I recently read an interview with entrepreneur Chris Wanstrath of GitHub who quoted Cameron Moll saying “I don’t believe in work-life balance. I believe in priorities.” We should be focusing, instead, on priorities. After all, there are aspects of work that are just as enjoyable as those in life, and there are times in our lives when we’d rather be working. The two aren’t just opposite sides of the same coin. How do we establish priorities in such a way that we enjoy both work and life and don’t burn out?

Stephen Covey formulated a simple 2×2 matrix for identifying and prioritizing activities that will result in more effective personal health. If we are ever going to manage our time well and get things done, Covey’s matrix, from his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, is a good place to start. The first step is to identify which quadrant we are spending most our time in. The second step is to find a way to spend most our time in the right quadrant.

The Time Management Matrix: Activities

This first matrix shows the activities that draw us into each quadrant.

The Time Management Matrix: Results

And this second matrix shows us the results of spending time in each quadrant of activities. It’s not surprising where we want to be (but just in case it’s not obvious, I’ve highlighted it for you). The tricky part is in prioritizing our activities in such a way we can focus primarily on the ones that will keep us in quadrant 2.

It’s not too difficult to see what types of activities to avoid and what types of activities to focus on to achieve optimal results in the workplace. This isn’t saying that you can’t dabble in each of the four activity quadrants. But you do have to choose which quadrant you will spend the most of your time in if you are going to achieve the results you want. It’s simply a matter of getting our priorities straight.

How to get into quadrant 2

The above matrices as outlined by Covey make it obvious we need to be focusing on activities that will result in getting us into the sweet spot of quadrant two. Here are some practical tips on how to find your way there.

• Track your time
  In the same way we track our expenses to keep ourselves on a budget, track your time. Knowing where your time is going is the first step to better time management. Online time tracking applications, like Intervals, will help you track time better with timers. And detailed reports give you clear insight into where your time is being spent well or wasted.
• Identify problem areas
  Once you’ve figured out where your time is going, decide where it shouldn’t be going. Spending too much time checking your fantasy football scores? Spending too much time micromanaging? Figure out what you shouldn’t be doing or what can be done by someone else and free yourself from that entanglement.
• Focus on priorities
  Decide what your priorities should be. We can often times spend too much time knocking off the low hanging fruit on our list of to-dos and never getting to the higher priority items. Delegate enough time to prioritize all of your tasks, giving equal attention to the little and the big tasks, to avoid the bigger tasks becoming crises later on.
• Plan ahead
  Take a little time out of each day to plan out the next day. List out your priorities and what you’d like to accomplish, leaving room for any emergent tasks that may come up. Knowing what you want to get done before you start working is one of the most effective ways to manage your time. Otherwise, you are left vulnerable to the whims of your inbox and your clients.
• Stretch and breathe
  Remember to give yourself some room to stretch out your legs, take a deep breath, and face the reality that there are only so many hours in each day and you can only do so much before you burn out. The goal in managing your time better is not to fill your daily schedule with more activities, rather, the goal is to use your time more wisely, more effectively, to avoid crises and alleviate stress that result from poor time management.

There are a lot of time management techniques online. Some good, some bad. There is no one-size-fits-all solution nor should there be. Every small business faces its own unique set of time management problems. It’s up to you to figure out how you want to use your time tracking down time sinks and turning them into more productive opportunities.

Ever wonder what type of technology is used by a web-based project management application’s customers? What browsers do they prefer? What operating systems are favored? Where in the world they are coming from? We’ve got some of those numbers to share with you, based on our own online project management software Intervals. We’ve crunched Intervals’ numbers to give you an idea of what the typical technological profile of our customers — web design, web development, creative agencies and professional services small businesses — looks like. Keep in mind, these numbers represent a niche — creative, computer and professional services oriented companies using online time, task and project management software. These numbers do not apply to the world at large.

Web Browsers

No surprise here. Firefox has been edging out Internet Explorer for the last year or two. What’s fascinating is seeing that Internet Explorer may soon drop to third place, usurped by the little V8 Javascript engine that could… Google Chrome. Safari is still hanging in there, but will have to stop trying to force its way into the iTunes install before small businesses start letting it anywhere near their Windows desktops.

Operating Systems

Windows remains the number one operating system for our customers, with Macs making up the rest of the numbers. The Mac OS is very popular among web designers, developers and most creative agencies, however Windows is still favored by most small businesses, including IT companies and web developers. As for Linux, our numbers are probably higher than most web-based software due to our early commitment to supporting browsers on the Linux operating system and our continuing interest and enthusiasm for Ubuntu.

Screen Resolutions

Web designers and developers can rejoice that the 1024×768 pixel screen resolution is almost extinct. In fact, it may just be the netbooks that are keeping this screen resolution alive. Larger and widescreen monitors have become the norm giving us more screen real estate and making us more productive. The wide variety of screen resolutions below reinforces our early commitment to making the Intervals layout liquid so that it will stretch and adapt to different screen widths.

Mobile Devices

The iPhone has shown to be the most popular mobile device for browsing the web, which is one of the main reasons we built a mobile friendly version of Intervals. And the iPad has quickly caught on as a popular device for browsing the web while on the go, its larger screen resolution and Safari web browser making it ideal for using web-based applications. Android is quickly gobbling up Apple’s market share and it may not be long before we see it moving up a position or two.

Countries and Territories

The United States, Canada and United Kingdom continue to represent the largest and most active group of customers. India and Australia continue to grow as the popularity of Intervals spreads. Intervals added support for non US locales in 2007 as it was adopted in more and more countries, proving that managing an agency and juggling project details is a common problem regardless of where you reside. These percentages approximate the actual proportion of the worldwide population — 300 million Americans, 60 million British, 30 million Canadians, and 20 million Australians (India, with a population of 1.1 billion, is the only exception here as it is a new and growing market for Intervals).

What does it mean?

We’ve always appreciated the openness that is fostered by other designers and developers who share their real-life data and experiences. We owe some of our own success to the spirit of exchange that occurs on the Web. We want to keep that going. These graphs looked quite a bit different three years ago. And they will differ even more so in the next few months and years. These snapshots are a point-in-time rendering of a marketplace, a very young, exciting and fluctuating marketplace, where new small businesses are started each day and new web-based services rise up each week to meet their ever growing needs. What will the online project management software landscape look like in a few months or years? We’re not quite sure, but we look forward to evolving Intervals to meet its needs.

Take a quick look at the online productivity software landscape and you will see there are plenty of options to choose from. This as a good thing, after all, project managers, web designers, web developers, and creatives are a thorough and intelligent bunch and highly capable of vetting out the best web-based applications that will work for their needs. The large number of online software options available means any small business can find a unique set of features — time tracking, task management, document sharing, reporting, invoicing, and so on — to match their workflow.

The ever-growing landscape of web-based applications is analogous to the rise of the coffee shop in the ’90s. Starbucks, Peets, and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf created a culture of coffee drinkers who don’t think twice about ordering a non-fat-half-caf-no-foam latte. In the online productivity marketplace we have apps like Basecamp, Freshbooks and Intervals creating an online culture of small businesses growing accustomed to getting things done with web-based time tracking, task management and project management applications. Small business are becoming increasingly more comfortable entrusting their business to online software, and more demanding in the features they expect their online software to include.

Each week, several more web-based applications join the fray. If you are designing and developing online software, first, welcome to the club, second, take these tips into consideration to cut down on your development time. We’ve been designing and developing web sites and web-based applications for ten years and have learned a lot along the way. Following are some tips useful for staying out of your own way and launching a successful online app.

Test. Test. Test. Then, test again.

Testing is essential but it is not always practical. It is often times more efficient to get your product out there and let your customers do the testing for you. That doesn’t mean you should not test at all. Test as much as you possibly can without holding up your online software, then launch it and test some more. There are several ways to test your web-based app — peer review, unit testing, ad-hoc testing, load testing, and good old-fashioned QA. Incorporate some blend of testing techniques into your development routine before you go live to avoid making rookie mistakes. Then let your customers find the more obscure bugs that are more difficult to catch in testing. Embrace the more forgiving iterative process that the culture of online software allows and use it to your advantage to get your app out and improve it with real-time feedback.
Additional resources for testing: PHPUnit, Selenium, pizza, beer and a few buddies with some time to spare.

Get to the problems sooner rather than later

Despite all the testing you can throw at your web-based app, problems are still going to sneak through. I was reading a story about Pixar in a recent issue of WIRED magazine. They talked about the fact that any project is always going to have problems. The trick, Pixar found, was to discover and fix the problems at the beginning of the project instead of towards the end. The same is true for web-based software. To limit your customers exposure to problems you have to find the problems before they do. We do this by using our own online project management software, Intervals, to manage ten years of web design and development work. We are able to find and fix most problems before our customers do because we are intimately familiar with our product.
Additional resources for identifying problems early on: Weekly scans of your error logs, Anticipate customers breaking your software in new and unconventional ways.

Most problems are self-created

Once you do detect problem with your app it’s most likely to be a programmatic one you introduced. Web developers will be inclined to blame the technology. But unless you are developing in FORTRAN, technology is rarely the problem. Switching over to the latest, over-hyped programming language or database is not going to solve your problems. That’s because the problem is likely your code. At the time you wrote it, it may have seemed like a good idea, but now it’s slowing down your software and needs to be fixed. It could be something as simple as a Javascript function duking it out with IE, or it could be a more complicated problem involving a seemingly simple SQL query slowing to a crawl as data accumulates in the database over time. Either way, it’s your responsibility to fix it.
Additional resources for avoiding mistakes: peer code review, an understanding of proven design patterns, committing to your current technology stack.

The database is often the bottleneck

Not only are most problems self-created, they usually come from the database end of the online application. The database is the single most important entity of any web-based application and yet database design and query optimization is one area web developers are least familiar with. As the database grows your web-based software will change its behavior. You need to be ready to get neck-deep in SQL, optimizing and rewriting queries to shave off a few milliseconds. It takes a truly creative mind to devise contingencies for how your app might grow and the problems that growth will create at the database.
Additional resources for freeing up the database: Memcached, PgBouncer, EXPLAIN, a basic understanding of SQL Query Optimization.

It’s hard to find problems before they become a problem

Problems are difficult to anticipate. We design and develop web-based applications to run on servers, but we don’t think like servers do. Problems arise when a machine interprets code differently than we did when we wrote it. The online software you create will be a living entity that does not sleep. Be prepared to be woken up at 3am and wipe the grog from your eyes to fix a few lines of code or a database query that is wreaking havoc on your servers. Be prepared by tracking everything you possibly can and identifying patterns in how your app uses resources. There are great products out there for tracking and monitoring your online application’s ecosystem. Establish acceptable usage patterns and look for exceptions to identify potential problem areas.
Additional resources for monitoring your application: Cacti, monit, Munin

Don’t let your code make assumptions

Frameworks are good in that they decrease the amount of design and development time it takes to get your online software executed and launched. However, they do this by making assumptions about your code so that you don’t have to write as much of it. The fill-in-the-blank nature of frameworks is what will cause you the most problems because it is the part of the web-based app you will be least familiar with. Vanilla SQL queries will become problematic in a production environment, requiring you to get under the hood and replace them with your own SQL specific to the needs of your database. Or you may need to write some code on the model layer of the framework to use up less system memory. The better you know your app, the better you will be at addressing issues that are unique to your app.
Additional resources for writing code: CakePHP, write your own framework, don’t use a framework.

Break the rules. Elegant code is not always the fastest code.

Another benefit of frameworks is that they enforce well established design patterns, which flows well with web designers and developers who appreciate clean and elegant code. Your customers, however, don’t really care what your code looks like. They want a web-based application that is responsive and reliable. There are times when we have to break the rules to make this happen. As a project manager, it is not fun having to twist a developers arm to get them to write faster, uglier code. But a project manager is also an advocate for the customer’s user experience. Web designers and developers need to understand the relationship between their work, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, company revenue.
Additional resources for breaking the rules: Breaking the “rules” of web development.

Response times are the single most important metric

The single most important factor your web-based app will be judged by is response times. If your online software is well designed, beautifully coded, structurally bulletproof, but not fast enough, customers won’t use it (Apple fanboys are the only exception to this rule). Compress and mungify your javascript. Install an accelerator on your servers. Incorporate load testing to benchmark response times. Monitor your database for slow queries and fix them. Do whatever you can to keep making the app faster.
Additional resources for improving response times: Closure, APC, eaccelerator, siege, pgfouine, pg_stat_statements.

Learn as you go

There is no right or wrong way to develop a web-based application. Most of the problems that do arise will likely have already been solved by others, so Google around for answers before slamming your head against the wall. Your online software is going to be unique to you and your customers, which will present its own set of business problems to resolve. Hang in there, give your customers honesty and transparency, and the problems you encounter will be more like hurdles and less like mountains. And if you have any questions about developing any type of web-based applications in general, drop us an email or comment below. We’d love to share more about what we’ve learned over the years. Meanwhile, good luck!

We are pleased to announce yet another round of updates to Intervals, our online time, task and project management application, launched this week. These updates combine some of our most-requested improvements with a few ideas of our own to continue in the tradition of keeping Intervals fresh, relevant and in a constant state of improving. The next time you login to your Intervals account you’ll find a few more ways to become even more productive…

Upload Multiple Documents At Once

There are many times in a project or a tasks lifecycle when we need to upload several documents at once. Whether it’s updating a task with screenshots explaining the work to be completed or adding files to a project for the copywriter, the ability to upload all of these documents at once is a welcome and speedy alternative to uploading documents one at a time. With multiple uploads you can add all of your documents, images and other files to a task or project all on one page.

Copy Time Tracking Entries

One of our most requested features these last few months has been the ability to copy time entries on the weekly timesheet. For those of us who perform some of the same tasks in our day-to-day workflow, time management will go much quicker with the copy feature. Simply click the copy icon to copy your time tracking entry from one hour to the next.

Bulk Delete Tasks

Every small business, creative agency and freelancer has moments of clarity when they realize they’ve created the same task several times. Now, instead of delete-wait-delete-wait-delete-wait, you can remove several tasks at once with a click-click-click-delete-wait. It’s like spring cleaning, but for your online tasks.

Bulk Delete Documents

Same thing as above. A faster way to quickly remove unwanted documents. This feature makes it easier to manage and clean up old documents — especially if you are trying to stay within your current plan, or if you prefer to remove documents after a project is complete.

Customize the Home Tab Date Range

It’s your calendar so we are letting you decide what dates it should display. Projects and tasks rarely fit nicely into the one month silos that calendars enforce. Filter the calendar according to your own date range to line it up with your next project timeline, your next sprint, or to see how many milestones are due this quarter. Flexible date ranges make the home tab far more versatile for project, milestone and task scheduling.

Import Clients and People

Ever since we launched the ability to import clients and people separately, we keep finding ourselves asking “why not import both at the same time?” Now it’s possible. As you first get started using Intervals you will find the ability to import clients and people at once a great time saver. At Pelago we have a client list topping 100, with anywhere from one to five contacts with each client. Now other web designers, developers and creatives like us can import large lists of clients and people quickly and easily, so we can focus on the more important things like projects and tasks.

Widescreen View added to Milestones

One of the bigger challenges in designing and developing online project management software is that there is no common denominator in regards to screen resolution. If you design for the lowest resolution you leave those with higher resolutions staring at blank space. And if you design for the middle to highest resolution you require those with lower resolutions to use the horizontal scroll bar. Our solution was to do what most web designers would do, design and develop for the lowest common denominator. But we didn’t stop there. We’ve added a feature we call the “widescreen view” for those with wider screen resolutions who wish to see more information. Check the box on the milestones page and several more columns appear, giving you more of the information-at-a-glance you want and need. This feature first debuted on the task list and will be added to other lists in the near future.

Web designers and web developers are tinkerers by nature. We love to fine-tune our creative ideas until they are somewhere close to perfection, despite our definition of perfection being in a constant state of flux. If our web site design does begin to approximate perfection, the inevitable happens. We come up with 101 reasons why we need to redesign our web site — good and compelling reasons why we should throw the old web site away and redesign, redevelop and relaunch a shinier and better web site in its place. I am telling you to ignore these inclinations. Yes, some web sites do need to be thrown out and redesigned, but most do not. To elaborate on the “why”, I’ve come up with five very good reasons NOT to redesign your web site.

1. No one looks at your web site as much as you do

Your web site gets a lot of visitors, but not a whole lot of repeat visitors. We look at our web site more often than anyone else, and we should if we are going to keep it up-to-date and bug-free. Web designers, however, are extremely sensitive to trend fluctuations and want to keep things visually fresh. When we look at something for too long it loses its appeal. The web site becomes tired in our eyes. Resist this first and powerful urge to begin a redesign by reminding yourself that a majority of your audience is seeing a different web site than you are. The web site, to your audience, is a transparent tool for delivering content; there is no blue ribbon with the web designer’s name on it.

2. You have higher priorities

A web site redesign is not a one person job. Any web site in production today likely has a small team of web designers, developers, copywriters, project managers, SEO specialists and system administrators involved in maintaining and operating it. A web site redesign is going to require the entire team to be on the same page in regards to template design, copy, server infrastructure, and any other factors that may affect the project. If the redesign is incorporating a new technology, your team will have to learn this new technology. You will need a compelling reason to redesign a web site before you can expect everyone to buy in and make it a priority. They are likely preoccupied with increasing web site response times, improving Google placement, and fixing bugs on the current web site. And what about your priorities? For example, driving more traffic to your web site is going to be better for business than a redesign. Make sure your redesign isn’t just an excuse to avoid higher priority, less exciting responsibilities.

3. Newer technology and trends will not solve your problems

The web is cranking out new frameworks and new tools for rapidly designing and developing web sites every week. And a lot of those new frameworks and tools are pretty sweet. I’ve heard many web designers and developers, myself included, justifying a redesign on the fact that framework X has a newer and more active community behind it than our current framework Y. The problem with this reasoning is that your framework, too, is still active and works just fine. It’s not broken or defunct. It’s just not the cool kid on the block anymore. The grass is always greener on the other side of the web, and web designers and developers are often quick to cite a new technology or trend as the solution to all our problems. And what you think are problems with your current web site are only going to be replaced by problems pertaining to the new technology. Stay with what works and you will save a lot of time in the long run. Otherwise, that new, cool framework you are adopting will likely become usurped shortly after you launch your web site redesign and you’ll start the chase all over again.

4. It will take a lot longer than you think

A web site redesign is going to take at least three times longer then you think it will. Even if you think you’ve accounted for it to take longer, it’s going to take three times longer than that. Once you start reworking the web site and all its images, templates, code and third-party apps, Alice’s rabbit hole will seem like a great vacation destination. Everything you didn’t account for, which will be a lot, will pop up and bog down your redesign. Web sites are much more complex then ever and usually have a database and a few third-party open source projects lurking under the hood. During the redesign process they will rise up and wreak havoc on the entire design and development team, consuming precious time and tripling your time estimates.

5. Your SEO rankings will take a shovel to the head

Unless you are painstakingly thorough during the redesign and redevelopment process, your SEO rankings are going to take a hit. Google favors content that has been around for a long time, as its had more time to collect inbound links and establish authority. You have the option of using redirect rules to let Google know that your web site pages have moved around from one place to another, but that doesn’t change the fact that your content and the way it is structured will be changing. If you have invested a lot of time into tuning your web site to score high on Google, consider how much time you will spend again trying to interpret and apply Google’s voodoo after the redesign is complete. A redesign could easily set you back a year in your SEO efforts. Try explaining why a redesign is more important than incoming traffic to the upper ups.

So… I’m stuck with my current web site design?

No. Web site designs can evolve. The creative process is an iterative one and the web is the perfect medium for exploring new ideas. If you want to redesign your web site first come up with a roadmap detailing where you are now, where you want to be, and how to get there. The smaller the iterative steps are on the way to a complete redesign, the less impact they will have. Instead of unveiling a web site redesign all at once, tweak, tune and change it over a few months, giving your audience and Google time to keep up and get comfortable with the changes. Smaller, iterative changes to a web site will give web designers and developers a continuous feedback loop useful for pushing the redesign in the right direction.