The Why
Value your time. It is all you have. It's more important than your money. It's more important than your friends. It is more important than anything. Your time is all you have. Do not waste your time.
— Naval Ravikant
You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
— Kevin Kelly
GemTimer exists because a year ago I saw the AI wave and decided I needed to get more out of myself. The good news is that it's still so early for AI, you can make the same decision today.
The first step to getting more out of myself was taking extreme ownership of how I spent my time. To spend my time more effectively, I had to track it.
I built GemTimer because after a few months of experimenting, I couldn't find a tool that gave me what I needed. When building GemTimer, a big decision was whether the time tracking should be automated or not. If I was going to take extreme ownership, GemTimer couldn't be automated, because automated solutions had always given me an out. If I didn't like what the data played back, I could find a mistake, decide the tool wasn't accurate, and maintain the image I had of myself.
Having used GemTimer for several months and hundreds of iterations later, I know that tracking your time isn't fun. I also know that using GemTimer has made a massive difference to my productivity.
Some people will read this and think they're above tracking their time. If you're looking for a way out of doing it, I get it. You can find plenty of reasons. For example, you could point to Daniel Ek and say "I manage my energy, not my time". If going out on my own has taught me anything, it's that your brain plays tricks on you to protect yourself. Deep down, you might have a nagging fear that if you tracked your time, it wouldn't look very pretty. Face that fear and get better each day.
Try GemTimer.
Best of luck,
Jeremy