Ask HN: Have you ever tried measuring the time you spend digitally?

[kshivendu]

1. Yes! It's very useful 2. Yes but it's not useful 3. No but sounds interesting

[muzani]

2. It's not useful. There are some improvements, but overall it makes things worse.

A good breakdown is as follows:

    writing code/tests/documentation: 33%
    procrastinating (includes HN): 29%
    design: 13%
    debugging: 8%
    task/team management: 8%
    testing: 4%
    waiting for compile: 4%

On the worst days, I spend about 50% of time procrastinating. This is why I stopped - the more I tracked it, the worse it got. The more I try to stop procrastinating, the closer something is to a deadline, the more likely I tilt.

There were some patterns. Early morning and post-siesta were creative moments. These were perfect for design/debug/task management. Late morning were tired-focused moments. These were perfect for menial tasks, i.e. code and documentation.

When you're creative, your brain jumps all over the place, which also makes it prime procrastination moments. Focus is a bug; the human brain was not built for it. Which might be why many people code best late at night.

[fridif]

4. no and it's not useful because i already know it is all day

[temp234]

Yeah... I was going to go with "4. yes and it was horrifying so I'm back to no"

[high_byte]

Android does this. it's not pretty for me and even knowing the amount of time I spend isn't helping me too much

[lurker137]

1. Yes and it’s quite useful. I use [1] to categorize it automatically. It helps to get a sense what I really spend my time on. As for only measuring time online, I find that less useful

[1] https://activitywatch.net/

[kshivendu]

Hi, I'm curious to know if there's anything that you don't like about ActivityWatch ?

[thiago_fm]

i think this is pointless.

do whatever you want, you aren't a robot that could understand 'oh wow, i spend a lot of time watching youtube! I should study instead'

nobody would follow/pay for this, people know when they are procrastinating and wasting time

[kshivendu]

Hi, I totally agree with you that nobody would pay for tracking their time. Infact, a lot of free tools are already available to do the same. People know when they're wasting time and often want to (because of boredom). I'm just wondering if it's possible to build tools that can help people take decisions ahead of time which changes their behaviour (maybe with a little bit of properly designed gamification). Thoughts ?

[the_only_law]

My phones at least, sends me a weekly notification regarding this sort of info.

[kshivendu]

What do you use ? iPhone ? Is it the default option, or you had to configure it that way ?

[the_only_law]

iPhone yea, I don't recall any configuration, I just get a weekly notification about screen type broken down by app category, app, and usage percentage change form the prior week.

[kshivendu]

okay cool. Thanks !