Startup Idea: Integrated Task Management and Time-Tracking Software
In my most recent job, I was employed as a dual staff assistant and editorial assistant for a small but growing publishing company. I was expected to handle two full-time or near-full-time roles at once, and those roles were locked in near-constant opposition with each other in terms of when and how often they demanded my time, and the way the workflow needed to be structured.
At previous jobs, I consistently earned praise and recognition for my organization, project management, and time management skills. But despite my best efforts to use productivity tracking systems, be proactive, and generally "stay organized," nearly every day was a constant scramble to put out fires and handle a never-ending deluge of unforeseeable tasks.
My supervisor did seem sympathetic to the problem and asked me to track my time spent on each task so that he could help me prioritize. Unfortunately, the nature of the tasks was so varied and the pace was so frantic (and I needed to switch between entirely different tasks so frequently and rapidly) that it was simply impossible to capture that accurately--and if I tried, it would have eaten up quite a huge chunk of my day.
In terms of a software program that would have helped me immensely: I picture it as a perfect cross between the "Secret Weapon" system of using Evernote to implement David Allen's "Getting Things Done" method and a categorization/time-tracking program. Specifically:
--Contains categories for my various types of tasks (e.g., "copyedit," "proofread," "meeting scheduling," "conference planning," "copywriting," "personal assistant tasks," "in meeting"). Categories should, of course, be fully customizable/color-codable in order to be useful to any user. --Hotkeys I could use to instantly start, pause, or stop a task in one of these categories. --Time tracking of each task. Ability to spit out all time-tracking into a saveable/printable spreadsheet capturing the past day, week, month, etc. --Basic analytics (e.g., charting tools that could track changes in amount of time spent on tasks over time) would be a huge plus! --Ability to incorporate Pomodoro-style chunks of work vs. rest periods alongside other time tracking would be an even bigger plus! --Ability to have multiple time-tracked tasks running simultaneously (to reflect multitasking). --Ability to manually adjust the start or stop time on a previous task (e.g., in case I accidentally forgot to stop it and it ran way too long). --System of taggable notes and/or action items. Fully customizable tags. --Reminder system to bring up a note from the past at a time predetermined by me. --Ability to attach materials to notes (project plans, etc.) --A way to sync up tasks completed (and captured via notes) with the time-tracking tags. For example, if I wanted to capture that a specific hour of copyediting was used to finish a specific article captured in my to-do notes, I would be able to link those in the system somehow.
Basically, I'm not looking for "synchronizing multiple systems" so much as a dovetailing/"one stop shopping" approach to several program types that already work well.