For the next week, I'll use this to plan and track all my days. At the beginning of the day, I'll fill in all the tasks I'm planning to do that day and then track how it goes. I'm also creating a Beeminder goal to keep me in check.

Let's see if it seems like this helps more than it wastes time on planning and tracking. And if it's fun.