Knights of the Editing Table

Dear Video Editors Pearson's Law is nifty little axiom that states: "That which is measured improves" Charging hourly, or even a day rate for your work is holding you back… (a thread) Most of us, early in our careers, charge by project. Which can be difficult to price out, because we want the work, but we don't want to under price ourselves. At the same time, we don't want to over charge and scare of clients. The best hedge against both these situations is knowing your own speed. If you can accurately estimate your work, you can plan accordingly. At the end of the day, we don't want to punish ourselves ourselves for working efficiently. We're here to make a product quickly and of a high quality... So, here's some tools to start tracking your time, and giving you control of your work schedule. Chronicler by Knights of the Editing Round Table: Chronicler is your steadfast companion in the quest against the ever-ticking clock. This Adobe Extension tracks your time within After Effects and Premiere Pro, allowing you to see exactly how long you spend on each project. It's like having a personal historian, meticulously recording your battles against deadlines. (knightsoftheeditingtable.com…) - $25 (Literally everything @KnightsEditing makes is awesome) Toggl Track: With one click, you can start timing your tasks and effortlessly switch between them, no matter if in After Effects or in Premiere Pro. (toggl.com/track/) - Free & Paid Plans Harvest: Beyond tracking time, Harvest creates invoices and provides insights into your project budgets. It works especially well as an intergrated adobe marketplace product. (getharvest.com/) - Free Trial & Paid Plans RescueTime: It runs silently in the background, tracking time spent in applications and websites, providing you with a detailed report of your productivity patterns. I highly recommend this one for procrastinators. (rescuetime.com/) - $6.50 /mo Timely by Memory: With its AI-powered tools, it categorizes your work for you, revealing insights into how you spend your time across different projects and tasks. It does a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to manually inputting time and managing tasks. (memory.ai/timely) - $9 /mo Some people like to use these tools consistently to optimize their work day, but that's not really how I've used them in the past. If the idea of that sounds daunting, use them to audit your time management quarterly. One of the interesting things I learned about myself from Chronicler is that I was spending way too much time on rough cuts, not leaving myself room to polish. Because of this, I switched my whole editing style to edit from front to back, polishing as I go. By doing this, I shaved nearly 5 hours of my average workflow. Happy tracking peeps!