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I started tracking my time in 15-minute intervals a little under a month ago, and I've also been surprised by how little effort it is. I've not gone for breaki
by barrucadu 6y ago
I started tracking my time in 15-minute intervals a little under a month ago, and I've also been surprised by how little effort it is.
I've not gone for breaking by day up into 15 minute chunks, instead I've been timing myself as I do things, and noting down the duration rounded it to the nearest 15 minutes when I change tasks. I'm also not tracking everything, for example, showering. So I have a fair bit of missing time every day, which I'm aiming to get down to 2 hours or less a day.
I've already found myself using time more "productively" - preferring to do things which are tracked (like reading) over things which are not (like mindlessly browsing the internet).
There are a few key metrics I'm keeping an eye on:
- Average daily sleep deficit: `avg(8 - sleep hours)`
- Average daily work deficit: `avg(8 - work hours)` for work days
- Average daily missing time: `avg(24 - all hours)`
- Days since last day off work, not counting weekends
- Percentage of leisure hours: `avg(leisure hours / (all hours - sleep hours))`
I'm also watching how I spend my work days, for example, what proportion of my time is spent doing active work, or in meetings, or doing admin work.
I'll likely expand the things I'm specifically monitoring as I get more data.
- nyxtom 6y agoDo you use an app for this, or do you just use the timer?
- barrucadu 6y agoI'm manually noting down durations in timedot format (https://hledger.org/hledger.html#timedot-format https://hledger.org/hledger.html#timedot-format) in a text file. For example, today's entry as of 18:32 is: 2021-01-03 leisure:anime ....................... leisure:social .. sleep 6.5h chores:foodprep . chores:regular . leisure:social ...... leisure:ttrpg:play .......... Each dot is 15 minutes, so I'm missing a bit of time today. Oh well. I think that having a timer app which lets me start / stop timers individually and give them names would be helpful. The one I'm currently using, on my phone, just has a single stopwatch.
- 6equj5 6y agoShameless plug: I wrote a little Python timer for Linux that works great with a dropdown terminal like Yakuake: https://github.com/krotera/timerBeetle https://github.com/krotera/timerBeetle I often use it for timed tasks, and it's faster than reaching for my phone or even opening a browser tab (and, unlike a Google or DDG timer, it doesn't keep ringing until you re-raise the browser window, find the tab, and silence it, which always annoyed me). : p
- tracyhenry 6y agoThe font of the entry looks different than normal texts. How is that done?
- kzrdude 6y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc (from FAQ)
- tracyhenry 6y agoThanks!