Time Tracking Tool

Forsaken_GA

Kimai - Open Source Time-Tracking

For those of you who might be a little more geekly inclined....

I was looking for a good tool to keep track of my time I spent studying.

The above is a simple PHP based app that installs easily on a linux/BSD LAMP stack. It's a little overkill, it's intended for things like project timing tracking and the like, but I've found it to be perfect for keeping track of my study time. I setup three different categories, Core Study (for things like watching ATC Videos, reading books like Routing TCP/IP, etc), Labs, and Misc. Study (for things like checking blogs and going more in depth in some subjects through other resources).

This is how I'm keeping myself honest in my studies, as I can see at a glance whether I'm slacking and need to pick it up, or if I'm doing too much and risking burnout and need to take a break.

dead_p00l

I haven't really put much thought into tracking my study time but maybe that's exactly what I need to do to try to get some of my motivation back.

Forsaken_GA

dead_p00l wrote: »

I haven't really put much thought into tracking my study time but maybe that's exactly what I need to do to try to get some of my motivation back.

Yup, I'm prone to procrastination, and I could always tell myself 'I'll do it tomorrow, there's still plenty of time to get in my studying for the week'. And 2 weeks later, I realized I haven't touched my lab at all.

This makes it easy to hold myself accountable. One look at the webui, and I can tell how much time I've spent on my studying this week, and how short I am of my 20 hours. If I want to do something else, like slack off and play a game, I need to step it up. Or, if I find I've already done 18 hours in 3 days, I'll just do the next two, and can take the rest of the week off.

Accountability is good if you're lazy

dead_p00l

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Accountability is good if you're lazy

That it is. I've been slacking for WAY too long. It's time for me to start getting serious and get something accomplished.

bermovick

Or you're easily distracted like me, and find yourself half-way through your study session reading on some website about some random thing that popped in your head or installing some cool app to test it out. This way I won't feel so guilty about how "around an hour" my actually 42 minutes of studying was - if I can just get in the habit of hitting some "stop".

Of course I've found myself spending half an hour getting this installed and working so .... I'm not sure if I should bless you or curse you ... yet

NOC-Ninja

I use this SlimTimer - Time Tracking without the Timesheet

easy to use!

Forsaken_GA

bermovick wrote: »

Of course I've found myself spending half an hour getting this installed and working so .... I'm not sure if I should bless you or curse you ... yet

Hehe, well, if you curse me, hopefully it's because it keeps you honest and not for the 30 minutes wasted!

nerdydad

Speaking of tracking time, I was speaking with a "coach" this past weekend. I asked her what she did to make sure she was not chasing shiny objects when she was working on her Doctorate. She said she rented an office with no internet or phone and scheduled the times when she would purely focus on study. I thought this was a very good idea and wondered if any others had tried something similar.

nel

nerdydad wrote: »

Speaking of tracking time, I was speaking with a "coach" this past weekend. I asked her what she did to make sure she was not chasing shiny objects when she was working on her Doctorate. She said she rented an office with no internet or phone and scheduled the times when she would purely focus on study. I thought this was a very good idea and wondered if any others had tried something similar.

ive never heard of anyone doing this. bit extreme imo and could be very costly. I can see where shes coming from though as internet/phone are a big distraction for most of us!

aldous

nerdydad wrote: »

Speaking of tracking time, I was speaking with a "coach" this past weekend. I asked her what she did to make sure she was not chasing shiny objects when she was working on her Doctorate. She said she rented an office with no internet or phone and scheduled the times when she would purely focus on study. I thought this was a very good idea and wondered if any others had tried something similar.

for some people its the only way i know lots of people that get distracted by phones/facebook etc if your one of those then you need to put something on to block it. theres a few addons to firefox that can block certain sites at certain times of day.

i don't have anything like that and don't feel the need to open every email that comes my way unless its subject is "URGENT Customer Data Center on Fire!!!!"

alan2308

aldous wrote: »

for some people its the only way i know lots of people that get distracted by phones/facebook etc if your one of those then you need to put something on to block it. theres a few addons to firefox that can block certain sites at certain times of day.

I've seen a few forums, OCAU comes to mind immediately, where the admin will give you a one week ban on request if you have something coming up that you should be working on.

Plazma

I'm a bit of a irc nerd and IM nerd.. so these days I usually have them closed completely or turned off the sounds and hid them in a different desktop.