There are countless time management apps on the app store. Most of them fall into these 2 flavors:
1) The app provides you with past days and times and you fill in the activity you performed during those times.
2) You press a button to indicate you're beginning an activity (i.e. work, chores, etc.) and press it again to indicate the end (where you fill in what you did in the app.)
The main deficiency with #1 is that you often forget what you were doing and you can't accurately fill out your time diary.
The main deficiency with #2 is that you often forget to press the button on the app to indicate you're beginning/ending an activity, especially when you're busy.
So I propose a 3rd way of recording time:
The time management app runs in the background. At set intervals (say every 1 hour), the app issues a notification asking you what you've been doing the past hour. You can provide a detailed description or you can check one of the common activities (i.e. work, sleep, resting, driving, shopping, goofing off when you should be working, etc.) If you miss several of these notifications, then the notifications will stop coming (so you don't come up against a dozen notifications if you haven't used your phone in a while.) You can also go back and edit the entries or provide more details when you have time in the future.
Most time management apps require you to proactively log what you've been doing, but in practice, I find that a difficult habit to adopt in order for the time tracking app to work properly. With this idea, the app will proactively ask YOU instead.
Then after you've been using this for a while, you can gather statistics like how much you're actually working, how often you're goofing off instead of working, which days of the weeks or times of the day when you're most productive, etc.
Background
I actually wanted to look for a time logging app after reading Peter Drucker's book "The Effective Executive" where he recommends you create a "time log" and audit how you've actually been using your time vs. how you think you've been spending your time. Then you ask yourself if your long term goals and priorities are aligned with how you spend your time each day. I tried implementing this "time audit" but it was too cumbersome interrupting the many tasks I have to do every day to record how I spent my time, and if I defer recording tasks for too long, then I forget precisely what I was doing at what time. So I wanted to make an app that will ask me at set intervals and I can respond to these notifications at the earliest convenient time.. hopefully, I can record a fairly accurate time diary to later analyze this way without too much interruption to my work.
1) The app provides you with past days and times and you fill in the activity you performed during those times.
2) You press a button to indicate you're beginning an activity (i.e. work, chores, etc.) and press it again to indicate the end (where you fill in what you did in the app.)
The main deficiency with #1 is that you often forget what you were doing and you can't accurately fill out your time diary.
The main deficiency with #2 is that you often forget to press the button on the app to indicate you're beginning/ending an activity, especially when you're busy.
So I propose a 3rd way of recording time:
The time management app runs in the background. At set intervals (say every 1 hour), the app issues a notification asking you what you've been doing the past hour. You can provide a detailed description or you can check one of the common activities (i.e. work, sleep, resting, driving, shopping, goofing off when you should be working, etc.) If you miss several of these notifications, then the notifications will stop coming (so you don't come up against a dozen notifications if you haven't used your phone in a while.) You can also go back and edit the entries or provide more details when you have time in the future.
Most time management apps require you to proactively log what you've been doing, but in practice, I find that a difficult habit to adopt in order for the time tracking app to work properly. With this idea, the app will proactively ask YOU instead.
Then after you've been using this for a while, you can gather statistics like how much you're actually working, how often you're goofing off instead of working, which days of the weeks or times of the day when you're most productive, etc.
Background
I actually wanted to look for a time logging app after reading Peter Drucker's book "The Effective Executive" where he recommends you create a "time log" and audit how you've actually been using your time vs. how you think you've been spending your time. Then you ask yourself if your long term goals and priorities are aligned with how you spend your time each day. I tried implementing this "time audit" but it was too cumbersome interrupting the many tasks I have to do every day to record how I spent my time, and if I defer recording tasks for too long, then I forget precisely what I was doing at what time. So I wanted to make an app that will ask me at set intervals and I can respond to these notifications at the earliest convenient time.. hopefully, I can record a fairly accurate time diary to later analyze this way without too much interruption to my work.