Yeah. Ready to go? Ready? Okay. Hey, guys, Welcome to the fun size podcast. This is Episode seven entitled Death to Time Tracking. I am Rick from Fun, Fun Size.

I'm Natalie from one side.

We're just getting together to talk about time tracking today. This is our podcast on mobile design, and we just wanted to talk a little bit about some current events before we get into today's subject. First up, I guess it's kind of hard not to talk about this. IOS eight is right around the corner. It's coming up feature wise. It's there's a lot. There's a lot of new features coming out in Iowa's eight, but design wise I mean, I haven't really seen much different. Really. It's just like a lot of cool new things that you can do with your iPhone. I think I feel like we'll probably see a lot of really interesting things in September when they actually release it. And they also have the WWDC that right? It's Debbie Debbie D c in both like the one we just saw. And in September as well, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, and yeah. So I'm excited. I've been so curious to see what I found six is gonna be because it's obviously going to be a bigger screen. But what does that mean? Like perhaps, you know, like, are they gonna have, like, these black bars around the outside of it of existing apse? Because they don't really have, like, a fluid, you know, um, interface the way android does kind of kind of curious what that's gonna look like.

Um, but I haven't seen much difference in the way it looks, except for the detail in refinement. Seems to be much higher. It's like it almost feels like Iowa A is what they were probably hoping to achieve with Iowa. Seven,

you know? Sure.

Maybe ship. It'll be early. But the detail, the refinement detail look a lot better. And I didn't catch the whole announcement. But some of the features that they announced, like, could potentially blow hole companies out of the water. You know, some of the group messaging stuff, you know, the annotation features that pretty much just you mean that people don't need products like, I don't know, really

interesting. Yeah, the email had all kinds of stuff like that, Like the annotation features and like swiping It's very similar to what we use for Mailbox, which I really love. That that app really makes my life a lot easier. Um, and they also have, like, enterprise level, uh, stuff for I'm less of your big company. You can get your whole company on IOS eight and have sort of, I guess, on the i t side of things like integrations just makes a way easier. That's pretty cool. Pretty interesting.

Um, I wonder if they fixed the keyboard to Yes. No, the keyboard. How has, like, that stupid like shift button like you can never tell if it's at our caps. Lock like it. You can never tell if it's the capsule ox actually on or not, because, like, I hope they fix that is such a tiny little thing. But, um,

yeah, I mean, like, you know whether or not it's locked in all caps or initial

cap. I mean, I've been using it since, you know, everybody has since I was seven came out, and it's still like when you look at it, I don't ever know if it's on by memory until a type something and see, see if it's actually on caps or not, And I'm like, Oh, doing it. You know,

another thing that's kind of interesting, like, you know, because I'm an android user and I'm really happy that Iowa is finally moving forward with a wife keyboard. I almost don't know how you guys have been able to

live without that.

It's kind of like Apple in the early days, like refusing to release amount that had a right click.

You know, I

guess they finally just committed to doing that. But what I find a little weird and I don't know if you guys kind of the public time is Iowa users is that the keyboard looks different in different acts. Like sometimes it's high contrast. Sometimes it's

gray and white. Yeah,

not always. I find a little weird.

You know, what's kind of funny is I've noticed on some legacy abs from IOS six and below, Um, for one reason or another, uh, older APS head. Some of them had hard coded that the keyboard into the app, meaning like they basically recreated their own keyboard instead of using the native one. So when I was seven came out and you go to use that it has this, like old looking keyboard. That's like old school. I don't know if you guys have seen that or not. It's really weird.

Really. What

do you mean? Anthony Bhai swipe keyboard. What does that mean?

Well, I don't I don't know what Iowa aided calling it. Oh, they're calling it quick type. Um, you do a Google image search for quick type you could see, Like on Android. You can just very chaotically swipe your finger around in emotion. And it'll automatically spell words without you having a type character by character. It looks like that. Definitely gonna be a part of what they

Yeah, only, Yeah, that's later.

Instead of, like hand picking you really, you could just draw a single line from like, th e is automatically form of the word the,

um Oh, you know, You know what they're doing. I'm on the apple side now. They are opening up the keyboard to third party keyboard experiences in Iowa. Say that's what it is. And it shows an example of just what you're talking about. Where they switch around. Kind of like I guess you do an android. That is crazy. Interesting. Um, speaking of android Are there any new android devices out that you know may have come out recently That Anthony mayor, And it may not be wearing on his wrist right now.

Man, uh, this this Google I o announcement. I know for many, like, heil sutures, it's not really a big deal, but this was a huge Google i o. And, you know, it was really interesting because they actually made no mention of Google laugh at all. It was all about a connected

device. That's true. I didn't think of that.

They, um, don't get caught it all The big one of the biggest announcement was the release of their new design language for the new version of the O s called El, which is based on material design. I haven't really research all that in depth, but the basic premise is that they developed the inspiration for this new you I buy by watching the way paper interact and various environments like being thrown in the air and flying down to the ground. Or how it told how you can fold in half and thirds and fours and what it looks like when you close and open it like Accordions. It's all based on this material. These this material that flows on top of the surface. And the other interesting thing about it is that designers and developers can give different depth of layer assignments to different you. I'll, um, if you could have a like a background later, zero in a button, layers upon two and then floating things the layer force of very dimensional.

Yeah,

And with that, you know, kind of around that they sort of a show like how that's gonna work in Google OS. And then they went straight to the you know, Android, where which, you know, uses the same language I did. I did get the Google watch. I got the basic LG. Actually, when I said Google, I just turned the watch on um, I got the basic Google watch, which is basically just a very robust version of Google now on Android or Google Search, as it's called in Iowa. Everything is notification based, uh, and I haven't really played around with it too much, but some of the after very highly integrated where you can respond with replies and some will

automatically launch

app on your phone. It's pretty surprising what you can do with it. Like I know it's just like the first relief, and some of it might be a novelty. But it clearly it's kind of starting to show me like how some of these things are gonna interact with each other and has, you know, product designers like not just with Google wear, but also with, you know, Iowa connected devices like Like we're already at the stage where designers we're gonna have to start dividing for the other tiny

screen totally

and but beyond. They also announced Android TV, and they announced their competitors to Iowa. The car. I think it's called Android in the Car and drive Car 100 auto or something

like that, something I'm not really

sure about. All those that end Android, where Israel and you can buy a mount.

That's pretty cool. It seems like Google has officially beat you know, Apple to the, you know, in the race for the I watch or whatever I've been hearing about an iWatch from Apple for, like, ever, it seems like, and just never happened. I'm glad you mentioned that about, uh, Google TV as well is that it is called this Google TV or

I think it's called Android

Andrew.

I'm not really sure I'll have a look at my eyes. My nose. I can't remember.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting, because, uh, I've been thinking about apple TV lately. I recently got a new, really smaller TV that I got from someone, and I am actually using it in my room, and I wanted to get a second Apple TV, but I'm like, Oh, man, September's right around the corner. We should probably just wait. So I'm definitely hoping among the other things that are gonna be talked about in W. David D.

C. Uh, this year that Apple TV will be amongst them. Maybe there'll be a new version of the hardware. Or maybe it'll just be like a new OS for Apple TV. They're, like, really behind on that. They've been adding other APS to it, but it's not nothing. Nothing very intuitive. In fact, I've been using the chromecast from like IOS devices to like project stuff on, and it seems to be pretty pretty far ahead of the game in terms of, well, not ahead. But they're keeping up pretty well with having like APs that integrate with Chromecast.

Yeah, it's a really interesting time. I kind of feel like this is kind of like, similar to when the iPhone first came out. Like a lot of stuff isn't mainstream. Yeah, you can tell that 369 months from now that the mobile screen is this gonna be one of, like, four or five different screens that you're gonna have to design for.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's see some responsive sites go down. Tow watch, watch level thing

I had this conversation, would would Todd, one of the owners of four kitchens, and he was telling me how they work. They work in the Web design. They do a lot of content management in design, around confident. And in that community, they're already talking about how like they need to stop thinking about the website. Is being the interface with the West by being the service that distribute content to guess what screen right on. And I think that's the same way all this building if you're designing Twitter six months or now, you're really you're really designing the the architecture of the information and how it's gonna be distributed.

Yeah. Oh, it's got to be a lot less valuable to hire somebody to design something for one specific, like avenue like, Oh, we're just gonna have you designed for, you know, android whatever. Or we're just gonna have you designed for the website, You know, like, there's so much to think. About. What? How does content fit into all these environments? And that's really interesting, right? Natalie wasted

your next episode on connected connected devices.

Yeah, that's interesting. Um, yeah. Cool. Let's shift off of the new stuff and just get into you. The the meat of it. We're talking about death to time tracking, man. We picked this. Honestly, we picked this topic this week because we had a very busy week and didn't have a lot of time to prepare. So we picked a topic that we've been talking about. Emily, Uh, internally. Sorry.

Um, and we've been talking about time tracking for a really long time. Really? Since we started. You know, since fun sized started and we've been always sort of butting heads up against is there a way to you? You know, just completely get rid of it. Anthony says, you know, he walks Siri's like, you know what? That's it we're done with time tracking. Like he says that all the time, and I definitely, you know,

feel like I want to get rid of time tracking as well, but it also is kind of scary. So we thought maybe we just look at it as you know what? Examine the problem. Kind of like at first. So, like, why do people track time? Why did? Well, yes.

I mean, before we get into this, uh, you know, a partner in this business I'd really be interested in Being with the community has to say about this. So, you know, you guys want to tweet back to us that that fun size on Twitter with your thought that really appreciate it because, you know, just like you were probably trying to forget about the question. Why did we time track? I really believe that. It just goes. It dates back to, you know, bigger days. Advertising agency days, big agency days where that is just the way you made your money.

You know,

if you had to track your I order so that you could build your clients and you build your client hourly and then on the in employee management, but nothing. That's how you tracked whether your employees were performing

or not. Right?

And And I think that just like Photoshopped, you know, like sure there are more advanced products out there that will allow you to design but abandoning time tracking as scary as it would be to abandoned photo shop for a product like

yeah,

something that was ingrained in us. And and I think I think it's largely related to just the way clients treat agencies or freelancers and how that trickled down to wow, the business owners. You feel like they need to treat their staff to make sense of it. Or there may be some time, you know, from the owner's perspective, sometimes just to, you know, make sure that your team isn't burnout. Sometimes it's not just about like are people working that sometimes like, are they working hard?

You know,

So I don't know. I mean, I don't know why, but I definitely am starting to see the there. While there are advantages and disadvantages on both five, I'm really starting to see the advantages of quick that's stopping, looking

at it as a metric,

even if you're tracking

it. Uh,

maybe not tracking it in terms of you know how well you're doing. It's a project that you think is more of an internal.

Well, I think, too, that something else come to realize is that Why do people track time? It's like something you can agree on. You know, like a client is gonna hire someone you know. It's a service industry were in like, design is sort of a service. So how do you measure the service? It's You have to pick some type of increment, you know? So it's it's time. And why is it time? I don't know. Maybe because that's the one thing that we all have to abide by. We all understand what time is. You know, an hour to one person means an hour to another person. Um,

yeah, but you know what I mean. It does like a common language. But you know what? There's times when it doesn't always make sense. You know? Like I mean, if you think about any sort of craftsman out there, you know, I've used this metaphor analogy. Money comes before, but, you know, think of like someone in Japan that the master samurai swordsman sword maker or someone that you know makes you know luxury custom guitars. If it costs $10,000 for a custom order custom guitar, why should it matter how many hours were used to create that? And if you if you develop your skill over, you know over the years, why why should your ability to make money based on how many hours of cookies if you could do it in half the time, isn't it worked the same value?

Sure, I think so. And I think that what I'm sort of like realizing here is I'm thumbing through our notes is that, um, there's a service that you get for time, but then there's a product you might get for value. You know, you said a guitar or a samurai sword that's not a service that's a product. And what we deliver, you know, in terms of design, is like a finished product, right? So why do we, you know, have to abide kind of by the clock, And I guess the thing what we could live on to Why do we hate time tracking if you want?

Unless you, uh what? I was one of the things I was thinking. Is that why? Why we hate time tracking or why I do is that it feels like you're sort of punching a clock and, you know, nobody As soon as you know, you have to, like, do a certain amount of ours. Then it just makes you feel like I can't wait to get through this amount of hours, you know, so I can be, like, done with what? You know,

I promised someone I would do or something, and it's less let's focus on the work and the milestones that we're actually achieving here. It just feels like if you're working from 9 to 5 or something and that's the clock, you have to punch punch in at nine, punch out at five. Then it doesn't actually matter what you do while you're there. I don't know. I guess it from like an employee perspective, you know, just like coming in. I've had lots of jobs, you know, I've worked at Starbucks. I worked at a construction company of work that chick fil A. And, uh,

when I was at those places, I just kind of couldn't wait till the clock was said five o'clock. I just wanted to leave, you know? Yeah. Yeah,

it is. You know, I I've definitely been in the employee by the perspective, more than a lot longer than I've been on the owner of the perspective. And most of the jobs that I've had, I was always the one guy or one of you guys that I couldn't keep up with ours. So I always found myself being scolded by, you know, the creative directors of the owners, like you need to fill out

your time sheet,

you know, because that was mainly because they needed those hours so they

could send an envoy. That's how they build, right?

Yeah. And what would happen is I would sometimes be 12 or three weeks behind,

And

at that point, you're just

guessing. You know, you're just saying eight hours here for hours here. Yeah,

two hour here, you know, You know, I don't know if Natalie looked at it like I have that I look at the time sheet and I realized, like, a couple weeks ago, that a couple weeks ago I looked at a snapshot of ours and only 50% of the people at once I've had a a hunch. And so you have to start wondering like, Well, really, how accurate

is

it? The part that sucks for me as an owner? There's really two parts, right? Number one. It's thought that, you know, if people aren't if your If your project is based on hours and the hours are updated, then you start going your clients more hours, and the other part of it is that if you're tracking hours, then you start looking at the number. It's, too. It's too easy to start looking at Howard and creating assumptions about how yeah,

right. And

and one of the last episode we talked, we talked about pricing and fun. Size is kind of in the middle, like we don't Bill based on hours we build based on retainers. We're kind of in a hybrid model. We still track time, but I still don't think it's really accurate. I don't I don't think it's fair, you know, like Rick You, for example, like you work on a project and you basically have an account that you work on. You know, you know pretty much 75% of your time and you're required to deliver a certain amount of effort and, you know, Sprint effort, five points.

The client. Why should it matter matter whether you did it in 30 few hours or 40 hours, If you know you've accomplished it in, I mean, they're happy, and then you look at the numbers. They're like, Oh, do we owe the client our

Yeah, the other thing is that ours are ours are a constant, But the work that you do within those hours is a variable, Right? Like ours always gonna be an hour, but some hours you spend, like, really heavy brain work and other hours you spend sort of like just doing something like that's really simple that you just have to do for it. So it's just weird to charge one thing for an hour over here, charge the same thing for an hour. Over here is the charge over here because you're actually doing, like, two very different levels of effort. So I don't What do you think about time tracking Natalie, Do you? I mean, I've definitely heard Anthony talk about a lot. Do you share his views in your distaste for time tracking, or do you actually Are you okay with it.

How much? Honestly, I'm kind of okay with I come like I was in a way, I kind of enjoy doing it just because I couldn't Don't track my own time to see where my hours in a day are going. Do you agree with him in the sense of not being punished for being efficient? Because they're on my whole entire career. Like everyone I've ever talked to, Everyone I've ever worked with. They're always like, you know, you're a really fast designer, like you can get solutions. You know Altidore really quickly and yeah, that's great, right? But then whenever you start thinking about, like, freelancing for having your own business, you don't want to pin a line.

Yeah,

we're doing, you know, at the same time, you know, it's good to know that I spent four hours here for our there and that if I ever board a reference, you know, maybe hours I would know like, Oh, yeah, I like that one day. I remember now, like I spent doing this in the

Yeah, I've never considered myself a slow designer. Always thought it was pretty pretty good. Pretty efficient. Until I started working with you and that totally blew my mind seeing cow how quickly you can get stuff out the door. So I mean, it is a good point, though it doesn't mean it's any less valuable. It just means you're really good at focusing and being efficient. Sowe should someone pay. I pay me more hours because it took me longer and and pay you less hours. Weeks is a tick. You weigh less time like,

you know, to be honest, that's something that Natalie and I we're aware of. Like when we first started the company. Because now in our polar opposite, she's very fast and I'm very slow. And we knew from the light from the first moment that if we were, if we were gonna charge hourly, we would actually be losing

money on.

So, you know, luckily, luckily, we don't build time of materials, have to worry about ours. It's just that are retained, like our retainers have always been based on hours. But honestly, we don't really need it, at least for the kind of work we're doing here in the way that we're managing

here. I think

the reason why we haven't been over let go of it because we're scared. We're scared. We're scared of what a client might say a way. Tell them we're not tracking the

hour. We're

scared of, like not being old approved to a client that we did the work.

Yeah, yeah, I think. I think one of the things that you're touching on there is really interesting, too, because it's like, Well, the reason I'm nervous too Well, there's two reasons, actually. One of the reasons I'm nervous to step away from time tracking is like if it comes down to and things were like not going well And, you know, maybe a client's upset with us or something, and they're like, Well, you know, we just need to see you know what?

Where all this time has been going, you know, then you feel like you have, like, this backbone where you could say, Look, we've been tracking our time. This is how it's going, you know. But that's sort of like it's not a good way. That's not a good mind set toe have rights like, Well, I know I can at least show in my time. She you know, it is not like, really evolving past the very like standard of trading somebody goods for money or service for money or something like that.

It's really not going any further than a simple exchange at that point. The other reason I am kind of nervous to, uh, quit tracking is just yeah, seeing how we're doing, right? Like it's sort of a report for ourselves to, um I would love to move beyond it, but we have to. We've been trying to think of ways to get get away from in a way that's fair for our clients and is just a better way to exchange What, what? You know, I guess I guess clients engagements for our attention and our productivity. Um, we had a couple ideas, but, um, I don't know if any of them are perfect just yet. Do you gotta do one of you guys?

I'm almost convinced, you know, just a recap. I think that there are more disadvantages too bold the freelancer in the agency and the client by tracking time because in that kind of world, someone is is bound to get the short end of the stick. I'll just leave it at that. That's kind of how

I feel like Yeah, that's a point.

We have explored some alternatives. Like Rick, you and I were in Andre or tease or working on the prototype of the Well. Is it a more viable, um, solution to simply use assistant input? Well, how much of my overall capacity that I spend on this project this week or today in terms of percentage is what I spend all day, half a day or 1/4 today,

Right?

Um and I think for some people, that may be a good solution. But I think because, you know, we work in retainer and we work in a job Prague project. I think that you and I, whether we talked about or not, we both know that will

not really. Well, the problem with the only problem with that is that would be fine for someone like like the work that I did have fun size because it's pretty much, you know, bulk in terms of, like, percentage of time. That I spend My day is probably like 75% of one thing, 25% on another thing, but you probably spend, you know, you couldn't even break it up to hours you'd probably have to break yours up thio half hour increments or less, because you you're

exactly right. You're exactly right. It works for the people that are staff on one project for people like me who spread across seven different projects. Plus, you know, three internal projects in the bunch of internal stuff. It just doesn't really work in the same. You still have the same problem. If you don't do it every day and you get behind it still produces, you know, incorrect result. Now, the alternative that I think we accidentally stumbled on that I believe is an actual solution is the use of pivotal tracker. Um, we're testing this, but I believe that it is a much more honest and transparent and really world. Uh,

you did your way of doing it right? You know, you turned to fund a little tracker. We didn't really understand it at first. And then we had a client that you wanted to use it. And seeing how that works has completely changed my mind about about time tracking because, you know, I don't know how many of you have used a little tracker, but the way that it basically works is based on your amount of effort. So let's say you have 40 hours a week to get to a client. You divide that by two meaning that you know, you know, every week you can do 20 points of work, so you break down all your task into point. You know, you break them down into small past.

You can create a simple estimate and the brilliance of pivotal crackers that it won't let you commit to past that. You can't you don't actually have the capacity to do. And that is like tracking hours and wondering if people are higher performers alot performer The the answer is right there, like it's clear, like it shows you whether you're ahead of whether you're delivering with your over delivering when you're under

delivering, whether you're

make any velocity and it's clear to the client if they want to know what you did last week, it's just

right there. Yeah, it's really it's really cool, and just looking at it, simply like that, it is. It is what you just said. There's some caveats, though, like you have to estimate. Basically, it's broken up into little stories, and each story gets assigned, you know, I'm gonna work on the website home page, right? That's a story or something.

Or maybe it's even broke up into smaller pieces. But, like, let's say website home pages a story and you say, Well, this is gonna take me, I don't know, four hours. So you estimated at two points or whatever, as a really basic, you know, generalization of how it works. But the problem is when you work on it for four hours and then, um, it has to do you realize that you need a new feature in there or something? Um,

or you just realized that it's taking you longer than you thought. So the caveat is that it is well, Number one is still some somewhat track tied to time. However, it's a little bit more generic. It's it's, um, it's not as directly related to time. And then the other thing is in order for it to work properly, everyone has to kind of embrace it, and everyone has to estimate the points correctly. And that's often solved with, like, a really solid planning meeting, like where you go through and be like, Hey,

this is our sprint This is our next two weeks, and, um, these are the story. So let's estimate him together so that everyone sort of like a grease. Yes, this is Ah, you know, one point story. Yes, this is a three point story. Whatever. So that's that's just like, kind of the caveats with the with pivotal tracker is a great tool we've been using. It's helped us a lot, and I really want to continue using it.

But, you know, like like a lot of other other things, it's, um it's not perfect.

Yeah, I don't I don't know if there will ever be like, a perfect solution, and, you know, and and I think the solution to this question, it really depends on you know what kind of freelancer you are, what kind of business you are in the witness, what's important to you. But for a and the way that we think it projects about 15 you know, we you know, we partner with our clients, So we would prefer that our clients know that they have a team and that that team is gonna be committed at certain percent. And if they're happy with the work instead of them focused on how many hours of this teamwork. And for those reasons, I think, you know,

pivotal trackers is brilliant. And the other reason why I like it is because it solves a lot of the other project management problems that you know everyone's already dealing with. Like howdy happening Final. You're tough. One place. How do you know? If you're under committing are over committing? What can you actually do? You know, in a week or two without being

overwhelmed, right?

And in transparency,

it is very ever very transparent. Natalie, I'd like to ask you because we just sort of gave you an intro to pivotal. What are your thoughts on it?

I well, because we work with so many. Like I touched juror. I touch Trillo asana like, pivotal tracker and, you know, just looking at it, because I have experience that the other one, I think that could understand it. But at the same time, there are some cork pebble truckers, but I'm kind of still trying to get the gist

of Yeah, Like

what? E. I think it's pretty straightforward to me.

Do you think that I prefer to use that tool over other tools? Or do you have a favorite tool, or do you care what the tool is?

I care So they sense that, you know, the easier the better. Right? Um, my little tracker, I think it has it. It's not necessarily the pool itself, but the state of mind. Like having thio form that new habit of, you know, instead of going to harvest, you go a little tracker to score

point Smart.

Like Mark Minutes an hour.

Yeah, that's funny to think of it as scoring points, you kind of are

you as funny and as funny as that sounds I mean, that's kind of how we're structuring our statements of work Now instead of them talking about how many hours we're gonna give client, we're talking about how much effort we're gonna give them and how many point we can score.

Yeah, and it's not so. It's not like a total departure from time tracking, because the points are actually linked to time at some point. But it is like a step towards something that is less related directly to time and Maur closely related to the work that we're actually doing so for. I mean for that reason I really like it. I think it's a step in the right direction,

another alternative that I never. I never crossed my mind that I was talking to our friends over it till soil. The guys do the dirty cat and they were talking about time tracking. And this was yesterday, and we were. We're having the exact same discussion and sharing, and we were sharing our ideas on, like, internal ways. We've been trying to figure this out, and they told me that from the business perspective, they are much more concerned with tracking what percentage of the time they're employees. They're happy

what we're doing that

school versus unhappy with the work

they're doing. So

they're trying. They're trying. They're trying to find ways where they can have their employees lost happiness versus point. Because there are making a correlation that if you're unhappy, you're probably working slower or you're maybe not working as much or you're you know, like you said, you're just waiting to punch the clock

and leave.

They're using that as a metric of morbid internal metric.

That's that's kind of amazing. That is, that is pretty cool stuff

because that actually provides more value right now. Think about the gate whether you're a freelancer, an agency, if you could go back in time and say Well, at the end of this project, I was only I was only happy 50% of the time. That's a good indication that he may not want to renew that contract, right, that I think that's a little thinking, because happiness, very

subjective,

rejected, right? So I could be completely happy working with the client on a type of project. But one certain day where I want eight hours, I was just not having anything that hated the world. I would probably market is unhappy because I just wantedto coming back to help you. You know? I know. I mean, I know it looks weird, but I think what what these kind of things are illustrating is that companies are becoming to be more concerned with how, um happy there people are and not trying to enforce, like, rigid punch in punch out things right, because I think everyone realizes at this point that it's all about culture and retention of how

you know, and that's that's what I

mean it most like I don't want anyone funds. I've believed because they felt like they were being judged based on their 20

you know, you know, and I don't want I think I can understand what fresh till soils getting out Because one of the problems of time tracking that we're trying to figure out how to solve is, well, it's inaccurate, and that's sort of the symptom. But what the symptoms that's a symptom of is the fact that it's not that fun to track time. But if you're it, we're trying to think of ways to game if I, you know, which is sort of a stupid concept, really. But, uh, score points with your pivotal tracker points the end of the day. Oh, yeah,

but what what fresh tilled soil is doing is actually making a kind of interesting because it puts sort of a little bit of power in the hands of the employees is like Okay, after trackman time, like I do everywhere else I go. But this gives me a chance to let make my voice heard, you know,

personal like more from employees, left for the billing

thing I like.

In the end, if your business is or you're freelance. Business is solely based on timing materials. You There's no way you'll ever be able to stop

tracking time. No.

And if you give your if you're working and retainers or value based pricing than honestly, time tracking may not be necessary. But, you know, we'll time tracking ever die. No, I really don't think it will. At five. I hope that six months from now we're not tracking time anymore. At least not for quiet purposes. Maybe. For I could see a tracking time just to see how to use it as a litmus test or a metric to see if we're estimating on project correctly that weaken create new engagement better. You know, I understand what I understand with the actual cop might

be exactly,

but I really don't think even three months from now I want any of our plan even wondering about our

Yeah, well, that'd be nice. I mean, you did kind of touch on what? That second reason I'm scared to leave time tracking for is checking on how we're doing. Like looking at the reporting at the end of the day and seeing all right. Well, we estimated eight, you know, 12 hours for this, you know, thing or something. And it took us 15 hours. You know, that was bad. This one,

we estimated 12 and we did it in four. That was good, you know. But that's like you say, Anthony. That's where somebody always loses. Some of its, like somebody wins and somebody loses in that scenario, you know? Oh, yeah. Um uh, I'll kind of we need a go ahead and wrap it up for a little bit over today, but, um, I know it.

Natalie shared with us, actually, last night. I think on infographic that she did I It was started sticking out of my mind this whole episode because it was very related to you. Time Um, do you want to tell? Is that Okay? Can we tell what that was that you shared with us? That you

It was whatever. I was left R g a. I just kind of thought it would be funny to see him. I can capture on where I spent my time while on RG et get infographic. Uh, you know how many e mails I sent? Like how? How much time In my day or my time? there in two and 1/2 years. I was there. That was been on certain projects even now. What color? Yeah,

what colors you designed with?

That was cool. Yeah, like the amount of days I were black.

Because, you know, in New York, what was it like, 70% black or something?

Holly? Warlick 90. That's interesting to write, like an even from the You know, that might be a benefit that that tracking things right to look at your personal history or for a business owner to be like, You know, I didn't realize that that employee a worked on all these projects, you know,

uh,

yeah. WeII post a link to that infographic in the show notes.

Yeah, if you're cool it that Natalie I would actually love Thio. It was just sort of like this giant, like, time tracking trophy. Almost. You know, when I saw it, I was like, Holy like, oh, man, we almost made their whole episode about Cassie.

But you don't

gotta market as explicit, but yeah, I was sort of like this testament to like this is all because of time tracking. I mean, some of it wasn't, but I don't know. I just thought it was interesting. It's really hard to get away from the benefit of reporting time tracking, but anyway, well,

what One last thing I started, you know, we've been but kind of what you guys were talking about lead to a benefit of time tracking. You know, like, if you look at like any any individual, if you know where you're spending your time accurately, then you know where to delegate your offload, right? Like if I can see that I'm spending 50% of my time doing operations, That might be a good indication that I need a higher office manager. If if Natalie is spending more time doing accounting than design, which is what she should be doing that maybe we need to hire an accountant. Rick is spending more time managing project than designing. Maybe Rick needs a promotion, right? Without without the kind of without some way of managing.

What about understanding that data? It's really hard, you know, court, correct. Or, you know, make ended

up. You know, I'm so glad that we have recorded now that you think I need a promotion. That's that's awesome, man. Um, yeah. So I'm sorry. Go ahead and finish your thought. And I had to get a little joke in there.

We'll announce the details about the next

one, perhaps. Okay. Cool. Yeah. And while we're announcing things, we did have one other little thing. We just wanted to tell people that have been listening to our podcast. Thank you very much. First of all, Ah, and second of all, we're gonna keep going, keep on trucking, keep on keeping on with the podcast. And we're really excited to keep going. And,

you know, we've been growing in iterating on the format of this and everything. We're gonna continue to keep it light weight and try and be frequent about it. But we thought we might go ahead and give it, like, its own name. Um, Natalie, what are we gonna call this podcast?

Ready for

it? Drum roll. Hey,

Hustle,

hustle.

I ain't you he o e

bump, bump, bump, ba bump ba bum bum bum. Yeah, I think

it's a great name because I think Wayne realized that you know that while there's a lot of mobile and product design stuff to talk about, there's a lot of different things, like culture and business and and really anything. And I think that, you know, hustle. Not really meaning, like, you know, overworking or whatever. Early. I think I have a lot of what we

were talking about a bit about it. Yeah, we kind of had a running pool of names that we might call it in the future. And Natalie threw that one in there, and I really liked it because she has this, Uh I don't even know if it is that picture that says hustles. Still in the office somewhere I haven't seen in a while. It's just like a picture frame that has, like, gold letters. That's a hustle. And it looks so like gangster gangster, and I don't know, it just kind of made me happy to look at it Sometimes I really liked the idea. So good job, Natalie

U.

Um, well, I think that's about it. So I am Anthony. You wanna give us? Ah, little, um how do we follow you on twitter and stuff?

Uh, you can follow me on Twitter at Man. Juan M A N T W a n for our company at 15 I'm at Natalie. Be in a t a l i e v As in Victor, I

and I'm Rick Messer. You can follow me on Twitter at Rick Messer. Um, r a c k M e S s E r. That's it.

One last thing on the show notes. Maybe I can convince Rick to post a link to this girl where our listeners can post a possible show topic.

Yeah, that would be awesome. We'd love to hear from, You know, we have a lot of ideas, but it was great to hear. Like what you guys want to hear if anybody's out there has any ideas? Great. We'll do that. We will do that. Okay. Thanks for listening. Okay. Bye. Thanks, Natalie.