I'm going for as easy and simple as possible. All plaintext, all sync'd across boxen, and accessible through the CLI.
Does anyone have advice on either the technique itself, or good formats for recording their own time data? Good tools they either hacked or found?
I personally don't currently use the history feature of pomodoro (what previous tasks were, how many were completed, etc.). Just defining a task, focusing for 25 minutes, and tracking break time are the things most important to me.
I'd ideally like to have many pomodoro "time jars", which track how many pomodoros I complete for a particular larger goal over some time period. When the time jar is full, for some personal definition of full, you've completed the goal. Haven't found a good app for this, so pointers would be appreciated. Might hack up something simple for the iPhone this summer...
To the commenter about time optimization wasting time, if that's all you do instead of Actually Working, sure. But to never profile your work flow, and never experiment with new methods... not only is that boring, it's inefficient over the long term. My personal productivity philosophy definitely includes a meta step for reflection and experimentation http://cosmicrays.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/productivity/
Just start doing it and write down your progress.
I did take the timer from pomodorro, that too in a very flexible way.
In any case, did i say LOL, or it's retarded? I just shared my personal opinion/experience.