Show HN: A time tracker that asks you every 10 min what you're doing | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A time tracker that asks you every 10 min what you're doing

maesure.com

132 pointsbucket2015124 comments

I like the app, but I am a bit confused by the data usage.

* As a starter: The source code is only a JS snippet. No HTML in there.

* Right away I "fullstory.com" appear in the JS. So I have reason to believe that all user interactions (mouse, keyboard, etc.) are uploaded to fullstory.com. Not sure this is actually the case. Certainly not in favour of it.

* In the network tab, I see requests to heapanalytics.io.

Setting aside the question if such data use is necessary, appropriate, or done elsewhere. I wonder if this is actually legal. I certainly did not consciously agree to my data being collected in this way and shared with third parties.

When you scroll down, you eventually see a Privacy Policy and TOS links in grey:

> By using this site you agree to the [Terms and Conditions] and the [Privacy Policy].

- Is a text like this actually effective?

- Am I violating EU law, if I use the same patterns in my Apps? (I am EU based.)

Most certainly, yes.

This actually sad. People here understand why people despise these schemes and tracking yet still do it and post it here. Can't even blame marketeers or manager pressure.

Creator here - that's a fair point, disabled both. That's what I get for taking a lazy shortcut.

Won't put them back without adding consent.

There's also a first-party cookie called "visitor", though that will require a bit more work because there's actual functionality that depends on it.

IMO first party session cookies aren't too big of a concern for the HN crowd - Being a web dev myself I know it's essentially a requirement.

It's those analytic services that we despise.

You're allowed first-party cookies that are necessary for your website to work.

The whole cookie banner and permissions things is partly a smoke-screen by advertising agencies to hide the fact that you don't actually need up front consent for necessary cookies. :)

It's depressingly funny how carefully some of those banners are worded.

"Cookies are necessary to make this site work. Click here to enable cookies!" Fine, but those aren't the same cookies, and mysteriously the website works just fine for me even if I kill the third-party cookies.

IANAL, but AFAIK it is a common misconception that cookies are a problem. They don't.

Closer to the truth is that tracking is a problem.

So as long as you don't use any tracking, you don't have to care about privacy consents. But be aware that simple things like assets hosted on 3rd party servers (e.g. web fonts) can be used to track your users by your partners. Furthermore, everything related to ads or social media is most likely being used to track users.

So if you want to avoid any trouble, host everything yourself and don't include any tracking/ads/social media. However, most likely you will still be required to have a privacy policy on your page if you have EU users.

EDIT: Btw. when I say 'tracking', I mean web tracking like Google Analytics, not time tracking (might be ambiguous in this context).

A question, since I have the ear of an individual who chose to add tracking to their small website: what exactly do you hope to get from these trackers? Do you think there could be some critical piece of information which could be gleaned from these logs which could help?

I associate trackers with megacorps where they're essentially playing Telephone between management and the boots on the ground doing the work ("we need tracking!" "ok, next on the work checklist is tracking, and here's a service that says it does that...").

We make a large, enterprise-targeted app at my startup. Fullstory has accelerated our search for product-market fit by allowing us to make some significant discoveries in how users use our app.

We could have made all these discoveries by properly instrumenting our code with our own tracking framework. That said, Fullstory provided us a big bang for our buck in [time spent : value provided]; half-day implementation led to all the usage info we could need.

We've gone as far as creating a recurring "Game Tape Friday" meeting where the whole development team sits down and watches 5-10 user sessions together to record bugs and possible UX improvements.

We're not a small website so this anecdote may be of limited value to you, but I would personally give up syntax highlighting before I would give up Fullstory.

Fullstory basically lets me sit behind the shoulder of every user and e.g. watch them use the app in a way I didn't think of, or stumble over the features that I thought were obvious but turns out are very counter-intuitive.

It's totally a game changer for UX design.

Heap, Google Analytics, etc are actually not as useful; I find the app's DB and server logs provide more relevant data. So I don't think I'll add them back.

Yes, it's a violation of GDPR to tell people that they're consenting. You have to ask them, and they have to perform an "affirmative act" - even a pre-checked checkbox is a violation.

The main relevant sections are probably:

Article 7: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/

Recital 32 (explains some of the valid/invalid methods): https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-32/

Cookies are the E-Privacy Directive, but it uses the GDPR standard of consent. Important nuance.

Haha nice. I do basically the same thing except with a script.

    while true; do
        sleep 900
        zenity --entry --text="what u doin" >> done.txt
    done

Although now it's just a reminder that isn't logged.

    zenity --question --text "Are you working?"

It doesn't really mean "Are you goofing off" but rather "Are you doing what truly matters right now instead of refactoring code or responding to less-than-useful emails?"

I have similar that ties in to Toggl timers. If the time's within the work day and I've not got a timer going it bugs me to do stuff [1]

If there is a timer running it also knows (based on my calendar) if I should be doing something else and asks if I am and offers to change the timer for me [2]

[1] custom script

[2] the same custom script pings my phone/tablet via a Pushcut webhook. This pings me the notification but also allows me to tap the notification and start a new, relevant, timer using iOS shortcuts and Zapier

    while sleep 900 ; do .. done

true not required. sleep is true unless interrupted.

Nice trick, that solves the problem of hitting Ctrl-C and the script sometimes looping again.

Never thought about this shortening before. Nice tip!

Makes me wonder about code golf for shell scripts. Now there's a rabbit hole...

You don't believe that refactoring truly matters?

Depends on the refactoring :P

IMO you can spend days shuffling around the same code if you want. It's not that refactoring is bad it's a priority thing.

Also if you refactor too frequently that's a sign you need to take a step back and more thoroughly plan out your system.

I've never had a boss or customer say "I need those class names changed, and before Tuesday!" :) It sometimes helps achieve goals, but it's never the primary goal itself.

Refactoring code is part of the work being done much like emptying the dust bin is a part of ensuring you can continue to clean house effectively. Leave one and the other suffers. It's a goal as much as having a clean house is - it is inseparable from it and a direct consequence of doing it, but it is often discounted or ignored - because it is seen as a separate task. It is not.

this. 100x this.

You want good code that's maintainable? You're refactoring (and probably adding tests) as you go.

I wonder if it'd be possible to check if only mouse events have occurred within the past 10 minutes or so. Then pop up a message saying "Stop browsing and get back to work!"

Wow. I can't believe that anyone would ask to be interrupted every f'ing ten minutes for nothing. I can't stand being interrupted more than once or twice a day.

Yeah, neither can I. Lucky for both of us, that is not what this application is about.

Yea, I already know that my day would be a log of "still trying to get back into flow state since the last time you poked me" entries.

Sounds like you're good at focusing, which not all of us are ;)

Well, with that thing in the background certainly nobody would get focused.

The person you're referring to is talking about a different kind of focus -- focus as in not going off task.

Some of us have a habit of getting distracted from the task at hand easily and going off on a HN/Youtube/Reddit/browsing/timewasting session.

Continual prompts like this you could catch this within 10 minutes in to a timewasting session and remind you to get back to work.

Personally I probably wouldn't use 10 minutes though as it seems a little too frequent and would go closer to the standard Pomodoro time of 25 minutes (which I have personally used and found useful).

As well as a reminder for those not good at staying on task, it sounds worth considering for those who spend their day satisfying constant small ad hoc requests who later get asked "What have you been doing all day?"

Hopefully it has a "same as last time" button, I doubt this has the same cognitive distraction level as fielding a question from a colleague as well. I.e. understand their question, think of the context, etc etc

I wrote and ran something like this but the sweet spot was 20 min not 10. The purpose for me was to discover how many 20 min chunks of time were actually productive. The efficiency of planned tasks declines when you assign more hours to it.

But that was not what I ended up measuring. The widget (it was) was like someone looking over my shoulder and modified my behavior. I became insanely productive for a few days then had a weird kind off burn out where I declined to enter anything or wrote "watching youtube videos" for days.

Eventually I replaced the widget with a careful cut out from the movie 1984 so that it looked like a telescreen with big brother looking at me. A factory bell would ring and I would be "forced" to take a break. I got bored with that before figuring out the ideal work/break ratio. (It didnt care what I was doing)

I considered automating self-inflicted activity monitoring but any amount alters your behavior... much like your gut told you it would.

Instead of doing it every 10 min, it should keep expanding the period while you keep giving the same answer. so 10, 20, 30, 60, 120. There used to be a app for mac that did just that. To me it was the perfect balance between convinience and useful data.

Not necessarily. If it did that, it will skip a lot of things you do after ending a long task.

I use one I made myself, and it is set to ask every 13 minutes - the largest prime below 15. Being a prime means it's unlikely to align to any real-world task boundaries, and it's also coprime to 60, so it won't keep asking at the same times every hour.

(Timer like this is actually a nice use case for a smartwatch, along with pomodoro timers. It removes friction from the UX, makes the whole thing less distracting, and allows it to be monitor almost all tasks during the day.)

EDIT: See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625346 for details.

It should go up if you're focused and down if you're not. If you are on track, it will go from 30 to 60. If you are not on track, it will go from 30 to 20, etc. That way the more in the flow you are, the less interruption. However as with all things, the weakest link is us. I'll just ignore it if I'm not motivated enough. :-)

Creator here - surprisingly, it's less annoying than you'd think, (at least for me).

I built this mostly from the point of view of personal productivity/improvement.

The idea is that it will keep asking you what you're doing even when you don't feel like putting an effort into tracking your time that day. Even when you didn't sleep enough or feel lazy, it'll still keep asking you, collecting the stats, and reminding you that it's watching.

I like the idea a lot, because i have memory problems and tend to get distracted very easily, which causes me to often forget what i was doing. So a constant reminder is very helpful.

Please don't make an enterprise version. Fun for the individual, maybe not so fun if forced upon you by megacorp!

Cool build though!

Yeah, absolutely no enterprise version. If my manager asks me to use this, I'll start updating my resume.

I worked (briefly) at a place that requested updates in 15 min intervals... on a spreadsheet. No thanks!

I briefly worked for a law firm and had to track my time in 6 minute increments.

Could you work on one thing for an hour then back-fill the timesheet to reflect that?

Yes, of course, but it became quite difficult to track when there was fire fighting across several fires

"What have you been doing in the last 15 minutes?" - "I've been trying to get back into the task I was working on after my concentration was broken because I needed to update this time tracker"

Nail on the head

What would be awesome is to include an option for random time, stochastically centered around a certain length, since that is perfect for not being able to game the system. I know that a tool called "Beeminder" had something like this back in the day.

Found the blog post they did back then: http://messymatters.com/tagtime/

I used this for a while and it really was extremely helpful since it activated the "gamey" part of my brain.

This. TagTime (which is Free, made by the Beeminder people, and plays nicely with their goal tracking product if you want it) is scheduled such that you are equally likely to be 'pinged' at any moment as any other, with an expected value of every 45 minutes.

I have been using it for the past five years or so. Apart from being a gloriously hacky bundle of perl scripts (and not playing wonderfully well when run on multiple machines) I've found it perfect. There's also an Android version nowadays I think, though.

That blog link explains it well.

I especially like this obscure bug in the RNG algorithm they're using, which is referenced in their Github README (https://github.com/tagtime/TagTime): http://github.com/dreeves/TagTime/issues/62#issuecomment-239...

It would be awesome if the notification says, "Are you still doing X" when I have already told I am doing X. Saves me a few keystrokes.

Okay, my bad. You have handled it in a drop down. I wonder if the notification can have the last item to save a click.

I'm being picky because I do plan to use this daily. But I am already happy. Kudos to you dev. =))

Being interrupted every 10 minutes seems like terrible idea which would most likely destroy your productivity.

Totally agree with that.

You can change the time length.

Think the same. The idea behind it isn't that bad though, the time interval could be configurable.

You might be able to do something like this automatically on Linux at least. You can have a job that asks the X server what the title of the focus window is, which in the case of a browser will include the name of the active tab. In the case of a terminal, your prompt_command can set the tab or window title which would also get caught. Emacs can set its own frame title if you want that too. Etc. etc.

I suspect Hammerspoon on OSX could so something similar.

Pretty sure something like this exists for X11. If not, it would only be a few lines of shell code calling out to xlsclients, xwininfo, etc.

I wonder how to do it on wayland

It makes me wonder if you could use a body camera and some machine learning to guess what the user is doing and then just provide a log to the user of their daily time spend. You could even break it down by minute. With a corresponding app on their PC and phone, you could turn "Phone time" into a description of what exactly they were doing on the phone.

I feel like RescueTime is pretty close to this.

Almost nobody tracks their time to better understand how they are spending it. I've talked to several people that have started, but even the most detailed oriented find it to not be worth the hassle.

If you really want this data, I think it's best to correlate data crumbs you leave after the fact and tally up your time at the end of the week. GPS data, computer activity logs, phone screen time, etc.

Another good enough answer is to track the time that is most important to you. Billable hours, exercise time, etc.

I track all my time for the week in 15 minute intervals on a piece of paper, spending ~15 minutes planning my week on Sunday evening or Monday morning. Funny enough I started by doing what you suggest: only tracking the time that is most important. I would suggest the same for anyone thinking of trying this out.

This sounds like it's about accountability of your time, not understanding where your time goes. People already know they aren't doing what they want to be doing, so they have reminders to keep them accountable to themselves.

I've been tracking all my productive hours since November 2018. I can highly recommend it. I also know some others that do the same. nateliason.com comes to mind.

It's not as insightful as I expected, but certainly brings about enough benefits to continue doing it.

I recommend everybody do it at least for a while, and go back to it when productivity suffers. It's remarkable how well it can keep you focused- not screwing off when you know you're going to have to write it down if you do.

I have done it before, there are tools that you can install that will capture the title of your active window and then graph it.

I can see if I spend 2 hours in Terminal or 1 hour in Vscode or 5 hours in Firefox. I can even see the title of sites I spent most time in the browser, etc.

That's the best approach I have found. One example I can think of is https://wakatime.com/ I personally use a python script I found a long time ago that does the same while keeping all my data locally. But it has less integrations and is not as nice.

> Almost nobody tracks their time to better understand how they are spending it.

It's not something a person needs to do forever (unless they want to), but doing it for a week or 2 can be very informative. It's a lot tracking what someone eats for a week to really understand where all the hidden calories are coming from. People are terrible at looking back any length of time and remembering the details of something.

Sounds exactly like my little son.

Mine uses Pebble and Tasker (with AutoPebble to mediate between the two). It works like this (there's no easy way to export something that's not an XML dump full of bloat, so I'll just describe it):

  - Profile: every 13 minutes
             between 08:00 and 23:00
    - Launch task: Request time log

  - Profile: on command from AutoPebble
    - Launch task: Log time

  - Task: Request time log
    - Show a screen on Pebble via AutoPebble
      - Type: List
      - Contents: %OPTIONS
      - Vibration pattern: 300, 200, 300

  - Task: Log time
    - Save "%DATE, %RESPONSE" into a CSV file.

  - Variable: %OPTIONS
    - hn, work, eating, foodprep, hobbyproj, ...

Running a tool like this on smartwatch is a win, because it's minimally distracting, and easy to use for everything I do daily. As said elsewhere, I picked 13 minutes to have something below 15 minutes that won't accidentally overlap with periodic tasks or generate regular patterns on the clock. I used to have a bit of randomization in there (skip Request time log if random%2 == 0), but it turned out to be more annoying than useful, as it would frequently miss an hour worth of data.

I made it one afternoon in a grand total of ~30 minutes (including debugging and testing). It requires no Internet connection, doesn't spy on me, I can use it anywhere I am as long as I have my phone in my pocket, I get to own my data in a machine-readable format, which I can trivially send out to my desktop for processing later. Overall, it's a win, and just an example of Tasker being amazingly useful tool in general.

EDIT:

Some extra use notes:

- The logged time is the time I selected an option on my smartwatch, so if I delay or miss a time log request, nothing bad happens. I don't expect my CSV to have perfectly regular entries.

- If I don't select an option in 13 minutes, the prompt will be overwritten by new one; again, nothing bad happens.

- To add, change or remove options, I simply edit the %OPTIONS variable on my phone.

- In the rare case when I select a wrong option, I pull up my phone and use nano in Termux session to quickly edit the CSV directly.

I like the idea I'll try it for a bit and see how sticky it is. One quick suggestions - if I start a timer and then I'm out of the room or don't notice the notification until 23 minutes later and then I enter what I was doing during that time, don't log the entry at the 10 minutes, log it at the actual time I submitted the note on the last period of time spent.

any chance you could implement the timer in a chrome extension as well? that way I don't have to remember to keep the tab open.

Absolutely loving this app so far. The complete lack of nonsense features that serve as an additional distraction from work are exactly what I have been looking for!

I am using this to track what I'm working on (or not working on) during the day so I can accurately enter my time-spent into projects at EOD.

I've shared this with my direct report for team use and wanted to know if there are any self-host licensing options planned in the near future?

I've been trying to get at this sort of nudge for a while now and I still haven't found the ideal interface.

The best solution I have is running a Periodic Timer [1] on my Apple watch along with Timelines time tracker [2]. And so I am reminded every 10 minutes to update my time tracker. It works quite well but I wish it was smarter and all in one app.

Finding the right time spans is also key, you want it to be as short as possible so that it is granular data but not too short so that the nudge becomes some sort of background noise you learn to ignore while focused.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/periodic-timer/id933241656

[2] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/timelines-time-tracking/id1112...

I wonder is there an interesting/useful way to integrate this concept and Tim Urban's time blocks [1]?

[1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/10/100-blocks-day.html

Back in a past job as a design/entering consultant I built a tool to silently track what I was working on. All our jobs had a three letter code (e.g. “ABC”) and all documents (and CAD parts) had a document number that started with the project code. These were used as file names and so I had a python script that would check what the window title for the front most window was to guess which project I was on and record it to a log file every few minutes. I then had another tool that read the log file and totalled up how long I had worked in each project each day. It worked very well and helped massively filling in timesheets later on.

Thankfully I don’t have timesheets anymore. Hated them...

15 minutes is the smallest billable increment for most very expensive lawyers and consultants. I'm guessing the reason is because anything less, like every 10 minutes, is just too much granularity and overly disruptive to getting work done.

Just food for thought.

Plenty of lawyers bill in tenths of an hour - six minute increments.

The standard billing increment in the U.S. is tenths of an hour, i.e. six minutes. I'm sure someone, somewhere bills in ten or fifteen minute increments, but the standard is six [1].

Source: Collaborated with multiple biglaw attorneys on ideas for a more efficient time tracking method.

[1]: http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/cja/billing_increment_chart

About your collaborations, did you come up with anything interesting?

The system I’ve settled on is to just keep a steno notebook on my desk, and write a couple words in one column, and hours in the other.

Something like:

1, 1.4, 3.4 | Revise App. Br.

Timers got too confusing because of multiple tasks, and any system involving typing on a computer or using my phone had too high an activation cost and ended up needing supplementing.

It involved an Apple Watch app that was essentially that. You’d set up your matters beforehand and use a one button start-stop timer with voice dictation for notes. It was an improvement in my opinion.

Security concerns around the product itself make it somewhat more complicated given the sensitive nature of the data.

Half tenths for a mechanic.

Clients with any kind of pricing power demand billing in tenths. They hate to see "Phonecall - .25hr"

I usually want the exact opposite: measuring what I'm doing without bothering me at all. RescueTime was quite good, unfortunately time has gone and not much new features and user interface changes has been made to it. Still pretty good however.

Great as a fun idea for your own amusement... but if this gets applied from an org...on behalf of many remote workers, this would be terribly intrusive and bothersome. "Sell crazy someplace else." as Jack Nicholson eloquently put it.

Is any of the information you input stored elsewhere except on your computer?

Looking at the title I though why would you even need that. And 10 min? Why not 5, or even 1, you'll get fantastic granularity of your stats. But then of course it will be only stats you've got and no real work done.

But what is more shoking to me is all the comments saying they are already using something like that. I think if such an intrusive tool is useful to you, you most probably have a bullshit job [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

I waited all my life to be interrupted every 10 minutes... jokes aside , this is a bit pointless, at least from a dev perspective, when you are finally in the zone to let a tool constantly interrupt

Some companies that offer remote work already have more advanced solution: take screenshot every 10 minutes, then feed it to AI to check whether the user is working or slacking :)

Seriously? Is that the solution being used?

I was thinking about how more and more people will be working remotely and what services would be beneficial to offer (such as ensuring productivity of employees) but this seems almost dystopian to me

Yes that's what I heard. Also heard people just keep to computers side by side, one screen recording the other for... commenting on hacker news

"almost"??

yes I hired some guys from india off of an outsourcing site. There was a checkbox there if I required screen shot software installed on the devs machines. I did not require it, but when I got to talking with the guys, they said, "yeah we just use virtual desktops for that app so it looks like we are always working :P"

It's been SOP in the penny contractor trade for years. oDesk pioneered it back in the mid-2000s or so.

Really not the smartest idea when you look at tools like Gryzzly that are doing the time tracking from Slack ! People are better when self accountable, like Maesure makes you feel. Interesting experiment !

When signing up with an email address:

<Error><Code>NoSuchKey</Code><Message>The specified key does not exist.</Message></Error>

Fixed

Most of the time Harvest App does a perfect job. It is a regular timer app but it is quite good at Symantec when you are not working. If sometimes I'm in doubt about what I spent my time one or if I know that I worked on something else that I was timing, I'll look it up in WakaTime. The combination of the too has been the most useful tool for me.

This is a great idea, but where is the privacy? The privacy policy literally says that your personal information will be shared with Google & other third party apps. [0]

This is a great way to collect data on what people do every day.

[0] https://maesure.com/privacy-policy

The problem with all time trackers that require any manual input is that eventually you stop using them. Either a small disruption in your life, or simply that the habit doesn't stick. Full recording of physical and digital actions + analytics might work. Some sort of spying on yourself.

I have a few sticky notes on the bottom of my monitor to remind me to do things that I daresay work just as well as this at keeping me focused. Without all the privacy concerns, tracking, futzing, and yak-shaving I could see creeping into this.

I'd rather have this remind to get out of chair once every hour or so and stretch and walk a bit.

This helps not just the body and eyes but helps refresh attention 'muscles', especially when stuck dealing with some stubborn issue.

Who the hell is such a control freak? All time-tracking apps should burn in hell.

Seems strictly worse than something like Qbserve that tracks you down to the second and doesn't need to interrupt you. Qbserve doesn't sync to the cloud which removes some privacy concern too.

That just tracks what application though right? It doesn't give any insights about what project for example.

This is a great app for those without managers or girlfriends. :)

On a more serious note, I get it, but realistically how much can someone stick to it for a reasonable amount of time in order to get conclusions?

I think a question asking app that helps you build a reliable schedule would be useful . Eg what are you doing ? When do you normally do it ? Are you doing X now? Should you be? Etc

I know the interval is configurable, but please make the default to somewhere around 30-50 mins.

10 mins is ridiculous and will make people ignore your product.

I have a boss for that - no signup required :/

As a student this would be great for studying and getting both work and school done in a reasonable amount of time.

I come back to Pomodoros. Love them for a week or 2. Got annoyed. And go back to nothing.

Please, do NOT sign up in this site until author fixes this noobish vulnerability:

When the sign up request is sent, it shows a S3 error not finding corresponding key. The true misdeed is requesting the resource with get and passing email and password as query parameters in the URL. Such a shame >-(

Isn't this pretty similar to basic auth? Passing credentials in plaintext but over TLS.

Yes. But URLs tent to be logged more than HTTP headers or payloads. Any L7 proxy can spit out requested paths and the password will be preserved in different places for long periods of time.

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!

Fixed.

Mental Illness as a Service

Overreaching boss as a Service

Great design, I really like the simple UI and UX.

This... this sounds like a torture device.

I have that. It’s my kids.

Does it seem strange to not want to be interrupted every 10 minutes to explain what I'm doing?

I've already seen the answer to this (and I get zero money for mentioning this). You have some software that takes periodic screenshots and then when your day is done you roam through those and can label time segments appropriately. There's at least one software product that more or less does this, and I would use that if I had to bill based on fragments of hour.

A while back I built something exactly like this (except it asked every 15 minutes, and as a desktop app that could unobtrusively pop up in the corner of a monitor instead of requiring browser attention). It also asked what I expected to accomplish in the next 15 minutes, so I'd have something to look back on 15 minutes from now to compare to.

At least for me, it was more an exercise in focus, breaking tasks down to smaller chunks, practicing estimations, and analyzing larger spans of time, rather than just being a tool to force me into actually working through those 15 minute segments. It was really nice to have a bit of self-reflection imposed every 15 minutes to see how my expectations of time use were stacking up against the reality. I don't think I would have wanted to spend the time or cognitive effort to revisit screenshots after the fact, when I've lost context and would have to take more time to analyze what's happening in each screenshot and extrapolate between them.

If I were in the zone and working on something that took longer than 15 minutes (which is pretty frequent for most people, I'd guess), I could see this format as pretty nagging and I wouldn't want the interruption. But there's also a reason I only do 15-minute pomodoro sprints. :)

RescueTime is a similar thing, but it tries to autoclassify.

Was thinking about something like this to measure happiness/fun.

You could plot a curve of an activity and do fun math with it.

I use Daylio for this. It tracks moods that you can configure (and sub-class, so "excited" and "relieved" could be under "good") as well as any activities you add (exercising, coding, watching movies, etc). You can then see your mood over time correlated with what activities you engaged in those days, as well as export it to do some analysis of your own. I just passed a 365 day streak, and it was super interesting to look back and see e.g. how many days I worked, how many days I drank, how many days I played video games, etc., as well as how many days I was happy, sad, anxious, etc

Thanks. I already have a manager and a wife.

Obligatory “I’m updating the tracker every 10 minutes “

Why would you do it to yourself? It’s yet another distraction for any deep work.

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