Time tracking for a multitasker

October 7, 2016 10:23 AM

I'm having trouble tracking where my day is going. I've had a lot of success with pomodoro on the days when my schedule is well defined, however other days time just seems to disappear. I know I'm working and doing productive things, I just want a better record of it. Start/stop timer based approach doesn't work for me. What are some other things I could try?

Mac/iOS based tools would be great!

posted by aeighty to Technology (11 answers total)

I've seen a method where someone uses different colored legos to represent different tasks and then takes a photo of the resulting tower.
posted by faethverity at 11:09 AM on October 7, 2016

Assuming by "working", you mean "doing something on a computer", it sounds like you want RescueTime.
posted by kevinbelt at 11:52 AM on October 7, 2016

The ZEI mentioned in this thread the other day seems pretty cool.
posted by matildaben at 12:01 PM on October 7, 2016

Try looking into RescueTime. It sits in the background and tracks what apps, websites, etc, you're on and gives you a picture of your day from that. So, you can look at the report and know "Okay, I spent two and a half hours in Excel today versus 40 minutes on MeFi." for example.
posted by SansPoint at 12:14 PM on October 7, 2016

I've tried RescueTime. It tells me that's I'm sitting in the browser, or an email client or the source code eidtor but doesn't provide any insight into what exactly I'm doing.
posted by aeighty at 12:27 PM on October 7, 2016

I know you say you don't like stop/start timers, but I've been using Toggl for a couple of months now. When I'm on my computer I get a message if I'm idle for 5 mins, asking me "are you still doing XYZ." When I'm not at home, I use the phone app, and if I forget to track an activity I'll just go back and fill it in to the best of my memory. This looking back has also helped me be more mindful of how I'm spending my time. Bonus: Toggl has a built-in pomodoro feature.
posted by Brittanie at 12:40 PM on October 7, 2016

Have you tried just keeping track of what you accomplish? I used to track the time but that felt really passive and "I spent 25 minutes writing an email to Bill" isn't as impactful to me as, "Shit, I only sent three emails today?" (Also I would spend way too much time messing with whatever app I was using.) Now I keep a manual list in One Note of what I do and email it to myself at the end of the day - quick notes, like "Call with Bill." Next to each task I include the last three characters of the case number the task was associated with, so this doubles as a good way to make sure my notes are up to date. If I know I talked to someone last week but it isn't in my notes I search my Tasks folder for 'XXX' and there it is.

If I know I'm not in a good place focusing on a particular day I will also write down the non-work I've done but I usually just stick to work stuff.
posted by good lorneing at 6:29 PM on October 7, 2016

Many years ago I worked on software used by debt collectors and was amazed to see how they could summarize a long phone exchange in a limited amount of space. For years now that's what I do for my time accounting at work with a spreadsheet. My company only asks for job #, activity, case # and time spent by day, but I have columns for morning/afternoon time plus abbreviated text (like above) saying what I did,why+if successful. I have been able to go back to those notes months later and find detail on work I did. So my time definitely does NOT "disappear" and all I use is a spreadsheet saved with the filename of the week starting date. FWIW.

On preview, I see good lorneing has a similar system in One Note.
posted by forthright at 7:21 PM on October 7, 2016

I did a fairly exhaustive search of AskMeFi archives awhile back looking at time tracking tools. These are what seem to come up pretty often:

Hours
Lumen Trails
Toggl
HoursTracker / Pro
KanbanFlow
LiquidPlanner
BubbleTimer
Personal Time Manager
RescueTime

I've been trying out these 3, as being closest to what I was looking for:
Hours
Toggl
(These two are basically start / stop timers, but they seem to handle that in a flexible, visual way, so you can adjust on the fly.)

BubbleTimer is a little different, based on the idea of an 'emergent task timer' and is basically a digital version of this guy's work.
posted by Bron at 8:38 PM on October 7, 2016

Since you mention a code editor, Wakatime is an editor plugin that tracks your coding activity (though I haven't really used it myself it seems pretty granular).

Qbserve is another RescueTime-like option also.
posted by firefleet at 3:35 AM on October 8, 2016

I use TagTime. It's a "stochastic" time tracker that pops up at randomly sampled times and asks you what you're doing.
posted by borsboom at 8:01 AM on October 8, 2016