discretetime
A simple experiment in time tracking that works by letting you sample what you are up to at specified time intervals.
It pops up every 15 minutes (configurable), and asks you what you're doing. You can type notes, and any word that starts with : is a tag. The notes go to a CSV file that can be used from e.g. Excel to tally up summaries of how you were spending your time. The file ends up in your home directory /discretetime/notes.utf8.txt. On Windows 7 that's C:\Users\username
The idea is that no-one really has the discipline to log their work accurately anyway, and being reminded in a non-irritating and useful way helps. Merely sample what you're doing is less intrusive and in aggregate, more accurate. If you were away from your computer, you'll just log it when you get back.
Suggestions for use:
Have a simple set of tags for the actual activity, e.g. coding (:code), designing (:dsn), debugging (:dbg), documenting (:doc), planning (:plan), meeting (:mt), talking (:talk), support call (:spt)...
Have another set for different projects or customers e.g. :tax :ibm :apple :ms :break :lunch
Each timed note would then normally have two tags and if you want, something human readable.
If you took a coffee break, then that would be in there too.
When you switch on your computer in the morning, just submit an empty note. That makes it explicit that you did not do anything you want to track.
What to do with this data? I don't know exactly yet, but it should at least be interesting to see how much time I really spend doing what I think I should be doing. :)
Keyboard shortcuts
Alt-Enter - submit the note. When it pops up and you're still doing the same thing, just hit Alt-Enter straight away.
Ctrl-Z - put the pervious note's tags in the note. Not your grand-fathers undo...
Escape - dismiss for now.
Corrections
You can edit HOME/discretetime/notes.utf8.txt and correct it at any time.
Installation
Install Java.
Grab the zip file, unzip somewhere, and double-click or run the appropriate script for your platform. (E.g. discretetime.bat for Windows)
discretetime goes and sits in the system tray in Windows and Linux.
Building
You need gradle and java 8.
git clone https://github.com/avisagie/discretetime.git
gradle build
Analysis
There is at present a very simple and crude method to derive a summary of your notes.utf8.txt. Unfortunately you need the command line.
The following example is for Windows. Suppose I unzipped the distribution at C:\dt... Run the following commands
cd C:\dt
java -cp discretetime-0.5.jar dt.SimpleFilter
To see all your :radproject tags, add +:radprojects to the commandline. To remove all time with :talk, add -:talk.