
Show HN: A time tracker that asks you every 10 min what you're doing - bucket2015
https://maesure.com/
======
heinrichhartman
I like the app, but I am a bit confused by the data usage.

* As a starter: The source code is only a JS snippet. No HTML in there.

* Right away I "fullstory.com" 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.

* In the network tab, I see requests to heapanalytics.io.

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.

When you scroll down, you eventually see a Privacy Policy and TOS links in
grey:

> By using this site you agree to the [Terms and Conditions] and the [Privacy
> Policy].

\- Is a text like this actually effective?

\- Am I violating EU law, if I use the same patterns in my Apps? (I am EU
based.)

~~~
bucket2015
Creator here - that's a fair point, disabled both. That's what I get for
taking a lazy shortcut.

Won't put them back without adding consent.

There's also a first-party cookie called "visitor", though that will require a
bit more work because there's actual functionality that depends on it.

~~~
ken
A question, since I have the ear of an individual who chose to add tracking to
their small website: what exactly do you hope to get from these trackers? Do
you think there could be some critical piece of information which could be
gleaned from these logs which could help?

I associate trackers with megacorps where they're essentially playing
Telephone between management and the boots on the ground doing the work ("we
need tracking!" "ok, next on the work checklist is tracking, and here's a
service that says it does that...").

~~~
bbaumgar
We make a large, enterprise-targeted app at my startup. Fullstory has
accelerated our search for product-market fit by allowing us to make some
significant discoveries in how users use our app.

We could have made all these discoveries by properly instrumenting our code
with our own tracking framework. That said, Fullstory provided us a big bang
for our buck in [time spent : value provided]; half-day implementation led to
all the usage info we could need.

We've gone as far as creating a recurring "Game Tape Friday" meeting where the
whole development team sits down and watches 5-10 user sessions together to
record bugs and possible UX improvements.

We're not a small website so this anecdote may be of limited value to you, but
I would personally give up syntax highlighting before I would give up
Fullstory.

------
vortico
Haha nice. I do basically the same thing except with a script.

    
    
        while true; do
            sleep 900
            zenity --entry --text="what u doin" >> done.txt
        done
    

Although now it's just a reminder that isn't logged.

    
    
        zenity --question --text "Are you working?"
    

It doesn't really mean "Are you goofing off" but rather "Are you doing what
truly matters right now instead of refactoring code or responding to less-
than-useful emails?"

~~~
primitur

        while sleep 900 ; do .. done
    

true not required. sleep is true unless interrupted.

~~~
vortico
Nice trick, that solves the problem of hitting Ctrl-C and the script sometimes
looping again.

------
stephc_int13
Wow. I can't believe that anyone would ask to be interrupted every _f 'ing_
ten minutes for nothing. I can't stand being interrupted more than once or
twice a day.

~~~
saagarjha
Sounds like you're good at focusing, which not all of us are ;)

~~~
alpaca128
Well, with that thing in the background certainly nobody would get focused.

~~~
nacs
The person you're referring to is talking about a different kind of focus --
focus as in not going off task.

Some of us have a habit of getting distracted from the task at hand easily and
going off on a HN/Youtube/Reddit/browsing/timewasting session.

Continual prompts like this you could catch this within 10 minutes in to a
timewasting session and remind you to get back to work.

Personally I probably wouldn't use 10 minutes though as it seems a little too
frequent and would go closer to the standard Pomodoro time of 25 minutes
(which I have personally used and found useful).

------
fimdomeio
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.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Not necessarily. If it did that, it will skip a lot of things you do after
ending a long task.

I use one I made myself, and it is set to ask every 13 minutes - the largest
prime below 15. Being a prime means it's unlikely to align to any real-world
task boundaries, and it's also coprime to 60, so it won't keep asking at the
same times every hour.

(Timer like this is actually a nice use case for a smartwatch, along with
pomodoro timers. It removes friction from the UX, makes the whole thing less
distracting, and allows it to be monitor almost all tasks during the day.)

EDIT: See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625346](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625346)
for details.

------
bucket2015
Creator here - surprisingly, it's less annoying than you'd think, (at least
for me).

I built this mostly from the point of view of personal
productivity/improvement.

The idea is that it will keep asking you what you're doing even when you don't
feel like putting an effort into tracking your time that day. Even when you
didn't sleep enough or feel lazy, it'll still keep asking you, collecting the
stats, and reminding you that it's watching.

~~~
epaga
What would be awesome is to include an option for random time, stochastically
centered around a certain length, since that is perfect for not being able to
game the system. I know that a tool called "Beeminder" had something like this
back in the day.

Found the blog post they did back then:
[http://messymatters.com/tagtime/](http://messymatters.com/tagtime/)

I used this for a while and it really was extremely helpful since it activated
the "gamey" part of my brain.

~~~
pmyteh
This. TagTime (which is Free, made by the Beeminder people, and plays nicely
with their goal tracking product if you want it) is scheduled such that you
are equally likely to be 'pinged' at any moment as any other, with an expected
value of every 45 minutes.

I have been using it for the past five years or so. Apart from being a
gloriously hacky bundle of perl scripts (and not playing wonderfully well when
run on multiple machines) I've found it perfect. There's also an Android
version nowadays I think, though.

That blog link explains it well.

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

~~~
imglorp
You might be able to do something like this automatically on Linux at least.
You can have a job that asks the X server what the title of the focus window
is, which in the case of a browser will include the name of the active tab. In
the case of a terminal, your prompt_command can set the tab or window title
which would also get caught. Emacs can set its own frame title if you want
that too. Etc. etc.

I suspect Hammerspoon on OSX could so something similar.

Pretty sure something like this exists for X11. If not, it would only be a few
lines of shell code calling out to xlsclients, xwininfo, etc.

~~~
j88439h84
I wonder how to do it on wayland

------
fkdo
Almost nobody tracks their time to better understand how they are spending it.
I've talked to several people that have started, but even the most detailed
oriented find it to not be worth the hassle.

If you really want this data, I think it'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.

Another good enough answer is to track the time that is most important to you.
Billable hours, exercise time, etc.

~~~
jessems
I've been tracking all my productive hours since November 2018. I can highly
recommend it. I also know some others that do the same. nateliason.com comes
to mind.

It's not as insightful as I expected, but certainly brings about enough
benefits to continue doing it.

~~~
dhimes
I recommend everybody do it at least for a while, and go back to it when
productivity suffers. It's remarkable how well it can keep you focused- not
screwing off when you know you're going to have to write it down if you do.

------
kleiba
Sounds exactly like my little son.

------
TeMPOraL
Mine uses Pebble and Tasker (with AutoPebble to mediate between the two). It
works like this (there's no easy way to export something that's not an XML
dump full of bloat, so I'll just describe it):

    
    
      - 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 "%DATE, %RESPONSE" into a CSV file.
    
      - Variable: %OPTIONS
        - hn, work, eating, foodprep, hobbyproj, ...
    

Running a tool like this on smartwatch is a win, because it'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'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.

I made it one afternoon in a grand total of ~30 minutes (including debugging
and testing). It requires no Internet connection, doesn'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's a win, and just an example of Tasker being
amazingly useful tool in general.

EDIT:

Some extra use notes:

\- 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't expect my CSV
to have perfectly regular entries.

\- If I don't select an option in 13 minutes, the prompt will be overwritten
by new one; again, nothing bad happens.

\- To add, change or remove options, I simply edit the %OPTIONS variable on my
phone.

\- 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.

------
qntmfred
I like the idea I'll try it for a bit and see how sticky it is. One quick
suggestions - if I start a timer and then I'm out of the room or don't notice
the notification until 23 minutes later and then I enter what I was doing
during that time, don'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.

any chance you could implement the timer in a chrome extension as well? that
way I don't have to remember to keep the tab open.

------
natpalmer1776
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!

I am using this to track what I'm working on (or not working on) during the
day so I can accurately enter my time-spent into projects at EOD.

I'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?

------
rollinDyno
I've been trying to get at this sort of nudge for a while now and I still
haven't found the ideal interface.

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.

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.

[1] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/periodic-
timer/id933241656](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/periodic-timer/id933241656)

[2] [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/timelines-time-
tracking/id1112...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/timelines-time-
tracking/id1112433234)

------
boltzmannbrain
I wonder is there an interesting/useful way to integrate this concept and Tim
Urban's time blocks [1]?

[1] [https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/10/100-blocks-
day.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/10/100-blocks-day.html)

------
samwillis
Back in a past job as a design/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.

Thankfully I don’t have timesheets anymore. Hated them...

------
dannykwells
15 minutes is the smallest billable increment for most very expensive lawyers
and consultants. I'm guessing the reason is because anything less, like every
10 minutes, is just too much granularity and overly disruptive to getting work
done.

Just food for thought.

~~~
ryanworl
The standard billing increment in the U.S. is tenths of an hour, i.e. six
minutes. I'm sure someone, somewhere bills in ten or fifteen minute
increments, but the standard is six [1].

Source: Collaborated with multiple biglaw attorneys on ideas for a more
efficient time tracking method.

[1]:
[http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/cja/billing_increment_chart](http://www.cand.uscourts.gov/cja/billing_increment_chart)

~~~
bonyt
About your collaborations, did you come up with anything interesting?

The system I’ve settled on is to just keep a steno notebook on my desk, and
write a couple words in one column, and hours in the other.

Something like:

1, 1.4, 3.4 | Revise App. Br.

Timers got too confusing because of multiple tasks, and any system involving
typing on a computer or using my phone had too high an activation cost and
ended up needing supplementing.

~~~
ryanworl
It involved an Apple Watch app that was essentially that. You’d set up your
matters beforehand and use a one button start-stop timer with voice dictation
for notes. It was an improvement in my opinion.

Security concerns around the product itself make it somewhat more complicated
given the sensitive nature of the data.

------
kissgyorgy
I usually want the exact opposite: measuring what I'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.

------
sebringj
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. "Sell crazy someplace else." as Jack Nicholson eloquently put it.

------
pascah7
Is any of the information you input stored elsewhere except on your computer?

------
zaro
Looking at the title I though why would you even need that. And 10 min? Why
not 5, or even 1, you'll get fantastic granularity of your stats. But then of
course it will be only stats you've got and no real work done.

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].

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs)

------
mac_was
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

------
mamon
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 :)

~~~
stevewodil
Seriously? Is that the solution being used?

I was thinking about how more and more people will be working remotely and
what services would be beneficial to offer (such as ensuring productivity of
employees) but this seems almost dystopian to me

~~~
fimdomeio
Yes that's what I heard. Also heard people just keep to computers side by
side, one screen recording the other for... commenting on hacker news

------
mcny
When signing up with an email address:

<Error><Code>NoSuchKey</Code><Message>The specified key does not
exist.</Message></Error>

~~~
bucket2015
Fixed

------
m19n
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'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'll look it up in WakaTime. The combination of the
too has been the most useful tool for me.

------
kotrunga
This is a great idea, but where is the privacy? The privacy policy literally
says that your personal information will be shared with Google & other third
party apps. [0]

This is a great way to collect data on what people do every day.

[0] [https://maesure.com/privacy-policy](https://maesure.com/privacy-policy)

------
brachi
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't stick. Full recording of physical and digital
actions + analytics might work. Some sort of spying on yourself.

------
subjectsigma
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.

------
zoomablemind
I'd rather have this remind to get out of chair once every hour or so and
stretch and walk a bit.

This helps not just the body and eyes but helps refresh attention 'muscles',
especially when stuck dealing with some stubborn issue.

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

------
a13n
Seems strictly worse than something like Qbserve that tracks you down to the
second and doesn't need to interrupt you. Qbserve doesn't sync to the cloud
which removes some privacy concern too.

~~~
rtkwe
That just tracks what application though right? It doesn't give any insights
about what project for example.

------
PedroBatista
This is a great app for those without managers or girlfriends. :)

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?

------
usgroup
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

------
ludwigvan
I know the interval is configurable, but please make the default to somewhere
around 30-50 mins.

10 mins is ridiculous and will make people ignore your product.

------
FerretFred
I have a boss for that - no signup required :/

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

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

------
jomendoz
Please, do NOT sign up in this site until author fixes this noobish
vulnerability:

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 >-(

~~~
grepthisab
Isn't this pretty similar to basic auth? Passing credentials in plaintext but
over TLS.

~~~
jomendoz
Yes. But URLs tent to be logged more than HTTP headers or payloads. Any L7
proxy can spit out requested paths and the password will be preserved in
different places for long periods of time.

~~~
grepthisab
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!

------
sagebird
Mental Illness as a Service

~~~
partiallypro
Overreaching boss as a Service

------
hiby007
Great design, I really like the simple UI and UX.

------
newzisgud
This... this sounds like a torture device.

------
Overtonwindow
I have that. It’s my kids.

------
not_a_cop75
Does it seem strange to not want to be interrupted every 10 minutes to explain
what I'm doing?

I'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'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.

~~~
drusepth
A while back I built something exactly like this (except it asked every 15
minutes, and as a desktop app that could unobtrusively pop up in the corner of
a monitor instead of requiring browser attention). It also asked what I
expected to accomplish in the next 15 minutes, so I'd have something to look
back on 15 minutes from now to compare to.

At least for me, it was more an exercise in focus, breaking tasks down to
smaller chunks, practicing estimations, and analyzing larger spans of time,
rather than just being a tool to force me into actually working through those
15 minute segments. It was really nice to have a bit of self-reflection
imposed every 15 minutes to see how my expectations of time use were stacking
up against the reality. I don't think I would have wanted to spend the time or
cognitive effort to revisit screenshots after the fact, when I've lost context
and would have to take more time to analyze what's happening in each
screenshot and extrapolate between them.

If I were in the zone and working on something that took longer than 15
minutes (which is pretty frequent for most people, I'd guess), I could see
this format as pretty nagging and I wouldn't want the interruption. But
there's also a reason I only do 15-minute pomodoro sprints. :)

------
ideasRgood
Was thinking about something like this to measure happiness/fun.

You could plot a curve of an activity and do fun math with it.

~~~
drusepth
I use Daylio for this. It tracks moods that you can configure (and sub-class,
so "excited" and "relieved" could be under "good") as well as any activities
you add (exercising, coding, watching movies, etc). You can then see your mood
over time correlated with what activities you engaged in those days, as well
as export it to do some analysis of your own. I just passed a 365 day streak,
and it was super interesting to look back and see e.g. how many days I worked,
how many days I drank, how many days I played video games, etc., as well as
how many days I was happy, sad, anxious, etc

------
throwaway082729
Thanks. I already have a manager and a wife.

------
xchaotic
Obligatory “I’m updating the tracker every 10 minutes “

Why would you do it to yourself? It’s yet another distraction for any deep
work.

