The four guys who make up Timeular, an Austria-based startup, hold a common belief about time tracking: it's a waste of time. The irony is immediate, but it's also part of what pushed them to create Zei, a solution to the tedious practice of tracking your time.
Timeular believes that technology can push the ceiling on our time-tracking efficiency. That's why they made Zei. Essentially a high-tech timer, it's a tiny octahedral device that connects to your computer via Bluetooth.
Each of Zei's eight surfaces can be programmed with a particular task. You place it somewhere near your workstation, occasionally rotating the device to shift to whichever task applicable. Zei automatically corresponds to which surface is faced up, tracking the time spent.
This effortless and intuitive setup eliminates the dreaded grunt work of filling up time sheets at work. In fact, Timeular is strongly adamant about it.
"Filling in time sheets feels like one of those unsatisfying, time-consuming tasks," says Timeular over at its Kickstarter campaign page.
If it delivers on its promise, Zei can help professionals achieve a less disruptive workflow, now that they don't have to go through the cumbersome task of keeping record of time as they work on their projects or smaller tasks within those projects.
But it doesn't stop there. Zei also integrates with a host of time-tracking software and management systems the likes of Toggl, Trello, Todoist and more.
"[W]e want to make [Zei] fit seamlessly into your current daily workflow. Therefore we're integrating [Zei] into all those awesome time-tracking and To-Do management solutions out there to make your life easier," says Timeular.
You can write, draw and put stickers on each of Zei's eight surfaces. It costs €69 or about $77 for the first 1,000 early birds and €79 or about $89 thereafter. A cheaper DIY model is also available at €39 or about $44, which comes in a package containing electronics, tools and 3D print files. Customization and assemblage is left to the user.
Timeular will provide apps for MacOS, Windows, Linux, as well as iOS and Android. The free app that integrates with Zei covers basic needs, but there's also a pro version for extended productivity features.
Timeular first started working on Zei in 2015 and was able to produce a prototype that enabled them to gather feedback from as many people as possible. Digging through Manuel Bruschi's Q and A over at Product Hunt, he revealed that the project was initially realized as a cube but has since evolved through many configurations.
Timeular's Kickstarter campaign for Zei ends on Oct. 26.
