Sharpen Your Focus With Freckle

I want to build a SaaS(Software as a Service) application as a part of my passive income project. While I am learning the technologies, I am also checking out what others have done on that area. Whenever I stumble upon tools that are useful in my passive income project, I'll let you know so you can benefit from them too. The first lovable application I want to introduce you is Freckle. They offer free accounts that lets one person work on one project. Freckle is a perfect tool for a project like mine.

Why I Fell In Love With Freckle

Before:
It is a a nice day and I start working on my passive income project. At some point I notice a popup of a new mail arriving. I go to check my email... and then I find myself on Twitter. I follow an interesting link that I find in a tweet. And before I know it, I've used several hours just surfing on the web. I have wasted massive amount of my prime time without noticing it.

Now:
Whenever I open my PC with an intention to work on my passive income project, I'll open the Freckle timer first. There is a button in my browser toolbar for that. I start the timer immediately and get to work.

When a new mail arrives I am not so tempted to just "quickly check it out", because I would need to pause my timer. If the mail popup looks important, I may pause the timer. But pausing my timer makes me conscious that I am switching into doing something that does not take my project forward. I stay focused - I'll just read the mail and come back working. I'm eager to get my timer back on running!

If I end up getting distracted by the web, I don't log those hours. Yes, I used at least part of them for my project, but I want to keep my pulse clean.

Where Is Your Pulse - Is Your Project Alive?

Well, Freckle shows me the pulse of my passive income project. Here is the view where I can input my hours without timer. The green dots below the turquoise bar shows my pulse. If I want to keep my project going, I'd better keep the pulse throbbing.

In addition to seeing my weekly pulse, I can click the "PULSE" on the right and it nicely shows me the pulse of my project for the whole month. If I had a Freelance account that costs $12 per month, I could put all my projects here and the pulse would have colorful pie charts. If I would need to make invoices, I'd probably buy Freelance account right away.

You Can Only Manage What You Can Measure

We are set for success here, right? You know I am. And when I'll look back a year after, I want to know what I did so that I can repeat it. Maybe I want to know how many hours I used for something so I can calculate what ended up being my hourly pay. That way I'll know what type of projects get me most money per hour (not to say that it is the most important thing). And what do you know, Freckle gives me excellent reports on the hours that I log in. Here is the report on my eBook work between 1st and 6th of July.

As you can see, I can now easily see how much time I have used on different activities while working on my eBook. Again, if I had the Freelancer account the hours breakdown would show me nice pie chart.

OK, I'm ready with this blog post. Let's log my hours.

Click, click and click, I'm done.

Don't wait any longer.
Register your free Freckle account and gain more focus in your project too!

DISCLAIMER

The links in this page are affiliate links. If you end up buying Freckle, I'll get some pennies too! But I am not recommending Freckle because of that. I am recommending it because it is so lovable. Life just cannot get any better than this.