One of the biggest problems I have in any given day is managing my time. There is always just so much stuff to do, I lose track of it; there’s always one more thing I’ve just forgotten to do, and the end of my day is full of frenzied panic trying to get everything done in time.

One of the better techniques for managing this is called “timeboxing.” The essential idea is that you just stop multitasking; pick one thing, and work on that one thing until it’s done. Once that’s finished, you move on to the next thing. You just write a task list, and next to everything you have to do during the day, you write how much time it will take to do that.

Once you’ve put all the various tasks in order, you just set a timer for your first task and work on it until the timer goes off. Then you put it aside - hopefully finished - and set the timer for your next task. Throughout the day, you can see just how much you have left to do, and just how much time you need to do it.

The technique is reasonably simple, but it has a few problems. First, you need time to set up your task list, and then you need to find a timer that handles all the various times you need to work. A kitchen timer works, but it can be a little bothersome carrying a kitchen timer with you everywhere - especially if you work on the road, as I do, and need to get things done in awkward or impromptu places.

So I was pretty happy to find the 5 Bucks a Day Action Enforcer. This application is designed for one and only one thing: timeboxing. That’s all it does, and it does very well.

Once I installed it, one of the first things I saw was a goofy picture of a cop on the screen… and honestly, I like to think of myself as a professional, so I was a little turned off by this. I couldn’t help but think to myself that people would see this silly little cartoon on my screen, and it wouldn’t look like I was working at all.

But in practice, the Action Enforcer doesn’t stay on your screen very much at all, so it doesn’t exactly matter. Once I got started using it, since I work on the computer, what’s on the screen is the work - and the Action Enforcer just sits in the background.

So there’s virtually no risk of people seeing it and thinking I’m playing some sort of Facebook game or something. That’s the other big risk I have with my time - my family doesn’t seem to know the difference between “work from home” and “home from work,” so they constantly interrupt me to do things. And those kitchen timers don’t have a pause button on them, so you can’t stop the timer while you run do something that has to be done immediately.

But the Action Enforcer has all kinds of little niceties on it. The main screen is pretty basic and straightforward: you’ve got the left sidebar, and the main timer screen. There’s no way to put the sidebar on the right, as I would prefer, but that’s a pretty minor complaint - most other software wouldn’t provide that as an option, either.

The main Action Enforcer screen has that cartoon cop picture on it. It’s also got a few controls up at the top, which I’ll go over in a few minutes, but the primary element is a dozen slots for timers.

The sidebar is titled “Actions” and has a counter for the number of actions completed. To the side of that is a “Report” link, which I’ll talk about later. But the major feature here is an area to enter in the details of an action, and a list of defined actions underneath it.

Actually, there are a lot of lists. Action Enforcer comes with one predefined “Default” list, but above the list of actions there’s a dropdown list that shows a whole bunch more… fifty, in all. I’ll cover those a little later.

The surprising thing about Action Enforcer is that even though it’s a strange interface, and takes some exploration, it ends up being really easy to use. The interface is clean, slick, and pretty… and once you start using it, everything just falls into place and works.

The way you set a timer is mind-blowingly simple. When you hover over any action in the action list, a little blue bar pops up with a series of predefined times on it. Point your mouse at the time you want - 5, 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, or 180 minutes - and when you click it, the timer is automatically added to the main screen.

It’s so easy, you can rip through the entire task list in just a few seconds… not even a whole minute. Especially once you create your custom tasks, instead of using the defaults, and even that takes no longer than your standard to-do list software. You just type a title and an optional description, and you’re done.

Once the timer’s over in the Action Enforcer main screen, you have all the usual functions you expect from a timer: reset, pause, delete, and another with a green checkmark called “finish.” There are two small buttons in the upper right corner that let you organize and arrange your timers, and just like your fifty action lists, you can have fifty sets of timers. I’ll cover those a little later, too.

As you add more timers, you can see Action Enforcer total up the amount of work you have to get done, and when you start actually running the timers you’ll see them count down. Once you finish something, clicking on the green checkmark increases the counter of actions completed.

If you don’t do that before the timer runs out, an alarm sound will play - it’s configurable from the drop-down over the main screen. Action Enforcer also lets you reset all the timers with one button click, or even gang them into one big timer… so as soon as one finishes, the next starts.

Once you’ve completed a number of actions, Action Enforcer can generate a pretty good report of what you did and how long it took you. Just click that “Report” link up in the corner of the sidebar.

You can fine-tune this report by removing actions. I was a little frustrated that you couldn’t group actions and generate a more detailed report with subtotals and rollup, but that’s not a huge deal.

I did discover some odd behavior. I tried to type an action item that started with a number - “5 articles” - but instead of going into my task list, it went straight to my timer screen as a timer named “articles” with a time of five minutes. When I watched the tutorial video, however, this turned out to be a feature.

I hated the video; the content was great, but the voice-over is just the most boring voice on the planet, and it’s tedious even listening to it. I wanted to fall asleep several times. The help videos are the same… you’ll need some sort of stimulant to keep yourself conscious, but the content is fantastic and covers everything very well.

That’s just about the worst thing I can say about Action Enforcer, really. The voice on the videos is boring. And honestly, if that’s the price of having software this good for a price this low, I’ll take it.

There are a couple of minor issues with the software. First, if you already have twelve timers on the screen, adding another one doesn’t work. It doesn’t give you an error - it just doesn’t work. Normally, you’re looking right at the screen when this happens, and you can see it not happen. But if you click the button to move a timer between groups, and you move it to a group that already has twelve timers… well, it just disappears into oblivion, and it’s gone.

There also doesn’t seem to be any way to add more lists of actions if you use all fifty lists, so I guess you have to figure out a way to manage your time without needing more than fifty lists of actions.

Personally, I don’t see why you’d need more than a dozen anyway, but if you do - you can use import and export to save action lists on your hard drive. So the only real limit to how many action lists you can have is disk space.

In the same way, you can’t add new timer groups, but… again… what would you be doing with that many timer groups? You can’t export or import timer groups, for some reason.

There is a workaround, of course: you can export and import lists. If you need a new list of tasks, you could export the list and clear it, then build a new set of tasks. If you ever need the old set of tasks back again, just import them. The default task list can also be restored at a moment’s notice to any list.

Speaking of export and import, I was impressed with the stability of the system. Action Enforcer’s exported action files are in plain text format, so you can use pretty much any text editor - like notepad - to create and edit them. I tried sticking some garbage in them here and there, just to make sure it wouldn’t crash if I imported a bad action list, and it does just fine.

Then, being the perverse sort of human being I am, I tried to import a 145 MB video. It wouldn’t let me browse for a .MP4 file, but I just renamed it to .TXT and imported it anyway. It took forever reading the thing, but in the end, it just didn’t produce any actions.

Didn’t crash. Didn’t complain. Pretty solid. I’m really very happy with the stability of Action Enforcer… nothing I do ever seems to crash it, and I’m pretty good at crashing software.

Large numbers of actions don’t cause trouble, either. I’ve exported and imported lists of several thousand actions, and Action Enforcer doesn’t bat an eye. The biggest complaint I’ve got on the import and export function is that Action Enforcer doesn’t store the title of your list with the actions, so you have to update it manually. (Click the little button to the right of the list title to edit it.)

With such a large list, of course, you need a search feature just to find the right action… and the magnifying glass icon to the left of the list title does the trick. Just click it to change that dropdown into a search box, and Action Enforcer will search for actions in all lists as you type. Once you’re done using the search feature, just click the red X to the left of the search box to restore your dropdown.

Overall, I’ve had great success with the Action Enforcer; it’s dramatically improved my awareness of where my time gets spent, which in turn helps me improve my time management. I managed to suck over two hours out of every day’s work, just by focusing on one thing at a time instead of the rampant multitasking I usually do.

There are a lot of great ways to use the groups and lists. I’ve got different sets of timers for different kinds of days, and I can see someone using it like a calendar… you could easily do each day of a month in the Action Enforcer, then generate a report at the end of the month. You might also track different clients on different pages.

I often use Action Enforcer in tandem with some of the other products on this site. For example, I have separate tasks for social bookmarking with SocialBot and RSS submissions with RSSBot.

Overall, the Action Enforcer is well worth two or three times the price - and the bonuses are actually good, not the typical PLR garbage I usually see. I literally can’t imagine going a day without the Action Enforcer managing my schedule at this point… it’s become an essential part of my workflow.

Click here to watch videos of Action Enforcer in action.