If like me you work in an agency where billing is based on a charge up rate pegged to your time, you'll probably know the pains of timesheets, yet you know without them you'll never remember what you did making them a necessary evil. Since I've never had to fill timesheets before joining Hill & Knowlton, it was something I had to overcome. For those who know me, overcoming something doesn't often mean getting used to it. There's always a better way to do something. I had the gut feeling that I wasn't the only one trying to solve the problem, so I went out in search of a solution to help me speed up a somewhat time-consuming task. I found that the solutions out there were either for personal time tracking or full systems for company-wide timesheets. If you doubt you have the power to influence a organisation-wide change, you might want to give these personal time managers a try and maybe make life a little better for yourself.

• If you run Windows and love shortcut combos, you'll appreciate this VB script I found on Lifehacker that can be activated via a key stroke combo (such as ctrl + alt + L). Upon activation, it gives you a popup dialog box with a one line form to will. Just fill in the task you're doing and it appends the date and time much like the way sever logs work.
• Blogger David Seah has a neat little timesheet template he calls an Emergent Task Timer. It really is just a pretty sheet for you to document your tasks in 15min blocks throughout the day. It comes in PDF or an experimental online Flash version.
• Another paper-based timesheet template (with no fancy Flash alternative) is Blue Flavor's timesheet. As good as David Seah's, just depends on which you like better I guess.
• If you refuse to be a tree killer, and absolutely love Web 2.0 AJAX stuff and don't mind leaving the browser window open throughout the day, you might want to either try TimeTracker, time.onrails.org, or the simplest one I've seen, Loggr. All are free, web-based, and good enough for personal productivity.

Now, for those who have the power to uproot legacy database apps or the evil Excel spreadsheet systems with macros that strangle every mouse gesture you make, check out SlimTimer, Time IQ, and 88 Miles. I haven't had the time nor capital to give these commercial systems a go, but they sure do look spiffy. Maybe you can tell me your experiences if you've had a chance to try them. Here's to a more productive tomorrow! (After you waste some non-billable time trying out the above options.) (Picture from David Seah's blog)