GoKawiilOne of the most freeing things I’ve ever done in my business is to stop tracking time.
I used to religiously track where I spent my time when on my computer. Client work in one bucket, personal branding in another, and side projects/adventures in a third. Inside of those, I would then categorize which engagement/project I was working on.
At the end of the year, it was awesome! I had this huge breakdown of where all of my time went. I could even cross-reference it against what each thing made money-wise and figure out my effective billable rate. Which sometimes was super empowering. But for side projects? Super depressing. :P
I’ve launched more than a handful of “things” that made no money at all. And spent a ton of time working on them.
As time went on, I found myself taking a few seconds to pick which project to bill time to. “Ok, let’s go build this thing!” “Oh, let me track time first.” “Hmm, is this personal branding? Marketing? A side project that I haven’t solidified yet?”
That additional context switch (on top of the actual one) could often kill the idea I had in my head. Before I even started working, I all of a sudden had an admin task to take care of.
And sure, I could do it after the fact. So I started just clicking “start” without assigning a project in my time tracker. Which worked pretty well! But then I would forget entirely. Or even worse, switch tasks and now had to make two decisions (old work and new work).
I eventually realized that it was costing me more time and, more importantly, mental energy, to keep this up than the payoff was worth.
So in 2026, I completely stopped tracking my time. And it has been the most freeing thing I’ve ever done for my business.
When an idea sparks, I just... do it. When I want to context switch, well, I context switch!
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