Overtime Tracker vs focus tools
In addition to project planning tools, there are services focused on maintaining focus on specific tasks.
These services are much closer in spirit to our approach, but they still have some key differences.
Timers and the Pomodoro approach
Almost everyone who has tried to find balance at work, increase productivity, or simply stop procrastinating is familiar with the Pomodoro approach.
There are many apps built around this concept:
- Forest
- Focus To-Do
- Pomofocus
- TomatoTimer
The concept works like this:
You set a task, start a timer, work for 20–25 minutes, then take a 5–10 minute break.
It’s a great approach for getting into flow and staying focused.
However, it has a key limitation: it works only for focus, and only when you fully control everything happening during your workday.
Once you start a focus timer and receive an urgent call from a colleague, the cycle is interrupted. The more interruptions you have, the less clarity you’ll have by the end of the day about what actually happened and why planned tasks weren’t completed.
Overtime Tracker isn’t built around the Pomodoro method, but you can easily organize your workflow according to it.
Each task has its own timer, and you can focus on a single task when needed. At the same time, you can switch to another part of the same task, start a task that wasn’t originally planned, or even work on multiple tasks in parallel — and all of this will be reflected in the final daily report.
Minimalist task managers
Things / Todoist / TickTick
The idea here is simple: you distribute tasks, assign them to days, and set priorities.
These task managers are closer to high-level planning, but they’re not designed for analysis or process tracking. You’ll have a plan, but no clear understanding of what actually happened during the day.
Deep Work, active task, and similar concepts
Most of these concepts are focused on concentration and deep focus.
There are many such approaches, and all of them can be useful in work.
But real work follows a simple rule: if something can go off plan, it will. In those moments, it’s important to be able to adapt your approach so productivity doesn’t suffer.
This is exactly the problem Overtime Tracker is designed to solve.
You get a tool that complements existing planning systems, allows you to build your workflow around the concepts that work for you, and accounts for the fact that plans can change.