Action Machine Pro – Time Management that Works

I’ll update this post as I get more experience with this product, but so far I’m very impressed.

I have a resources link for tools that I use in my consulting business, but I wanted to create a special post about this tool. Every once in awhile you see something that is so simple on the surface that you think, “It can’t be that simple”. Well, this is one of those tools. I call this the modern day egg timer.

As a consultant, I’m often juggling many tasks, along with the non work commitments that are part of being a husband and father. The paper planners don’t work well for me…. I’ve used the popular ones and they all can work, but they just didn’t fit my style.

Since a lot of my time is spent in front or near my laptop, I needed a system that worked well in that environment. There are a lot of software solutions that integrate with your email, but most of them are expensive and have too many bells and whistles that I would never use.

In walks the KISS (Keep it short simple) solution. I’ve actually started to use a digital egg timer to help me stay on task. That works, but I have to remember to carry it with me if I’m not in my office and unless I write down the time I spent on a task, I loose any audit of my time. A colleague of mine told me about a simple piece of software called “Action Machine Pro” and recommended that I check it out.

I did and I think this may just be the thing that sticks. I like it’s simple architecture and it solves the problem of keeping an audit of where you spent your time. Nothing like looking back on a week and seeing if you really worked in the areas that were important to your business or personal goals.

Enough said…. you can check it out Action Machine Pro if it sounds like it might help solve your time management or time focus problems.

** Action Machine Pro Review Update – After using the product for the last 3 days,  I’m happy to report that it really is helping me get more focused on what I need to be doing.  This is partially due to the fact that you setup an action (what you will be spending time on) and then assign a amount of time you need to spend on that action.  You then see all the important actions at the beginning of the day that you need to tackle.

This action alone is beneficial to a lot of people.  The act of having to either select or create a new action get’s your brain focused on what is important for the day.

I also really like the reporting feature.  I can see myself saving off a copy of this report at the end of each week and using it to go back and see how much time I actually spent on client work vs. marketing my business vs. other non business tasks.  Where am I actually spending my time !