Live data from Hacker News

I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

samplesize.one

21–30 of 321 posts

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#21

Awesome read! I've been tracking all my time, also at a 15-minute resolution, for the past 24 months. It seems to make new habits so much easier to adopt. The biggest surprise was how effective pre-tracking my time (aka time-blocking) was at programming myself to do things. Making things concrete and easy to visualize definitely helps in preventing procrastination. I see that you used Google Sheets for time tracking.…

Does one of those allow easy input of activity with a single button click without required login and cloud use? Also are they free?

I tried to find an easy tracking workflow a few years back but all the apps had hidden dark patterns so I gave up.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#22
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It really puts a point on the whole "everyone has 24 hours in a day, but not everyone's 24 hours are equal". Great point. Further driven by the pandemic

Funny you mention that. Because of the pandemic, a lot of people had to drop their in home help. Only the richest of the rich, who had in-home help that lives with them, were able to keep using in-home help.

Also people who decided not to worry about the consequences of having someone coming in and out of their home.

Seems to be lots of them really.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#23
I am using a pomodoro app (productivity challenge timer) and as a result track my time. The smartphone also tracks walking and running and I have recently started tracking sleep as well. It does 80% of the tracking automatically I guess. I also use habitica as a complementary tracking tool.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#24
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everytime these come up, I am reminded how little time we have for extracurricular activities as parents This is interesting, because it's only a problem for non-rich people. Rich people solve this with nannies and babysitters and other home staff to take care of chores and child-rearing so they have more time for work or leisure activities. It really puts a point on the whole "everyone has 24 hours in a day, but n…

Isn't paying someone else to raise your children... not raising children? It's like comparing a bank with actual gold in a vault and many expensive physical security measures with someone who owns a futures contract with no delivery.

Seems to be that the distinction may not be important for managerially oriented people. Some parents, of a mindset which I was not raised by, seem to see the role of a parent to be more in charge of "Coordinating an upbringing". I don't think this mindset is wholly bad, though I would expect it does have recognizable trade-offs.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#25
Interesting! I personally have used for the last 30 months the app called Time Tracker.

Each second of every day is tracked, the timer goes on continuously and I just change the current activity.

Looking back at it at the end of the year is surprisingly a double-edged sword...

You are hit with a high knowing how much time you spent on work, working out, reading, socializing, etc..

But then you get hit with the downside, which is that you see how much time you wasted...

When you realize how much time gets spent on gaming, going to the store or even changing your clothed (!!!) you start looking at your time very differently.

If anyone has any questions or wants to know something I would be glad to be of use..

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#26
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everytime these come up, I am reminded how little time we have for extracurricular activities as parents This is interesting, because it's only a problem for non-rich people. Rich people solve this with nannies and babysitters and other home staff to take care of chores and child-rearing so they have more time for work or leisure activities. It really puts a point on the whole "everyone has 24 hours in a day, but n…

Isn't paying someone else to raise your children... not raising children? It's like comparing a bank with actual gold in a vault and many expensive physical security measures with someone who owns a futures contract with no delivery.

There is a line between completely "outsourcing" raising your children (how I "stereotypically" imagine royal families might do) and getting help with the things that take all your energy but doesn't really contribute to your relationships with your children.

Washing clothes, buying groceries, cooking every day are all things that must be done, but it can be done by another person (nanny, au pair, or even grand parents) without taking away (much) from your relationship with your children.

Just imagine the difference between the mood of a parent who cooked, cleaned, washed that day vs the parent who is relaxed as all those things were done by outside (paid) help. Same person in two totally different mood and energy level by the dinner comes. Also keep in mind that these things have to be done every single day, so while it might be okay to work through this backlog every day for a week, I'm sure your mood would change after you've done it for 10 years (assuming multiple children).

I heard once and I think it's true, that kids don't need 24 with their parents, they need the 2-3 hours (changing as the kids age) with them every day, but after that they get bored of daddy or mommy and want to do something with their friends or alone.

If you can afford outside help, it can actually make the time you spend with your children more delightful, you may bond more, and in the end have a better relationship with them also in the long term.

It can obviously go wrong, if you look at your children when they are 14 and you have no idea who they are because they went to the nannies directly, but it doesn't mean it can be done right.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#28
post #7

Everytime these come up, I am reminded how little time we have for extracurricular activities as parents (outside of things you'd do with the kids, e.g. hiking, swimming, etc) But raising children is an investment in itself and the years where the demand for attention is higher (0-5 especially) are short in comparison to the future time you have for yourself. I suppose you gain perspective and over those years an abi…

The problem is when you have multiple children spaced over a few years, you get a decade or more of time eaten up.

-My brother-in-law coined the phrase micro-holiday to keep himself sane when having kids - a micro-holiday is the time you have to yourself during a day. Most often, it occurs in the time span between closing the rear door after packing the young 'uns in and opening the driver's door after walking around your car.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#29

Everytime these come up, I am reminded how little time we have for extracurricular activities as parents (outside of things you'd do with the kids, e.g. hiking, swimming, etc) But raising children is an investment in itself and the years where the demand for attention is higher (0-5 especially) are short in comparison to the future time you have for yourself. I suppose you gain perspective and over those years an abi…

Investment indeed! I think it all depends on how you define what amounts to a “good day”

Maybe it means you have put in some meaningful work into having quality time with your kids, or teaching them something new, reading a book to them, or cooking with them and/or your spouse.

Side note I can definitely empathize with the lack of time for extracurricular. For our family it is generally something we do together - which tends to fill multiple “cups”. Outside of that my spouse and I trade off for time to do these type of things for ourselves.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#30
My usual plug for TagTime[0], which handles this in a slightly different (and in my view better) way: it stochastically tracks your time by randomly sampling times to ask you what you're doing right now. Fair in expectation, timeless (no slacking off because you've just filled in the timesheet), accurately captures (on average) the cost of all the short phone calls and context switches.

It's by the Beeminder people, but works on its own. A hacky pile of perl scripts. I've run it continuously for 8 years now.

[0]: https://github.com/tagtime/TagTime

Post reply on HN