Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity • Hacker News Board

Re: Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity

#21

Post by lazyeye » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

Loic wrote: post #4

HSO wrote: post #2

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…

May I ask what you are using to track your time? Late edit: Especially offline time tracking.

If you use windows trackerize is another good option:-

http://ravenum.com

Re: Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity

#22

Post by ninalanyon » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 8:14 PM UTC

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.

Re: Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity

#23

Post by layer8 » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

lazyeye wrote: post #21

Loic wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask what you are using to track your time? Late edit: Especially offline time tracking.

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.

Re: Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity

#24

Post by lazyeye » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 10:15 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #23

lazyeye wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Re: Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity

#25

Post by fmajid » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 11:14 PM UTC

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.

Re: Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity

#26

Post by layer8 » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 12:17 PM UTC

lazyeye wrote: post #24

layer8 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Some Reflections After a Month of Tracking My Own Online Activity

#27

Post by lazyeye » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #26

lazyeye wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.