I use the google stopwatch[0] and then keep the hours in a spreadsheet per project. I've tried fancier systems but this is what works for me.
Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
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Re: Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
#12It depends on what I am doing. I find when doing software dev, I need to take frequent breaks to let my mind rest. That is part of the time cost of doing the job. I track when I come in and when I leave with a spreadsheet. Although salary, I know if I do not use the spreadsheet I, like I have observed others, will slowly let time slip until they are not doing their full job. My office looks for me to do 80 hours in 2…
> I find when doing software dev, I need to take frequent breaks to let my mind rest
I've found this too, but I don't usually track the breaks as work (unless at least somewhat related to one of the things I'm working on, or that we have in the backlog, like reading an article about a type of query we are going to need to use, etc.)
Are you tracking these breaks as part of your 80 hours in the 2 week period?
Re: Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
#13I don't...
Re: Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
#14I used to use the apps atimelogger ( http://www.atimelogger.com/ ) and atracker ( http://www.wonderapps.se/ATracker/home.html ) for a year and two years, respectively. I tracked work and certain non-work activities (e.g, sleep and such), and it was very effective. The reports helped with awareness around relative time spent over different projects and such. While all the tracking was manual, and I tried to do it eith…
Wow, Timing looks really nice!
It's a bummer that no time tracking App really seems to focus on cross platform support. I've been looking for a time tracking app myself and couldn't find one to support my situation.
I have: - A Linux desktop - A MacBook - An Android Phone - Offline activities I want to track
Re: Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
#15Toggl Track https://track.toggl.com/timer
This is the best I have found. Also great if you are consulting/freelancing and want to generate reports to attach to an invoice
Re: Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
#16Although I’m not tracking my time specifically, I did recently look at my first and last login times in Slack. I was surprised to find a lot of days where I logged in very early and very late. I don’t think you can draw a lot of conclusions from these values but they are an interesting personal metric.
Note: As a technical manager I feel strongly that you SHOULD NOT look at these values for your employees. I looked only at my own data.
Re: Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
#17Toggl Track https://track.toggl.com/timer
This. Been using it for more than 6 years for freelance work and never had any issues with it. Also never paid a penny since it has a generous free plan and I never had much use for any of the advanced features. It has a simple desktop app for tracking and I can quickly see my hours on the dashboard with statistics, summaries for specific time periods, filtering, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
#18Why would I track my work hours?
Some people bill by time.
Re: Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
#19Timewarrior (https://timewarrior.net/). It makes it super easy to correct mistakes (i.e. forgetting to start/stop tracking), which is pretty critical for me as I'm never 100% on remembering to track
Re: Ask HN: How do you track your work hours?
#20Taskivities
PS: I was looking for an app to track time against a list of value adds. More like daily task related activity logs with option to add time. So we built this internally and later launched as a SaaS.