I like statistics, and I like seeing how I spend certain elements of my time. I have a somewhat daft habit of timing routine activities and then mulling over the weekly/monthly/yearly charts this generates.
Time logging apps are fantastic for this but, every few months, I decide I’m going to look for a new one simply because I get bored. I like to switch things up, even if it’s completely unnecessary. I do it in other ways too, like changing the furniture around, colouring my hair, or reorganising my apps. I’d even get bored of doing the same job day in and day out and couldn’t stay in the same role for long. My current job is irregular enough that I don’t get itchy feet.
My time-tracking habit is both enjoyable and irritating. I like the details it yields, but get stressed if I forget to do it and have to remember what I did and when. Currently I’m using a little app called JotDay which I switched to about a month ago. It lets me start tracking quickly via widgets or shortcuts and presents my data in colourful graphs. Here’s the overall data from this month so far:
I also love breakdown charts that reveal other interesting details about my time usage. The image below shows which activity was the most dominant each day of this month.
I wish the app let me see a yearly view like this, it’s possibly my favourite chart because it’s one that makes me go “aahhh, that’s fascinating!” and it’s nice to see that my most enjoyable activities are my most frequent.
The next image is my categories breakdown for October. This chart varies quite a bit month-to-month and gives me a good overall view of what I’ve been up to. It can be narrowed down into sub-tasks too.
Incidentally, the App category only logs my feed reader app and Mastodon. I don’t include apps that depress me (looking at you Facebook) and I also don’t include apps that I look at rarely (looking at you Reddit and YouTube). Happy apps only!
Colouring lets me focus and reduces anxiety. I often enjoy music with headphones in the evenings, to de-stress from the day.
The video category covers TV and Movies. This month, I’ve been binge-watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and just started an episode of TaskMaster each evening – husband and eldest really enjoy it too.
Gaming covers everything other than colouring. Which is most commonly sudoku or general word games.
Driving and Chores are my “must-do” categories and while they’re not enjoyable as such, I like to log them to see exactly how much time I spend doing tedious routine stuff.
I used to time track my work hours as well, but kept forgetting to start the timer. Husband does though as he’s a serial procrastinator and needs to know that he’s getting his 40hrs in!
So that’s my time breakdown. I also use a habit-tracking app, but I’ll save that for another post.
Do you use a time-tracking app? Feel free to share which one – I’ll be sure to give it a look if it’s on iOS or Mac.