Bottom Line: IFTTT’s location channels can help you automatically track your work hours.

As a resident, I have to track my hours at work to make sure I’m not at the hospital longer than I’m supposed to be. Many people probably just guess-timate, but I prefer to track my actual hours as accurately as possible, because I find it interesting to go back in later and compare how much it felt like I was working to the hours I actually put in.

IFTTT has simplified the process with their iOS app and its Location trigger. Whenever I enter or exit a predefined area centered at my workplace, it automatically logs a timestamp into a Google Drive spreadsheet for me. Later, when I enter my hours into the website we have to use, I just pull up that spreadsheet, enter the info, and delete the rows afterward. Alternatively, one could use the Dropbox channel to append rows to a text file, which may be even easier / faster / more accessible.

Here’s my current IFTTT recipe:

IFTTT Recipe: Automatically track work hours connects ios-location to google-drive