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Question

24 Hour Time Tracking

Sep 11, 2017 11:06AM PDT

I've been tracking time now for almost a year, but it's using a tool I built myself. I started it out of tracking time for work, but eventually I made the leap to track the time outside as well. Most of the tools I've found are for tracking work time, but I think that's silly. Most of the time you can't change what you're doing at work. You couldn't shorten or eliminate the time, unless you plan on quitting. The vast majority of my time that I can improve or change is personal time, and the options are much better because I could go anywhere or do anything.

My key has always been to focus on the outcome. What is it that I gained from that minute? Did it go towards a tool that can save me future time? Was it spent to eat? Was I asleep? Was I relaxing outside? Or was I wasting it watching funny videos? It's good to have some downtime but you really have no idea how much time you spend until you can see it.

I do a review every 10 days of my time, and what I've been able to find fairly consistently is that I can go through the time items and pull out vast gobs of time. I don't worry about the sleep - which is almost always the biggest item (and now it's by far the biggest), because we as people need sleep. It's not an option to not sleep. If you don't sleep, you get sick or make stupid mistakes that cost even more time. Instead I focus on the biggest other items that I have control over.

I could have done that faster, or why did I spend so much time doing something, or that was a complete waste. Then I think of a specific concrete step that I can take, and how much time it will save. I focus on 3 defined goals for the next 10 days, which usually add up to 5-15% of the waking time. Proceeding like that, in 7 sessions I can double the amount I've gotten done. Of course, I'm not always perfect and sometimes will get back into bad habits or old failures from weeks ago, but overall I find I have a lot more time now.

I don't see any tool online that is anything close to what I do, where I input the time and what I was last doing. Nothing to show a visual breakdown of the day. Most (like 80%) are focused on businesses, and the ones that remain are just simple stop/start timers, nothing is really 24 hour tracking or would have enough categories to represent the complexity of the number of tasks I'm engaged in. There's nothing to support multitasking (which I admit I'm still working on. I presently just put a separate entry half way through which cuts the time in half for each item). No colour coding of what was time well spent, time on a task but could have been faster, time of questionable benefit, or time of absolutely certain uselessness.

What I want to know is, is there a market out there for this? Would people want a tool like the one I have? It's a lot of effort to build a login system and harden the code and all that. I don't want to waste my time, if at the end of the day I'd be the only one using it. So, is there anyone out there who would use it? Anyone reading this where that sounds like something you would end up using? What would be the main concerns for you with some software like this? Any features I should focus on?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: time tracking
Sep 11, 2017 11:21AM PDT

That doesn't seem to be a typical PC-application (the subject of this forum). More something for a smartphone or smartwatch that you always have at hand.

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Answer
Nothing I'd use but there are folk that are borderline OCD
Sep 11, 2017 11:37AM PDT

About time management. This is their choice so an app like that would appeal to them.

However the problem with apps is it rarely is worth doing on speculation. There are articles about how an app that broke into the top 10 netted the author under 1K USD. My view is you do this if you feel the need for the app you could never find and want it badly.

Or as a stepping stone to get a job at some app dev company which is like auditioning for a job where the bosses constantly ask for status and why isn't it done yet (you piece of trash.)

-> Yes I'm an app author but my apps are made to specification and I only have to deal with "is it done yet?"