Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity | Hacker News Reader

Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity

mcwhittemore.com

51 pointsmcwhittemore25 comments

I‘ve been doing sth similar by tracking my time for the last 3 weeks and change. I havent done the full analysis yet but it‘s already clear that how I think I spend my time is completely different from how I actually spend it.

Perception/„feeling“ vs physical reality. The gap is huge.

Trivial example, I was convinced that the „time toll“ i have to pay around training was very high. Like I was spending an hour or more just to change into sportswear, shower afterwards, and switch back. This perceived deadweight loss always presented an additional psychological hurdle to get off my ass and train. Now that I know that it‘s much less than I thought, it‘s gone.

Similar for cooking.

Like I said, havent done the full analysis yet but I can already highly recommend this practice of recording time at least for a while.

I spend zero (extra) time changing. I make the workout coincide with when I'd get showered anyway and typically wear clothes good enough for the gym.

May I ask what you are using to track your time?

Late edit: Especially offline time tracking.

Sure, I use ATracker (https://atracker.pro/)

They have phone apps for both iOS and Android which work offline. Their iOS app has a "companion" on the Watch too, so you can quickly switch activities on your wrist. I think without this I wouldnt have the patience to even track bathroom time (another thing that I vastly overestimated before I saw the numbers).

I´m still hovering between writing my own tracking system, for more control, and the convenience of a pre-made system. I would most miss the watch app, I think, as I have no idea how to make that.

Possible compromise would be to use this app but automate the data export and analysis in my own custom environment.

But yea, long story short, Atracker, and offline works well.

Thanks a lot for this comprehensive answer. I have a Garmin watch, maybe there is an app for it too.

As a developer, the balance between using a readymade solution or implementing is always a bit tipped on the DIY side.

I used ActivityWatch with vim, browser, everything on Linux. (Last time I checked, make sure to have a firewall on the port)

Although did not know what to do with the data. I just saw my chess addiction subsiding. Maybe it was a side effect of seeing it at 60 hours a week.

Now it’s at 0 hours.

If you use windows trackerize is another good option:-

http://ravenum.com

From the website, it only takes snapshots every five minutes? I believe ManicTime registers any window focus or title change.

No you can configure for every 3 mins if you prefer. But it then uses that metric to allocate time to different client accounts based on keyword matching you set up. And it does screen captures too. I like it because unlike most other apps it is completely automated and private (no uploading data into the cloud, secure encryption etc).

I still don’t understand why it uses a fixed interval instead of being triggered by focus/title changes. In my usage that would miss a lot of actions. Other apps like ManicTime are local-only, no uploading as well.

Well the time is automatically allocated to client accounts based on that interval and with my keyword matching correctly set up, I still get a reasonably accurate estimate of time to bill individual clients. This all happens automatically. I dont look at my time-tracking app at all till the end of day.

I should add it has a special "follow" pseudo-account which you can match to general use apps like windows explorer which will assign that time to the most recent assigned client account.

> how I think I spend my time is completely different from how I actually spend it.

Experiencing self vs Remembering self.

After Daniel Kanheman gave a ted talk on this, I deliberately try to prioritise my experiencing self.

That is a disturbing length of time to spend on LinkedIn.

Yeah, the number is above 0.

I have been gathering a lot of information about myself.

I wrote my own RSS reader. It is self hosted, so tracking is also done on phone.

I gather pages I visit through my reader, browse history, times a page was visited.

It is my window to the internet.

https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive

Really enjoyed going through your website. And web graph browser is super cool, just wish there was like an "expand all nodes" or "expand current level connections" button.

Also: on your main page, in the last section, the second line of the paragraph has a typo: "...Currently I'm work at..." -- I'm not trying to be annoying but thought you'd want to know (:

For Mac Users, Qbserve is a pretty good time tracking app that observes you as you use your computer (not just the browser, although it has plugins to identify the sites you browse), and is a good way to start getting a grip on time management, even if it can be a little overwhelming at first.

You don't need an extension for Firefox you can get the data from places.sqlite in your Firefox profile.

A little bit of SQL and some shell script would get the statistics.

An interesting (unrelated) reference in the article… https://mcwhittemore.com/web-graph-browser/

Nice post! I’ve found Early (fka Timeular) useful for this kind of tracking.

Nice analysis. I cant do something similar, because I use a myriad of devices. Since last week I have tried to simply spend less time on the phone. I want to gradually get to <1 hr a week.

meaningless

grind , when and how you want

grind harder, when you are behind the 8 ball

pay attention to your periferal vision, it's telling you stuff, same with first thoughts in the morning, they are useualy actionable but always do the self care stuff first schedules are great, if you have a lot of good things that you must maintain, but will eat you if you are trying to build from scratch or...if you are the anvil,bear if you are the hammer,strike

No, that's not meaningless, I've tracked my time and turned out I've spent much more time than I thought on one website that only made me angry, I've blocked it and saved myself hour a day and don't miss the website at all. So yeah, from my experience tracking can be very useful and meaningful.

efficiency is for machines if your grinding when you have to, then it makes no difference what when where, and how much you put into unwinding anger is good, if it's not disfunctional, and directed at actual bad things that effect you now, anger is your signal to, grind, right through the objectionable thing, if its remote like the web page, then any amount of effort is waste, and self harm so grind, or luxurate in the knowledge that, whew! no more grind power left just now timing is for refining your thing, and streamlineing, but if you got no thing grind it's meaningless to optimise, treading water, especialy when there is a beach resort that you can see and hear I would reverse the whole thing and say that if you were to time your very best moments of work, or creativity, you will find them to be shockingly brief, and remembering the specific conditions that led to those moments, is the thing to focus on and foster. baring that grind

Replicating the author's experience requires a $5/mo subscription to a feed reader/glorified bookmark manager...

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