Ask HN: How do you track your work hours? Currently I use stopwatch on my desktop pc and pause it whenever I do something that is not work related like randomly reading article/reddit/hn/youtube iirc I heard that john carmack use a cd player and pause it whenever he does not works |
If I did, I would get nothing done and lose my mind in the process.
When I was a contractor I used to generate my invoices using it.
Same. Stopping and starting a clock for every little thing is too much of a hassle.
Do you stop it if you are googling a work related question? when going to have a coffee or the toilets? if you are trying to relax so you will be more productive later? I never had complaints about rounding up hours.
I track time spent on work broken down into dozens of subtasks, which is really helpful for analysing later and estimating future work. It's easy and quick to switch tasks or retroactively adjust or track time. There are various reports you can view or export as CSV.
Goals: make predictable progress each day, get a feel for how long different types of tasks take, and to have guilt-free rest after a day is “done”.
So I decided I’ll aim to work just 3 hours on weekdays, 2 hours on weekends, but I must first write down my current subgoal in a text file and note every time I stop or start.
So this file is full of things like “15:03-15:20, 15:55-16:00 Make minigun emit a puff of steam when it stops”. Conveniently reused as a git commit message. GPT made me a sublime text plugin that adds up the total, and I have inserting current clocktime as a mey binding.
I’m only allowed to work towards that subgoal as fast as I can with no distractions.
The goal must lead to a releasable update, otherwise it does not count. So in my system I’ve defined doing taxes or checking email as not work but a chore (like washing the dishes), to make sure I prioritize releasing stuff.
If I want to check HN or something, then I need to take a proper break instead of semi-working. And since I need to confront this and note it, I’m less likely to do so.
Each day I adjust the Subtotal for the previous day and put in an entry for the new day.
When I start working I put in an entry into Start, Finish e.g. 3:33pm 3:33pm, and then adjust the Finish time when I stop.
I have a sheet for the month, and when a new month comes around I add up my totals for the previous month, check that the SUM(Subtotal) is the same as the SUM(time col), and then calculate average hours worked per day / week.
I then duplicate the sheet for the next month.
Have been doing this since last year and it works great.
Edit:
I made a template for anyone interested - here you go https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XDp-sYcrsd3Ey-Fo1p5H...
Spreadsheets might be old news but they get the job done for so many things.
- track and optimize productivity
- I have a budget per project
- ensure I work my 40h/week (if I work more or less, my productivity goes down)
https://tailordev.github.io/Watson/
- kind of a diary to help me remember what I worked on
- good "backup" where I can see where I actually spent my time on
Additionally, I have a Google sheet that I use to track how many hours a day I in worked.
While all the tracking was manual, and I tried to do it either in real time or by the end of the day (or at best the next day), it was useful to have some automated time tracking tools for double-checking in recall. For this, I use mostly Timing (https://timingapp.com/) and location tracking on my phone.
Now I use a custom entry system in Obsidian which lets me do more fine-grained reports (e.g, by project) and also has the advantage that I have one app less to worry about. I still have Timing to help with recall though. Some people use Timing exclusively - and it does have several advanced features and a nice UI!
It's a bummer that no time tracking App really seems to focus on cross platform support. I've been looking for a time tracking app myself and couldn't find one to support my situation.
I have: - A Linux desktop - A MacBook - An Android Phone - Offline activities I want to track
Note: As a technical manager I feel strongly that you SHOULD NOT look at these values for your employees. I looked only at my own data.
It even made it on LifeHacker back then: https://lifehacker.com/track-your-time-with-lego-bricks-3997...
The article is only on the internet archive these days https://web.archive.org/web/20081206084136/http://jexp.de/bl...
I notice others who watch the clock and leave immediately after 8 hours, my day is almost never that smooth and if I am on a roll I do not want to stop as it costs me more time.
But do take your occasional breaks, it is better for your overall productivity.
I've found this too, but I don't usually track the breaks as work (unless at least somewhat related to one of the things I'm working on, or that we have in the backlog, like reading an article about a type of query we are going to need to use, etc.)
Are you tracking these breaks as part of your 80 hours in the 2 week period?
http://bookofhook.blogspot.com/2013/03/smart-guy-productivit...
I've changed jobs since then though and don't really need to know more than the total number of hours for a day, but I've been using Obsidian for that. In the yaml frontmatter, I have a 'clocks' array similar to what the clock-in/clock-out looks like from org-clock.
PS: I was looking for an app to track time against a list of value adds. More like daily task related activity logs with option to add time. So we built this internally and later launched as a SaaS.
I found it to be great
You can use rules to auto-categorize your time which is clutch.
Project X 08:43 PM - 10:00 PM
So, ideally I'd like to have a one or two click tracking solution which rescue time did not really provide.