Show HN: MyHours – Time tracking for digital nomads | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: MyHours – Time tracking for digital nomads

myhours.com

48 pointsjohngorse46 comments

Am I the only person that hates "Start or stop timer with a single click"? I don't want timers. I never remember to start them, I never remember to stop them.

What I do instead is write down in my little (edit: physical, pen and paper) notepad when I start a task then note when I stop it, later updating the timesheet with the difference. I just want to be able to enter a hours:minutes value for each task when I get a moment, does this app do that? It's literally the only reason I still use Basecamp Classic (v1)

Another pet peeve: If I click "Features" in the header or footer I want more information, I do not want to be scrolled back to the thing I already read.

It's always been one of those features that sounds good in your head, but never works in practice, except when you're playing chess. They NEVER get used, and if by chance they do, they are so wildly inaccurate, because you've forgotten about it in the meantime.

What's the difference between remembering to click a button and remembering to write something down?

Quickly jotting a time on a piece of paper doesn't seem to drop be out of the zone/flow/etc whereas switching to some time app does. I always have the notepad and pen next to the mouse ready to go to write notes about what I'm doing anyway, may as well just timestamp the task changes. Also the notepad is always there in physical space, I haven't accidentally closed the tab it was in and it's never hidden behind a terminal window.

Not really sure, I think it's having a different input method as opposed to the mouse and keyboard I'm using to do whatever task I'm doing so it doesn't get in the way.

Try https://wakatime.com which I built to solve this exact problem... it automatically tracks your time, no more manual timers!

I don't think I'm your target market sorry. That sounds worse than the timer buttons. I'd expect to get back to a timesheet that hadn't realised I left the editor open overnight[1] and it tries to bill for 12 hours work while I was asleep.

Good for the bank, not great for repeat business!

[1] This is an assumption on how it works because I couldn't find that on your site. Your docs links also goes to API documentation - is that intentional?

Edit: Found the FAQ in the footer (this should be way more prominent!) that explains how it works, unfortunately it wouldn't track the time I'm working on syadmin stuff and other non-code tasks which would mean I'd need to use my notepad method and this.. Too much extra work, I'm only tracking time in the first place because otherwise we don't get paid. Man I hate tracking time.

Thanks for the feedback, the FAQ is in the footer to prevent distractions and the DOCS link hopefully conveys that it's for devs. I'll try putting the FAQ next to DOCS for a while.

I've found that the vim plugin captures sysadmin time well enough, even if just to jog my memory later on.

Just for anyone not wanting to look at the FAQ, it only tracks while actively editing a file. And in my experience (I've used wakatime since early days, although not lately). even when you're off researching stuff online in the midst of a programming session, the charts makes those times easily "findable" for the proper time tracking when actually tracking the data.

For sysadmin I guess that doesn't matter, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

I've been using wt for the last 30 days or so, and it's working really well.

Are you considering an on-prem version?

I use toggl[1] exactly this way. Check it out.

[1]: http://toggl.com/

I wrote a python script that hooks into a git pull, since the first thing I always do is start the morning with a pull. Then I wrote a script that looks for a commit with a specific message to my personal repo, since I always end the day committing to my personal repo (I squash into master). The commit usually has the ticket number in it, so the script logs the time in our system. The next git pull will start the timer fresh.

Have you looked at wakatime?

Unfortunately my company wrote it's own ticket tracking and time tracking software. But the script only took a few min to write, so no biggy.

If you want to stay focused and track your time I built Tomatoes[0]. It's a pomodoro technique timer and a time tracker. It's web based, it's completely free and open source[1]. I built it when I started freelancing and I was in need of both a tool that would have helped me to be productive and to track time that I spent on clients projects.

[0] http://tomato.es

[1] http://github.com/potomak/tomatoes

i don't understand all these time tracking apps to the seconds/minutes. as a consultant/freelancer don't you value your time and skills more than on the minute at the desk working? how do you incorporate thinking about problems when your taking a shower or sleeping or the many other times you are not at your computer or desk without a timer and thinking. i find these can be some of the most valuable times there are for solving tough problems.

ever since i started charging day rates, life has been so much easier. i set a minimum of 1/2 a day increments. 10x easier to manage, and it stops the client from looking at you as a cost center that they are loosing hourly on. it also stops the micromanagement of your time. estimating work is hard enough, tagging hourly on stuff makes it even harder. a day then can be as many hours are you like it to be. weather you end up working 12 hours or 4 is up to you and how well you get the work done. if the client is willing the pay the day rate for the problems you are fixing, the hourly time you spend no longer matters.

Probably off-topic, but it seems as though every new site advertising a software tool has a top-down picture of a desk with a Macbook on it, a notepad, and some other office supplies scattered around.

I'm not complaining; it's a nice image, but there's definitely a trend going on.

Even Google Drive: https://www.google.com/drive/

It's a hipster thing. Macbook: Check Wooden table: check Vintage wayfarer glasses: check, Iphone: check, Notepads in different colors: check, Coffe or tea: check, Some totally unrelated drawing or technical plan: check, Fancy pencils or pens: check, A vintage lamp: check

Off topic. But you just described my current work situation fairly accurately, the main items hit. Macbook, iPhone, wooden table and tea. Replace the drawings with some bills, notes with an iPad and the "vintage" lamp with a normal lamp.

I have to say it is a very comfortable setup, especially in the early hours.

I am glad that it works for you.

More than just a trend, a lot of these came from the same photo shoot.

https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/top-view-office-des...

Looks very nice. I signed up to evaluate it better since I am using Kapow now.

I think it is a bit too complex though for the simple case scenarios. I had to set projects and clients and tasks and billing and billable hours and so on. I had to visit so many pages just to set up for a test of one client and one project and in the end I couldn't create an invoice with a price on it.

Whilst the project/client/task/person working/billing per hour tuple provides a very nice model, I think in real life it won't be used as much so no need to enforce it.

Hi, tnx for your comment and opinion. You don't know how much I appreciate that kind of evaluation. I will discuss with my colleagues about this.

You should force SSL. Following the header links causes the page to reload over https.

Hi will do, tnx for reminder.

No problem. Good job on your launch! Product looks nice.

I am a big user of Harvest and this looks very similar. That is not a bad thing but I have a few issues with this.

1) When I signed up I filled out some information. I thought it was my first project but I don't remember now. This information has disappeared. I had to enter in new tasks, project, etc.

2) The tracking screen is too complex, I get that it does a lot but it is overwhelming. I will compare to harvest which asks very simple questions (Project, task, duration (if left blank it starts a timer))

Also is there a chrome/firefox app? This is crucial as a timetracking application should not take up significant time to use.

Hi, thanks for signing up, you can switch on simple time tracking if you go to Profile page in Manage menu. Also did you create projects and tasks in a wizard when you first sign up?

Personally I write all my time to CalDav server for about 3 years now. Works great on all kinds of devices. Then I have a small python utility that can read the calendar file and parse time for selected words. For example I create event "DEVELOPMENT PROJECT_XY". Then python script calculates time for "PROJECT_XY"... Maybe I should publish that as open-source after some code review. Also I can review how much time I spend on personal stuff like house cleaning, cooking, shopping, or research and study...

I've spent the last couple days trying to find a way to time Asana tasks ...

I never want to leave the Asana UI to do time tracking, I want to be able track stuff from multiple organizations / workspaces / projects, I want to be able to make estimates, and I want to see progress towards my estimate wherever relevant.

Have tried Hubstaff, Everhour, Harvest, Timecamp, Timeneye, Toggle. They all suck and cost 5x what this costs ...

Can anybody suggest another?

I'm ready to give up and tiny Chrome extension ... but that's a lot of work!

Harvest and Asana play nice together. Are use Harvest to track my time in Asana. I know you said you tried it, but... it works great for me. The Chrome extension for Harvest works with just about everything.

https://asana.com/apps/harvest

Good to know. Thanks.

Harvest is just suuuuchhhh overkill for what I need -- timer & estimate buttons that writes to a custom property on Asana task objects.

And after mapping my projects over to Harvest I encountered a bug that broke the whole thing.

Opened a ticket ...

Harvest has a bunch of import tools, it also has some CSV import tools that can make setup easier. You don't have to use burn down features if you don't want.

(I'd send this offline but you haven't listed a contact method in your bio)

Do I need to manually duplicate Asana tasks into Harvest tasks before I can start tracking?

This is problematic since I really try to break everything into many bite-sized (sub)tasks ...

It will automatically sync over tasks with time added to them in Asana.

Interesting thanks. It's a shame that Asana doesn't allow one to estimate time for tasks. It would be useful for fixed-price projects, to both make initial project quotes, and later see how you're doing against your estimates.

I had a look at Paydirt which shows time spent vs estimated for tasks and projects, but it's not as nicely integrated with a task board like Asana. You can import Trello projects but it's a one-way import, not that integrated.

A well integrated app for project board / estimates / time tracking / invoicing would be fantastic.

I have been using toggl.com for months now, and it's really amazing. Apps for all major platforms, good reporting interface, and manual/timer tracking.

I loved toggl but I ended up needing more features than just tracking time for $10/month.

http://www.manictime.com/ is free, automatic and awesome

Must have for programmers and people who spend entire day in office. It is not timer based, but still tracks you with seconds accuracy. We use paid version as a team on server which unlocks new features.

Looks perfect for my side gigs. 3 dollars / month for Premium ain't a bad price point either.

It'd be nice to see a better demo or screenshots. The one currently overlaid on the computer screens look a little rough. :P

Hi, tnx for your comment. We're redesigning our landing page currently, so there will be nicer pictures on it too.

Celebrating 15th anniversary??? This might be the oldest running "Show HN" yet.

We redesigned it, but indeed it might be among the first time tracking web applications out there. It was never shown on HN before.

Why is https not on by default?

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