The Four Circles of Creative Hell [comic]

Even the notoriously uninhibited creatives can benefit from time tracking – be it for billing their clients or improving their time management skills. But they have to be careful not to mix up time and results. You can’t force creativity – and there is nothing worse for the artist than a clock mercilessly ticking away.

Initial (over)excitement about being productive

This phase is characterised by excitement over the perceivably positive activity of time tracking, as well as overenthusiastic appreciation of any aesthetic solutions offered by the application.

• The lesson is to start the timer, then look away.

The Shutdown

If you fail to heed the warnings and push past the 20 minute mark, you’ll soon enter productivity twilight zone

• Also known as the “what am I doing with my life” phase, it acts much like a black hole by crushing everything you enjoy about your work into a very unremarkable looking speck
• The lesson: if you’ll be doing nothing, make sure that nothing is something that makes you happy

Continued fixation on process over substance

For people with a wandering mind, the ticking timer might cause a false perspective that measuring time is more important than measuring results.

• Do your work first, check your stats later. The lesson: Track time, but measure work.

Acute awareness of time as an unstoppable and unforgiving force

Sometimes you just need to drop what you’re doing and move on. The lesson: when the timer hits 20 minutes and you’re doing nothing, change tasks.

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