5 ms·

Ask HN: Time tracking

6 points by ctingom 18y ago

Hi all, I'm building a time tracking application. I'm curious about your personal time tracking preferences: Do you track your time mostly after the fact? Not at all? Track time mostly throughout the day (stopwatch)? I ask, because we have a Stopwatch mode in our application and a manual time entry mode and I'm curious which one will be most popular and to focus our efforts. Thanks...

brusqe 18y ago
Presumably this is for http://www.minuteglass.com/ http://www.minuteglass.com/? If you are after any significantly large sample data to base some usability/design decisions on, I'd recommend Amazon Mechanical Turk.
- ctingom 18y ago
  Yes, I'm the designer behind Minuteglass and I'll think about using the Mechanical Turk to get some feedback. Thanks.
mkuhn 18y ago
For me its something I normaly do at the end of my workday. Fiddling with a stopwatch mode throughout the whole day would be somewhat to much effort for me.
- ctingom 18y ago
  Thanks for the feedback!
scorpioxy 18y ago
Echoing on what @mkuhn said, i would normally like to use a stopwatch mode when i would be doing something for a long period of time. For example, half a day's work for project A and then switching to project B or something like that. Otherwise, i tend to just use time slots and fill then in at the end of the day in a spreadsheet. Mechanical and tedious, but it does the job. Of course, it doesn't really help unless i remember to fill the information in.
chris11 18y ago
I've just been keeping a time log for the past few days. I'm not sure how long I will keep doing it, but right now it works so I just my cell phone for the time, and a piece of paper to write down what I'm doing throughout the day.
cheekysod 18y ago
I use TaskTrack: http://www.bushsoftware.com/TaskTrack/TaskTrack.html http://www.bushsoftware.com/TaskTrack/TaskTrack.html no setup required, and it tracks exactly how long you spend on each document during the day; so all you have to do is group the documents into tasks and you have the total time spent. its actually made this stuff a heap easier than it was for me, I never used to bother until the end of the week, now I still dont, but the numbers are right :)
- ctingom 18y ago
  Sounds like a nice app, sort of like RescueTime.

6 points by ctingom 18y ago

brusqe 18y ago

Presumably this is for http://www.minuteglass.com/ http://www.minuteglass.com/? If you are after any significantly large sample data to base some usability/design decisions on, I'd recommend Amazon Mechanical Turk.

ctingom 18y ago
Yes, I'm the designer behind Minuteglass and I'll think about using the Mechanical Turk to get some feedback. Thanks.

mkuhn 18y ago

For me its something I normaly do at the end of my workday. Fiddling with a stopwatch mode throughout the whole day would be somewhat to much effort for me.

ctingom 18y ago
Thanks for the feedback!

scorpioxy 18y ago

Echoing on what @mkuhn said, i would normally like to use a stopwatch mode when i would be doing something for a long period of time. For example, half a day's work for project A and then switching to project B or something like that. Otherwise, i tend to just use time slots and fill then in at the end of the day in a spreadsheet. Mechanical and tedious, but it does the job. Of course, it doesn't really help unless i remember to fill the information in.

chris11 18y ago

I've just been keeping a time log for the past few days. I'm not sure how long I will keep doing it, but right now it works so I just my cell phone for the time, and a piece of paper to write down what I'm doing throughout the day.

cheekysod 18y ago

I use TaskTrack: http://www.bushsoftware.com/TaskTrack/TaskTrack.html http://www.bushsoftware.com/TaskTrack/TaskTrack.html no setup required, and it tracks exactly how long you spend on each document during the day; so all you have to do is group the documents into tasks and you have the total time spent. its actually made this stuff a heap easier than it was for me, I never used to bother until the end of the week, now I still dont, but the numbers are right :)

ctingom 18y ago
Sounds like a nice app, sort of like RescueTime.