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ObsessiveTimekeeper OP t1_j2mjs9e wrote

* Not quite every minute

Source: Personal entry into a custom website I built for easily tracking activities as they happen in real-time.

Visualization: Chart.js for the doughnut and stacked line/area chart, and custom html/css for the rest.

Number crunching: Javascript

I was inspired by a dataisbeautiful post last year where someone tracked every hour of their day throughout the year. After a week of mulling, I decided I should do the same and began hacking together a simple tool to help me stay on top of things. The tool consists of a big grid of "blocks" that map to a single activity (sleeping, eating, working, etc.). A block always has to be ticking, there's no turning it off– only switching to another activity. The data is thrown into firebase so I can sync between my pc and phone, and I eventually built a small screen to allow me to edit logs after the fact for when I forgot to update the timer.

Technically I didn't track every single minute of the year 🙂. In fact, I officially started on the 16th, but unfortunately suffered some data loss due to bugs early on in the year

Notes on the viz:

  1. The little day/night clocks are 24/hr and oriented such that 0:00 is pointing directly to the right
  2. The play/stop icons for the 7 highest activities (besides sleep) indicate the most likelystart/stop time rounded to 10 minutes. Notice that these don't necessarily represent a continuous interval of start -> stop. I.e. The most common stop time can happen before the most common start.
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eyewave t1_j2mkdtl wrote

do you also track the time it takes to input and compil the data? :'p

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ennuinerdog t1_j2mnlwz wrote

Wow, you must be REALLY happy 2022 is over.

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Yveskleinsky t1_j2mox7a wrote

Did you have any insights after seeing the results?

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Tarien_Laide t1_j2mp191 wrote

I'm guessing that you didn't really start tracking brushing your teeth until halfway through the year? At least that's what I'm hoping.

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s_hightree t1_j2mr36p wrote

Replying to ObsessiveTimekeeper (#1,262,896)

Is your custom website setup open source by any chance?! Would be awesome do to something similar. I use Toggle now for work, which has already gotten me in the habit of tracking time throughout the workday- might as well extend into everyday life!

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Ciarrai_IRL t1_j2mshxg wrote

This level of time tracking is impressive. I'd have expected to see time tracking appear high on your list for time spent. What mechanism did you use to track your time?

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Suspicious-Feeling-1 t1_j2mzpat wrote

Damn even if you designed a beautiful and efficient UI to log all this, that would drive me totally nuts to do all the data entry. Anything surprising for you in here?

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ObsessiveTimekeeper OP t1_j2n0r4g wrote

Replying to Yveskleinsky (#1,263,093)

Sort of, it was fun to see things line up but I'm not too surprised at the results for better or for worse. It has helped me to realize that I work too much and have a really terrible sleep schedule. Two of the many things I'll be trying to fix in 2023.

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ObsessiveTimekeeper OP t1_j2n1ou1 wrote

Replying to Ciarrai_IRL (#1,263,236)

I used a custom website/tool I built. In hindsight, I probably could've tracked time spent updating the activity pretty easily (by logging time spent interacting with it). Although I don't think it adds up to thaat much. It probably only takes about 5 seconds to update my current activity and usually don't switch that often.

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NittyGrittyDiscutant t1_j2n81me wrote

Impressive commitment to tracking.

So...life in a pill: sleeping, working and the rest.

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ObsessiveTimekeeper OP t1_j2nc0fj wrote

Replying to maartenyh (#1,264,095)

I do, and it's not something I'm happy with. I'm usually working on personal projects that late at night and it's very easy to get lost and go until 2am. Better structure is something I'm hoping to achieve this year.

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ricochet48 t1_j2nck7x wrote

Nearly 8.5hrs of sleep is honestly the most impressive stat here.

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maartenyh t1_j2nd6ow wrote

Replying to ObsessiveTimekeeper (#1,264,273)

It is true that it is generally better to do something relaxing before going to bed, but if you enjoy what you do then it is way better than actual “work” before bed in my opinion.

If you can’t stop then there are MANY gamers (to compare it to “non-work) that also can’t stop with their games and go to bed right after a game.

It is generally better to relax, but if you’re having fun, YOLO right?

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Gazhammer t1_j2nia7y wrote

Ah, good old Miscellaneous, wonder what that could be?

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Archmage_Lazuli t1_j2nigvl wrote

This is so cool! I'm actually working on a similar project and I'm curious, how did you do the "day of the week colour blend" visualization?

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ObsessiveTimekeeper OP t1_j2noshu wrote

Replying to Archmage_Lazuli (#1,264,595)

Thanks! That's a weighted color average based on frequency per activity grouped every 3-minutes. Then I just paint it into a canvas using fillRect in js.

Little more detailed: every 3 minutes of every day of every week I sampled what activity was "active" for those 3 minutes and added that to a counter for said activity. Then do the weighted average with the total number of samples for each 3 minute inverval.

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modelvillager t1_j2nx0j0 wrote

Why do none of these posts account for the enormous admin time of tracking every minute of your life?

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ObsessiveTimekeeper OP t1_j2o0qb9 wrote

Replying to modelvillager (#1,265,268)

I wouldn't call it an enormous amount of time. It takes me like 5-10 seconds to update it, and I do it while I'm moving. Walking to the car? Tap driving on my phone. Getting up from my desk to go make some food? Click cooking.

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agentouk t1_j2o9lpe wrote

But, why? Think of what you could achieve doing something else

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Costpap t1_j2olzjw wrote

Replying to ObsessiveTimekeeper (#1,265,434)

How do you make sure that you always remember to tap the correct action? I’ve kinda always wanted to do something like this - maybe tracking every hour instead of every minute - but I’ve always been too afraid that I’d miss out on tracking something. For example, I’ve been wanting to keep track of how much water I drink using Apple Health, but consistently forget to add that I’ve drank 500ml or something. I have seen success in tracking habits in the past, but even then, it’s just an Excel spreadsheet with a cell for every day of the year and then numbers, reflecting the kind of action tracked and the amount of times per day, in the adjacent cells. That’s kinda easier on me, since I can update the spreadsheet from once a day to once every 3 days and still successfully recall everything of the top of my head.

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Moist-Ad7080 t1_j2oqc9k wrote

Replying to ObsessiveTimekeeper (#1,264,273)

I used to spread my working time out like this as well, often working until 1am, then crashing. I thought this was ok at the time.

Now I'm more strict with myself (mostly forced to my relationship commitments) in keeping my work time in one or two big chunks of the day. With rare exceptions, I never work beyond 8pm, so I always have a good chunk of downtime before bed.

I can say since switching to this work pattern my mental health and quality of life has improved significantly. Its much easier to switch off from work and focus on other important life stuff.

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ObsessiveTimekeeper OP t1_j2otlih wrote

Replying to Costpap (#1,266,318)

I don't always remember, and in those cases, I have a nice little interface that lets me quickly adjust/splice in log items as I remember them.

But as time goes on it's been more ingrained in my brain (feels like I'm forgetting something when I don't update) so I don't forget too often.

​

To your point about tracking water consumption, this is something I actually want to start doing this year (along with sugar and other misc counters). I'm probably going to end up adding a counter feature that lets me quickly click a plus/minus button in regular amounts (16 oz, 20 grams).

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ObsessiveTimekeeper OP t1_j2ouboj wrote

Replying to Moist-Ad7080 (#1,266,459)

This is definitely something I'm going to try heading into this year. Hopefully, I have similar results to you. Forcing myself to work without as many interruptions might be hard, but having longer stretches of relaxation time at the end of the day will be nice. That along with an actual margin of time before bed where I'm not working my brain and looking at a screen.

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Costpap t1_j2oycnz wrote

Replying to ObsessiveTimekeeper (#1,266,578)

I see. That's quite easier to do when you have a website set up in order to do all of the tracking, in comparison to relying on an Excel spreadsheet, which is best updated on a PC. Your set up makes me wonder what I could do to replicate something like this using a VPS and a subdomain on a domain I have, actually.

As for water consumption, I suppose it'd be a lot more rewarding to implement it into your current workflow for entering all of the data. In my case, I could look into using Apple's Shortcuts to let me have a button that I can press to quickly add data to the Health app, especially since I usually drink water in 500ml increments. I could always have the shortcut ask me as well - but then the whole process would become significantly slower.

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ick86 t1_j2q110g wrote

Omg, it’s beautiful. How did you track? Did you use an app or some software?

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mr_pineapples44 t1_j2qzeqj wrote

My thoughts when looking at this: holy crap that is a level of commitment to tracking that is beyond me. I feel like I'd love to do this, but I also feel like mine would be much less positive - I spend a lot more than 42 hours on Reddit for example. That's like a month for me.

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