I spent a few months doing some coarse time tracking at work - basically I'd retroactively add and edit events on my calendar to reflect what I had actually done during the workday, down to 15 minute increments. I binned them into IC work, meetings, interruptions, and non-work stuff. While I did get some insights about where my time was going, it mostly just made me really anxious and input-oriented about my productivity and made feel guilty if I didn't end up working a full 8 hours on a given day. Stopping the time tracking was good for my mental health.
I've tried it for a few months for 1-hour intervals and it wasn't as stressful, and was a useful exercise to understand how I'm using my time.
I feel like there's a few lessons here, depending on what your goal is: if you're mostly working, are those hours useful, and if you're not, do you care about it?
Regarding the 8 hour, I've just come to realise that I can't get 8 productive hours in a day (I want to say most people can't but maybe I'm projecting). I track every day and the good days have around 5 hours tracked. The bad days around 2
Raw throughput and time efficiency should be treated as separate metrics. They should not be conflated with productivity, nor are they all that correlated to begin with. I define productivity as an abstract goal. The time tracking is information to satisfy my curiosity and gain insight. There's no place for quotas in my approach. There are only ever relative comparisons for me.
Time efficiency is just percent of the time range you arbitrarily defined filled by the tasks you explicitly defined. If it seems low it doesn't necessarily mean you aren't tracking enough things, but that your subtask definitions are too narrow.
Raw throughput is either the number of tasks completed or "points" redeemed, but often your subtask estimates are too "lumpy" or just flat out wrong.
I get that it's not for everyone, but there's nothing wrong with time tracking in itself. It's its own skill. Discomfort is usually a sign you need to try new techniques. Don't give up.
It sounds like two factors are at work - reducing personal time-tracking AND doing more AI-assisted work, both of which can reduce our ability to focus. In the case of AI, it also arguably reduces the need to focus for some kinds of productivity, so the net effect of increased output is expected.
If it helps, you can get AI to do the admin task of time tracking automatically, at least for anything that it is involved with.
Hey man, the best way to go about this — is to gamify your schedule and make your self do the items you desire to do. Whatever you plan for your day 8-9am every day, can be “read only” until you journal eod.
Also, thanks for bringing light to a significant issue / topic— I feel like there’s a lot of ….
solo standing, no corporate or faang job (at the moment, by decision) & “founding status” technical full stack eng.. but “pre-revenue” for whatever projects you passionately pursue regularly.
“If you can’t create the curriculum for the day, how can you expect to succeed eod”
Hence, you gotta make it fun for yourself.. the items you achieve and get done after, will be a piece of cake (8-9 write only, until eod, read only + journal: tom > today).
the solution might be checklisting in lieu of time tracking - rather than note what you spend each moment on, define tasks and subtasks, and work on one set of subtasks at a time. the checklist helps maintain focus because if you think of something random you can note it down for later rather than jump straight into it.
I don't understand the problem here. If you cannot focus, just focus more?
More structure/checklist to force you to focus will have other side-effects like you found out. When you get rid of the structure, you still need to have a rough map in your mind of where you want to go.
To me, this is similar to being honest. You don't want to depend on a system or checklist for being honest. It is something you always need, as a policy. Focus is like that. If you want to focus seriously on something, just make it a policy, and don't use all these tricks as crutches.
You are right, so I am probably completely on the wrong here. :D
A question to advance the discussion. What I am wondering is, if you can remember to go back to your time tracking system, why can you not remember to go back to your main goals?
Well the truth is we forget the time tracking system too. The solution is to keep the system in your face.
Maybe a programming/assembly analogy can help you understand the issue.
In my case, ADHD makes my brain want to work in a parallel way.
While I'm busy with task A it's like HEY CONDSIDER TASK B. Did you see C?
On good days, we see that and say NO OP - BUSY WITH TASK A. And refocus our mind.
Say it's a bad day...
Instead of CONSIDER TASK B, it's more like GOTO TASK B. And here it's equally harmful.
What should happen is the registers (context) of the CPU (brain) should be saved when task A stops. Likewise before task B starts it should be fully loaded into the brain.
None of these things happen for us.
So task A is left in an unfinished state, the context to finish it dissolved into thin air. Task B is started without properly being prepared which negatively impacts efficiency and performance.
And the moment the going gets hard, dopamine release decreased, you can feel it coming...
INTTERUPT - GOTO TASK C.
So it's managing that that's hard. Writing things down helps a lot, but good luck remembering to write :D
Tangentially related, but after the mindless push in my company for more AI use at any cost, every morning I drive to work thinking to myself if today should be my last day at my job.
One reason I am not giving my two-week notice is that I don't like "difficult conversations" with my manager.
I first started tracking time many years ago explicitly with the goal of more intentionality and focus on a single task. If I recall correctly the tip came from CGP Grey (of old-YouTube fame) on one of the podcasts he was doing at the time.
Good for you to have figured this out! This is how I always work, and I am as productive as I can be because I only do what's on top of my mind. I've also learned that if something is never on top of my mind it's because it's not worth doing, so it gets filtered away automatically.
I probably am in a privileged position to be able to do this (greenfield research in the private sector), but I just love it.
> I've also learned that if something is never on top of my mind it's because it's not worth doing, so it gets filtered away automatically.
I wish I could work that way! Sadly, I have client obligations that aren't always the most exciting thing I want to be working on. But they pay the bills.
i looked at the overall shape of the words and punctuation on this page and thought, oh this looks like adhd, let me scroll down... yup adhd. didnt read any of it though cause it reminds me of something that i need to do that ive never thought of before, so now i have to go do that thing
do not apologize for existing!! that was just my way of relating to the experience. and keep posting, i like how your page just does the thing it's supposed to do and isn't hostile to attention. i wish the rest of the internet was like that
It's point is highlighting a common issue that is becoming widespread due to AI tool proliferation. I have the same exact issues. I used to love sinking into deep work mode but now that's gone.
> Turns out, the friction I felt around picking one thing may have actually been beneficial. Perhaps it was actually helping me stay focused. Even if it cost just a bit of extra time before I sat down and worked.
Indeed. I use mine to help me revisit languishing projects on a regular basis, and 'finish' them eventually! I can ignore anything on my calendar and work on whimsical things, but guilt eventually catches up and I acquiesce to the calendar's demands!
As someone who helps small businesses leverage their labor efficiency, I can definitively say that nothing gets better without tracking time and working out what's working (and not).
The great thing here is that OP worked something out. My suspicion is that they were simply working on the wrong things (intent vs. actual benefit were incompatible), and therefore felt strange recording time for the sake of it — there was no gratification that the decision they made to spend time on something, the act of laboring over something they felt was meaningful in the moment, and the resulting benefit were never congruous.
Remember: recording time isn't the benefit. It's the tell that gives us a hint as to how we spent time and a smoking gun if we're not doing anything worthwhile. My suggestion for OP: do what works for you, even if it's batshit in the moment. Maybe you're better at jazz than most of us.
Hey Joe, I think the solution to your problem is in your post. You said that when you were tracking your time it killed your idea, and that when you stopped tracking your time you became unfocused.
Try letting AI classify your idea into a time-tracking bucket for you, and to generate a beginning of day report describing how you spent your time yesterday.
If you write down your idea, then it'll be harder to forget it. You can let the AI figure out where to put it and fix it the next day if it's wrong.
If you look at where you spent your time yesterday each morning, then hopefully it'll help you figure out a better place to spend your time today.
You can easily set this up with any harness. Just copy and paste my comment and tell the AI to make some skills.
It helps me to think about it like a different type of function call. We've got normal functions, async functions, there's a Go project that turns HTML templates into "templ" functions. JSX functions. LLMs are just a new `infer` function type.
A few years ago if I suggested that you should write a program to help you with time tracking, I imagine that might get a few responses with pointers to some existing open source projects. In a few years, someone might point to support for infer functions in nightly rust.
In other words, I think that we're dealing with really poor packaging right now and it's stressful, and that in the future this will all be normalized and integrated into our existing workflows.
Real Artists Ship
The idea that nothing you’re working on is real until you ship it to customers, users, or whoever the stakeholders are.
Helps a lot against bouncing between lots of projects and not making much progress on any of them.
I feel like there's a few lessons here, depending on what your goal is: if you're mostly working, are those hours useful, and if you're not, do you care about it?
Yes, exactly! Even if I got a bunch done I'd still feel like I didn't accomplish anything if I had "wasted" too much time.
Time efficiency is just percent of the time range you arbitrarily defined filled by the tasks you explicitly defined. If it seems low it doesn't necessarily mean you aren't tracking enough things, but that your subtask definitions are too narrow.
Raw throughput is either the number of tasks completed or "points" redeemed, but often your subtask estimates are too "lumpy" or just flat out wrong.
I get that it's not for everyone, but there's nothing wrong with time tracking in itself. It's its own skill. Discomfort is usually a sign you need to try new techniques. Don't give up.
If it helps, you can get AI to do the admin task of time tracking automatically, at least for anything that it is involved with.
Trust me, I’m adhd. Good luck!
solo standing, no corporate or faang job (at the moment, by decision) & “founding status” technical full stack eng.. but “pre-revenue” for whatever projects you passionately pursue regularly.
“If you can’t create the curriculum for the day, how can you expect to succeed eod”
Hence, you gotta make it fun for yourself.. the items you achieve and get done after, will be a piece of cake (8-9 write only, until eod, read only + journal: tom > today).
You got this!
I did this enough that I eventually made a tiny Mac OS desktop app to help me. It’s so basic, but my productivity is meaningfully higher.
I hate promoting my stuff, but this might be helpful for others too: https://pomododo-app.com/
There needs to be time set aside later for sorting through the inbox, but that's still better than constantly being distracted throughout the day.
More structure/checklist to force you to focus will have other side-effects like you found out. When you get rid of the structure, you still need to have a rough map in your mind of where you want to go.
To me, this is similar to being honest. You don't want to depend on a system or checklist for being honest. It is something you always need, as a policy. Focus is like that. If you want to focus seriously on something, just make it a policy, and don't use all these tricks as crutches.
I'm guessing you don't have ADHD, right?
A question to advance the discussion. What I am wondering is, if you can remember to go back to your time tracking system, why can you not remember to go back to your main goals?
Maybe a programming/assembly analogy can help you understand the issue.
In my case, ADHD makes my brain want to work in a parallel way.
While I'm busy with task A it's like HEY CONDSIDER TASK B. Did you see C?
On good days, we see that and say NO OP - BUSY WITH TASK A. And refocus our mind.
Say it's a bad day...
Instead of CONSIDER TASK B, it's more like GOTO TASK B. And here it's equally harmful.
What should happen is the registers (context) of the CPU (brain) should be saved when task A stops. Likewise before task B starts it should be fully loaded into the brain.
None of these things happen for us.
So task A is left in an unfinished state, the context to finish it dissolved into thin air. Task B is started without properly being prepared which negatively impacts efficiency and performance.
And the moment the going gets hard, dopamine release decreased, you can feel it coming...
INTTERUPT - GOTO TASK C.
So it's managing that that's hard. Writing things down helps a lot, but good luck remembering to write :D
If you can’t focus on some task - you can also treat it as a signal that maybe the task is not worth focusing on in the first place…
I kid you not, that's literally the thing I've been considering all day, maybe it's a sign. So this is great confirmation.
One reason I am not giving my two-week notice is that I don't like "difficult conversations" with my manager.
Why don't homeless people just get a house?
I probably am in a privileged position to be able to do this (greenfield research in the private sector), but I just love it.
I wish I could work that way! Sadly, I have client obligations that aren't always the most exciting thing I want to be working on. But they pay the bills.
I sure couldn't find it: to me it read like "I time tracked, now I don't" with no actual insight or conclusion into why either might be preferable.
To tell us that he cannot focus.
> Turns out, the friction I felt around picking one thing may have actually been beneficial. Perhaps it was actually helping me stay focused. Even if it cost just a bit of extra time before I sat down and worked.
They regretted it.
The great thing here is that OP worked something out. My suspicion is that they were simply working on the wrong things (intent vs. actual benefit were incompatible), and therefore felt strange recording time for the sake of it — there was no gratification that the decision they made to spend time on something, the act of laboring over something they felt was meaningful in the moment, and the resulting benefit were never congruous.
Remember: recording time isn't the benefit. It's the tell that gives us a hint as to how we spent time and a smoking gun if we're not doing anything worthwhile. My suggestion for OP: do what works for you, even if it's batshit in the moment. Maybe you're better at jazz than most of us.
Try letting AI classify your idea into a time-tracking bucket for you, and to generate a beginning of day report describing how you spent your time yesterday.
If you write down your idea, then it'll be harder to forget it. You can let the AI figure out where to put it and fix it the next day if it's wrong.
If you look at where you spent your time yesterday each morning, then hopefully it'll help you figure out a better place to spend your time today.
You can easily set this up with any harness. Just copy and paste my comment and tell the AI to make some skills.
It helps me to think about it like a different type of function call. We've got normal functions, async functions, there's a Go project that turns HTML templates into "templ" functions. JSX functions. LLMs are just a new `infer` function type.
A few years ago if I suggested that you should write a program to help you with time tracking, I imagine that might get a few responses with pointers to some existing open source projects. In a few years, someone might point to support for infer functions in nightly rust.
In other words, I think that we're dealing with really poor packaging right now and it's stressful, and that in the future this will all be normalized and integrated into our existing workflows.