Show HN: A time tracker that asks you every 10 min what you're doing

I like the app, but I am a bit confused by the data usage.<p>* As a starter: The source code is only a JS snippet. No HTML in there.<p>* Right away I &quot;fullstory.com&quot; appear in the JS. So I have reason to believe that all user interactions (mouse, keyboard, etc.) are uploaded to fullstory.com. Not sure this is actually the case. Certainly not in favour of it.<p>* In the network tab, I see requests to heapanalytics.io.<p>Setting aside the question if such data use is necessary, appropriate, or done elsewhere. I wonder if this is actually legal. I certainly did not consciously agree to my data being collected in this way and shared with third parties.<p>When you scroll down, you eventually see a Privacy Policy and TOS links in grey:<p>&gt; By using this site you agree to the [Terms and Conditions] and the [Privacy Policy].<p>- Is a text like this actually effective?<p>- Am I violating EU law, if I use the same patterns in my Apps? (I am EU based.)

Haha nice. I do basically the same thing except with a script.<p><pre><code> while true; do sleep 900 zenity --entry --text=&quot;what u doin&quot; &gt;&gt; done.txt done </code></pre> Although now it&#x27;s just a reminder that isn&#x27;t logged.<p><pre><code> zenity --question --text &quot;Are you working?&quot; </code></pre> It doesn&#x27;t really mean &quot;Are you goofing off&quot; but rather &quot;Are you doing what truly matters right now instead of refactoring code or responding to less-than-useful emails?&quot;

Wow. I can&#x27;t believe that anyone would ask to be interrupted every <i>f&#x27;ing</i> ten minutes for nothing. I can&#x27;t stand being interrupted more than once or twice a day.

Instead of doing it every 10 min, it should keep expanding the period while you keep giving the same answer. so 10, 20, 30, 60, 120. There used to be a app for mac that did just that. To me it was the perfect balance between convinience and useful data.

Creator here - surprisingly, it&#x27;s less annoying than you&#x27;d think, (at least for me).<p>I built this mostly from the point of view of personal productivity&#x2F;improvement.<p>The idea is that it will keep asking you what you&#x27;re doing even when you don&#x27;t feel like putting an effort into tracking your time that day. Even when you didn&#x27;t sleep enough or feel lazy, it&#x27;ll still keep asking you, collecting the stats, and reminding you that it&#x27;s watching.

Being interrupted every 10 minutes seems like terrible idea which would most likely destroy your productivity.

Almost nobody tracks their time to better understand how they are spending it. I&#x27;ve talked to several people that have started, but even the most detailed oriented find it to not be worth the hassle.<p>If you really want this data, I think it&#x27;s best to correlate data crumbs you leave after the fact and tally up your time at the end of the week. GPS data, computer activity logs, phone screen time, etc.<p>Another good enough answer is to track the time that is most important to you. Billable hours, exercise time, etc.

Sounds exactly like my little son.

Mine uses Pebble and Tasker (with AutoPebble to mediate between the two). It works like this (there&#x27;s no easy way to export something that&#x27;s not an XML dump full of bloat, so I&#x27;ll just describe it):<p><pre><code> - Profile: every 13 minutes between 08:00 and 23:00 - Launch task: Request time log - Profile: on command from AutoPebble - Launch task: Log time - Task: Request time log - Show a screen on Pebble via AutoPebble - Type: List - Contents: %OPTIONS - Vibration pattern: 300, 200, 300 - Task: Log time - Save &quot;%DATE, %RESPONSE&quot; into a CSV file. - Variable: %OPTIONS - hn, work, eating, foodprep, hobbyproj, ... </code></pre> Running a tool like this on smartwatch is a win, because it&#x27;s minimally distracting, and easy to use for everything I do daily. As said elsewhere, I picked 13 minutes to have something below 15 minutes that won&#x27;t accidentally overlap with periodic tasks or generate regular patterns on the clock. I used to have a bit of randomization in there (skip Request time log if random%2 == 0), but it turned out to be more annoying than useful, as it would frequently miss an hour worth of data.<p>I made it one afternoon in a grand total of ~30 minutes (including debugging and testing). It requires no Internet connection, doesn&#x27;t spy on me, I can use it anywhere I am as long as I have my phone in my pocket, I get to own my data in a machine-readable format, which I can trivially send out to my desktop for processing later. Overall, it&#x27;s a win, and just an example of Tasker being amazingly useful tool in general.<p>EDIT:<p>Some extra use notes:<p>- The logged time is the time I selected an option on my smartwatch, so if I delay or miss a time log request, nothing bad happens. I don&#x27;t expect my CSV to have perfectly regular entries.<p>- If I don&#x27;t select an option in 13 minutes, the prompt will be overwritten by new one; again, nothing bad happens.<p>- To add, change or remove options, I simply edit the %OPTIONS variable on my phone.<p>- In the rare case when I select a wrong option, I pull up my phone and use nano in Termux session to quickly edit the CSV directly.

I like the idea I&#x27;ll try it for a bit and see how sticky it is. One quick suggestions - if I start a timer and then I&#x27;m out of the room or don&#x27;t notice the notification until 23 minutes later and then I enter what I was doing during that time, don&#x27;t log the entry at the 10 minutes, log it at the actual time I submitted the note on the last period of time spent.<p>any chance you could implement the timer in a chrome extension as well? that way I don&#x27;t have to remember to keep the tab open.

Absolutely loving this app so far. The complete lack of nonsense features that serve as an additional distraction from work are exactly what I have been looking for!<p>I am using this to track what I&#x27;m working on (or not working on) during the day so I can accurately enter my time-spent into projects at EOD.<p>I&#x27;ve shared this with my direct report for team use and wanted to know if there are any self-host licensing options planned in the near future?

I&#x27;ve been trying to get at this sort of nudge for a while now and I still haven&#x27;t found the ideal interface.<p>The best solution I have is running a Periodic Timer [1] on my Apple watch along with Timelines time tracker [2]. And so I am reminded every 10 minutes to update my time tracker. It works quite well but I wish it was smarter and all in one app.<p>Finding the right time spans is also key, you want it to be as short as possible so that it is granular data but not too short so that the nudge becomes some sort of background noise you learn to ignore while focused.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;periodic-timer&#x2F;id933241656" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;periodic-timer&#x2F;id933241656</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;timelines-time-tracking&#x2F;id1112433234" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apps.apple.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;app&#x2F;timelines-time-tracking&#x2F;id1112...</a>

I wonder is there an interesting&#x2F;useful way to integrate this concept and Tim Urban&#x27;s time blocks [1]?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;waitbutwhy.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;100-blocks-day.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;waitbutwhy.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;10&#x2F;100-blocks-day.html</a>

Back in a past job as a design&#x2F;entering consultant I built a tool to silently track what I was working on. All our jobs had a three letter code (e.g. “ABC”) and all documents (and CAD parts) had a document number that started with the project code. These were used as file names and so I had a python script that would check what the window title for the front most window was to guess which project I was on and record it to a log file every few minutes. I then had another tool that read the log file and totalled up how long I had worked in each project each day. It worked very well and helped massively filling in timesheets later on.<p>Thankfully I don’t have timesheets anymore. Hated them...

15 minutes is the smallest billable increment for most very expensive lawyers and consultants. I&#x27;m guessing the reason is because anything less, like every 10 minutes, is just too much granularity and overly disruptive to getting work done.<p>Just food for thought.

I usually want the exact opposite: measuring what I&#x27;m doing without bothering me at all. RescueTime was quite good, unfortunately time has gone and not much new features and user interface changes has been made to it. Still pretty good however.

Great as a fun idea for your own amusement... but if this gets applied from an org...on behalf of many remote workers, this would be terribly intrusive and bothersome. &quot;Sell crazy someplace else.&quot; as Jack Nicholson eloquently put it.

Is any of the information you input stored elsewhere except on your computer?

Looking at the title I though why would you even need that. And 10 min? Why not 5, or even 1, you&#x27;ll get fantastic granularity of your stats. But then of course it will be only stats you&#x27;ve got and no real work done.<p>But what is more shoking to me is all the comments saying they are already using something like that. I think if such an intrusive tool is useful to you, you most probably have a bullshit job [0].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bullshit_Jobs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bullshit_Jobs</a>

I waited all my life to be interrupted every 10 minutes... jokes aside , this is a bit pointless, at least from a dev perspective, when you are finally in the zone to let a tool constantly interrupt

Some companies that offer remote work already have more advanced solution: take screenshot every 10 minutes, then feed it to AI to check whether the user is working or slacking :)

When signing up with an email address:<p>&lt;Error&gt;&lt;Code&gt;NoSuchKey&lt;&#x2F;Code&gt;&lt;Message&gt;The specified key does not exist.&lt;&#x2F;Message&gt;&lt;&#x2F;Error&gt;

Most of the time Harvest App does a perfect job. It is a regular timer app but it is quite good at Symantec when you are not working. If sometimes I&#x27;m in doubt about what I spent my time one or if I know that I worked on something else that I was timing, I&#x27;ll look it up in WakaTime. The combination of the too has been the most useful tool for me.

This is a great idea, but where is the privacy? The privacy policy literally says that your personal information will be shared with Google &amp; other third party apps. [0]<p>This is a great way to collect data on what people do every day.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maesure.com&#x2F;privacy-policy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;maesure.com&#x2F;privacy-policy</a>

The problem with all time trackers that require any manual input is that eventually you stop using them. Either a small disruption in your life, or simply that the habit doesn&#x27;t stick. Full recording of physical and digital actions + analytics might work. Some sort of spying on yourself.

I have a few sticky notes on the bottom of my monitor to remind me to do things that I daresay work just as well as this at keeping me focused. Without all the privacy concerns, tracking, futzing, and yak-shaving I could see creeping into this.

I&#x27;d rather have this remind to get out of chair once every hour or so and stretch and walk a bit.<p>This helps not just the body and eyes but helps refresh attention &#x27;muscles&#x27;, especially when stuck dealing with some stubborn issue.

Who the hell is such a control freak? All time-tracking apps should burn in hell.

Seems strictly worse than something like Qbserve that tracks you down to the second and doesn&#x27;t need to interrupt you. Qbserve doesn&#x27;t sync to the cloud which removes some privacy concern too.

This is a great app for those without managers or girlfriends. :)<p>On a more serious note, I get it, but realistically how much can someone stick to it for a reasonable amount of time in order to get conclusions?

I think a question asking app that helps you build a reliable schedule would be useful . Eg what are you doing ? When do you normally do it ? Are you doing X now? Should you be? Etc

I know the interval is configurable, but please make the default to somewhere around 30-50 mins.<p>10 mins is ridiculous and will make people ignore your product.

I have a boss for that - no signup required :&#x2F;

As a student this would be great for studying and getting both work and school done in a reasonable amount of time.

I come back to Pomodoros. Love them for a week or 2. Got annoyed. And go back to nothing.

Please, do NOT sign up in this site until author fixes this noobish vulnerability:<p>When the sign up request is sent, it shows a S3 error not finding corresponding key. The true misdeed is requesting the resource with get and passing email and password as query parameters in the URL. Such a shame &gt;-(

Mental Illness as a Service

Great design, I really like the simple UI and UX.

This... this sounds like a torture device.

I have that. It’s my kids.

Does it seem strange to not want to be interrupted every 10 minutes to explain what I&#x27;m doing?<p>I&#x27;ve already seen the answer to this (and I get zero money for mentioning this). You have some software that takes periodic screenshots and then when your day is done you roam through those and can label time segments appropriately. There&#x27;s at least one software product that more or less does this, and I would use that if I had to bill based on fragments of hour.

Was thinking about something like this to measure happiness&#x2F;fun.<p>You could plot a curve of an activity and do fun math with it.

Thanks. I already have a manager and a wife.

Obligatory “I’m updating the tracker every 10 minutes “<p>Why would you do it to yourself? It’s yet another distraction for any deep work.