time planning wiki

[André Fincato]

Hi!

I accidentally, and to my delight, found the following on the github wiki — https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/wiki/Time%20planning

As I’ve been thinking on how to track time in different ways, this looks a very good starting point.

Could you Simon give more detaile / ad-hoc background or infos about the overall setup? How you use it and why? From reading the article I wish you would explaining a little more why you opted for what you are using. In particular when it comes to budgeting daily and weekly — which I find extremely interesting.

My use case would be:

- tracking my working hours daily as a freelancer, so I can easily declare them in my yearly Income Tax Return

- roughly organise on a weekly basis my workload across projects

- forecasting future projects that I know either will start at a later date (because of clients) or that I want to start in the future

After a lot of back and forth I switched to org-mode again this last month, and have been tempted to use its clocking  and reporting features — which I might — but I am also interested in using hledger budgeting and forecasting options to keep more loose time-planning as a reference (which sadly seem to have no space in any computer calendar app).

I’d be happy to hear your comments and suggestions! Especially if you are emacs and/or org-mode users!

af

[Simon Michael]

Hi André,

glad you found it interesting. For now, let me see if I can add a few more bullet points.

How do I use it ?

- I try to log time whenever I'm at my computer. 

- And not to get sucked into computer activity before deciding what to log.

- Time at computer is mostly what I log. I'm not tracking non-computer activities.

- Ideally, I log when starting a task. I pull down the time console with alt-space, and make a preliminary entry in the log, as a reminder.

- Sometimes I'll write the account (task category), sometimes just a note of the current time (commented with ;), sometimes both.

- I try to work or at least log in multiples of 15 minutes, which makes for easy logging.

- When finishing, or taking a break, or switching tasks, and definitely when leaving the computer, I update the log, adding one or more dots depending on time spent.

- If I didn't note the account previously, I'll write that too.

- If I didn't note the start time, I'll look at the computer wake log (tlogwatch output, "display on" time). Or if that didn't work, guess it.

- If the time spent wasn't close to a quarter-hour boundary, but I want to log the time accurately, occasionally I'll write the number of minutes explicitly (which timedot allows).

- If the same category already has some dots logged, this means adding a second line for it, since you can't mix dots and numbers.

- Often I'll do a bit more work later to round that up to a quarter hour and get rid of the number entry.

- In addition to the tools described, I am experimenting with a mac app called Effortless. It provides quick goal setting, reminder beeps and an always-visible display of current task and remaining time (well, it would be always-visible if I always had a giant screen). After completing a goal/session I log it as usual.

- I have trouble managing and keeping track of account names. I keep inventing more categories and using them inconsistently over time, and searching backwards through the log to find old entries to copy, or running command-line reports to list possible account names. 

- My time accounts are always overdue for cleanup. This would make the budget reports more useful.

- I don't yet do a lot of budgeting. I have a few simple unchanging daily/weekly/monthly goals defined.

- I do check the daily budget report, during or at end of day, to see how I spent the day with respect to goals, or the previous day.

- Less often, I'll check the weekly or monthly budget reports. 

- Billable accounts in the monthly report matter as I use those numbers in client invoices. It directly affects and limits (alas! time-based billing!) my income.

- Sometimes my process feels baroque and inefficient, but I try to limit time spent tweaking it. It's ok to have a consistent habit that gets the job done, even if it's not optimal.

Perhaps I'll get into the why's another time. Like you, I'm interested in how others do this.

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[Zoran Zaric]

I use the timeclock format to track my time on projects for my employer.

At the end of a day or week I convert the timeclock entries to standard journal entries and add a posting for my daily due worktime and a open posting for my overtime.

example timeclock file

i 2018/06/26 08:00 ACME Corp:Meetings

o 2018/06/26 08:15

i 2018/06/26 08:15 ACME Corp:Sprint 214:Story 23

o 2018/06/26 12:00

i 2018/06/26 13:00 Foobar Inc:Issue 666

o 2018/06/26 17:00

This would result in the following journal entry:

2018/06/26 * Workday

  Equity:Work:Employer:ACME Corp:Meetings  0,25 h

  Equity:Work:Employer:ACME Corp:Sprint 214:Story 23  3,75 h

  Equity:Work:Employer:Foobar Inc:Issue 666  4 h

  Equity:Work:Workday  -8 h

  Assets:Receivables:Employer:Overtime

I’m still not sure about the accounts for worked time on projects.

I hope this adds anything to the discussion.

Thanks,

Zoran

p.s.: The only thing I don’t like about the timeclock format is its verbosity in having to end every entry. I’d really like if line 2 wasn’t necessary. Perhaps a way to solve this and not lose tracking of parallel entries could be adding a feature to drop the second line and have the next entry start with „oi 2018/06/26 08:15“. You could read it as „out and in“.

Any thoughts?

[Simon Michael]

On Jun 26, 2018, at 7:18 AM, Zoran Zaric <z...@zoranzaric.de> wrote:

I use the timeclock format to track my time on projects for my employer.

At the end of a day or week I convert the timeclock entries to standard journal entries and add a posting for my daily due worktime and a open posting for my overtime.

example timeclock file

i 2018/06/26 08:00 ACME Corp:Meetings

o 2018/06/26 08:15

i 2018/06/26 08:15 ACME Corp:Sprint 214:Story 23

o 2018/06/26 12:00

i 2018/06/26 13:00 Foobar Inc:Issue 666

o 2018/06/26 17:00

This would result in the following journal entry:

2018/06/26 * Workday

  Equity:Work:Employer:ACME Corp:Meetings  0,25 h

  Equity:Work:Employer:ACME Corp:Sprint 214:Story 23  3,75 h

  Equity:Work:Employer:Foobar Inc:Issue 666  4 h

  Equity:Work:Workday  -8 h

  Assets:Receivables:Employer:Overtime

I’m still not sure about the accounts for worked time on projects.

I hope this adds anything to the discussion.

Interesting!

Thanks,

Zoran

p.s.: The only thing I don’t like about the timeclock format is its verbosity in having to end every entry. I’d really like if line 2 wasn’t necessary. Perhaps a way to solve this and not lose tracking of parallel entries could be adding a feature to drop the second line and have the next entry start with „oi 2018/06/26 08:15“. You could read it as „out and in“.

Any thoughts?

It is verbose. Do you enter it manually ?

Capital I could be another possibility.

[Zoran Zaric]

Am 26.06.2018 um 10:50 schrieb Simon Michael <si...@joyful.com>:

On Jun 26, 2018, at 7:18 AM, Zoran Zaric <z...@zoranzaric.de> wrote:

p.s.: The only thing I don’t like about the timeclock format is its verbosity in having to end every entry. I’d really like if line 2 wasn’t necessary. Perhaps a way to solve this and not lose tracking of parallel entries could be adding a feature to drop the second line and have the next entry start with „oi 2018/06/26 08:15“. You could read it as „out and in“.

Any thoughts?

It is verbose. Do you enter it manually ?

Yes, I enter the timeclock entries manually.

Capital I could be another possibility.

Could absolutely live with capital I.