Simple time tracking/logging tool

Questions on how we spend our money and our time - consumer goods and services, home and vehicle, leisure and recreational activities
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HasHas
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Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by HasHas »

Fellow Bogleheads,

I just came across a simple "time log" in one of Randy Pausch's presentations on time management (see the picture below). As some of you may already be aware, Randy was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon who gave the popular "Last Lecture" ( YouTube Link ), which later appeared as a book with the same name (Wikipedia Link).

As a Professor myself, I have to juggle multiple responsibilities everyday (such as teaching, research, mentoring, and service). Obviously some are more important than the others for my career and it would be great to understand how much time is spent on each category (not easy to manually track, hence this post). I am sure many other knowledge workers or managers working on different projects face the same problem. I was intrigued by the simplicity of the "time log" in Randy's slides. One can define major activities/responsibilities (teaching, research, mentoring and service for professors) based on the nature of their job and then just mark the activity for which a specific time block was used.

For those who are interested, I found pdf and excel files of this time log on GitHub. Here is the link: The Randy Pausch TimeLog.

Question: While I can of course take a print out of the above pdf/excel for each day, I am wondering if anyone is aware of any softwares/apps that could achieve something similar. With this data in hand, one can potentially start understanding much more deeply where their time is going (in the same way as tracking our spending helps in determining where our money goes). I tried implementing this in excel and it is not difficult to do that for each month. It would be nice though to have something more sophisticated so that data could be tracked over a longer period of time.

In case you are interesting in checking Randy's presentation on time management, here is the link.

Image

Note: This post was slightly edited for clarity.
Last edited by HasHas on Sun Apr 11, 2021 12:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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rob
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by rob »

I've fought again time tracking for years... worked places that did this and just made up numbers. What is your aim?
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quantAndHold
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by quantAndHold »

I don’t see “commenting on Bogleheads” anywhere on that.
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HasHas
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by HasHas »

rob wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:09 pm I've fought again time tracking for years... worked places that did this and just made up numbers. What is your aim?
I just want to understand my own time utilization properly. In other words, I would like to understand the fraction of time that I spend on teaching, research, meetings, etc (I am a professor).
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HasHas
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by HasHas »

quantAndHold wrote: Sat Apr 10, 2021 8:38 pm I don’t see “commenting on Bogleheads” anywhere on that.
Good catch! Looks like Randy was not a Boglehead :wink:
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HasHas
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by HasHas »

OP was updated for clarity.
JoinToday
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Cal Newport

Post by JoinToday »

I recommend you listen to or read Cal Newport's books, podcast, blog. He focuses on making your time count; but not into detailed time tracking.

He is a computer science professor at Georgetown, so his advice in particular might be of value to you.

In particular, he advocates schedule your days (time block planning), and don't waste time, especially on email, slack, social media, facebook, twitter, etc. Reduce your time on shallow activities, focus effort on more meaningful (deep) activities.

I think VictoriaF recommended one of his books here (if I recall correctly). I like Cal Newport's advice a lot.
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gips
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by gips »

i worked with a friend, a talented, senior technologist at a hardware company who engaged in meticulous time tracking for 3 months. after a couple of days of analysis and thinking about the results, he walked into our manager’s office, quit, and became a full time photographer :)

i’ve used two time tracking apps: geofency tracks time based on geographic location. i use it for tax purposes to keep track of how many days are spent in nyc. i’m guessing you need something more granular than location based time tracking, we used timelive for our consulting company, $3-$4 a month, users can enter detailed activity tracking. i believe you can try it for free for 30 days.
fwellimort
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by fwellimort »

gips wrote: Sun Apr 11, 2021 3:19 am i worked with a friend, a talented, senior technologist at a hardware company who engaged in meticulous time tracking for 3 months. after a couple of days of analysis and thinking about the results, he walked into our manager’s office, quit, and became a full time photographer :)
Sounds just about right in the world outside academia.

The places that practice this are like Amazon Warehouses and the like. All of them are infamous for horrible work life balances to the point that workers have to piss on bottles during work.

I hope OP the best in pursuing this curiosity but I hope OP would never make a research paper highlighting benefits about this monstrosity of a practice in the ex-academia world.
I did try to 'time track' (myself) when I first started my job. I found I wasted more brain power keeping track of minute issues over actual work.
What do I log compiling time as. What do I log my co-worker randomly messaging me. What do I log my computer suddenly crashing followed by an IT call + zoom meeting + co-worker asking for data while I try to go through my notebook.
Then there's the endless pointless meetings that are not worthwhile and I'm doing something else in meantime (but not focused at all on the other task either).
When I was at college, keeping track was many times simple. Many times, there's just you and the desk. In many other jobs, sometimes, it's not that simple (how detailed would my logs have to then be for these unexpected events. Too abstract/vague and I feel it's pointless).

Plus, I don't get paid any more or less by being more productive. In fact, I end up spending more brain power for the same pay resulting myself to a lower pay per effort. Working all day can already be exhausting even without doing anything else. Using extra brain power on top to keep track, ya... just make sure you don't create a research paper talking about 'benefits' on this. Personal curiosity is good. I'm curious too. Research paper. No. Don't make society worse than it is. :)

Anyways, these are the reddit suggestions in the past of similar needs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/c ... ncrements/
Rain
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by Rain »

I've used the desktop app Klok for what you describe for a few years now. I use the free version but a small $ amount provides extra features. Here's the website: https://getklok.com/

Pros include:
--Can create as many or as few categories and subcategories as you want
--Tracking time on task is easy (drag and drop a category)
--Can edit/add entries in the past
--Can add comments to any time entries
--Pie-chart graph gives you percentages and time spent across your top-level categories; click on any of the pieces of the pie to see sub-categories
--Export weekly data into Excel for more analysis if you want
--Regular updates and no technical glitches that I've noticed
--Much more efficient and informative than paper-based tracking, which I've also tried for short periods of time

Cons include:
--Can't copy-paste entries or set up recurring time blocks (but the paid version lets you transfer over your calendar appointments, so that could be a good solution)
--It's not available from everywhere (i.e. it is installed on your workstation instead of online; no iPhone app)

Probably similar to the OP, I have a lot of flexibility on when and where I work. With regular tracking, I started to keep better track of the weekends, evenings, and vacation hours when I was working for an hour or two (or three) to get everything done. Downloading the weekly data helped me to see that I was working way more than I was paid to work, and that helped me to gradually reclaim personal time. I also set some benchmarks of how I wanted to spend my time. By comparing actual time spent in the pie chart to my benchmarks, I started to commit more time to the non-urgent and self-directed parts of my job that were important to me (and my employer) but always getting pushed to the side by time-sensitive commitments.

For me, it's similar to tracking finances. Without figuring out where the time (money) goes, it's harder for me to align time (money) to priorities.
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Eagle33
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by Eagle33 »

A different aproach is Getting Things Done, David Allen's GTD methodology to increasing your productivity.
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Bogle7
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Re: Simple time tracking/logging tool

Post by Bogle7 »

Take a look at OfficeTime.
I have used for 12+ years.
https://www.officetime.net/
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