# tlogging: sample the current activity every 30 minutes

i used to struggle with focusing on work tasks. sometimes i just felt overwhelmed and didn't know which task should i work on. i solved this problem by always picking my oldest task in my todo list whenever i started feeling overwhelmed.

but even then, i often got distracted and made little progress. i then tried techniques like pomodoro. the idea is that i select a task and then work on that for the next 30 minutes while there's a timer on my desktop reminding me to focus. then i take a 5 minute break and repeat. this didn't really work for me either. i just found it to be way too much of a hassle to be this formal about my focus.

# stochastic time tracking

i kept looking for some tips and tricks and eventually i stumbled across the idea of work sampling or stochastic time tracking as described at http://messymatters.com/tagtime. the idea is that a tool regularly interrupts me and asks what i am doing. i describe what i'm doing (or what was i doing the past few minutes) and then i have a logfile with samples of activities. it's like linux perf-like statistical profiling but for humans. or like a reverse pomodoro technique.

i thought maybe better time tracking will help with my focus because i will better understand where my time goes and can adjust accordingly. this type of sampled logging immediately resonated with me because i did something similar when i was doing @/recording. i was experimenting with recording my screen and i wanted an up-to-date statusbar that displays what i am doing in each moment. i kept forgetting to keep it up-to-date so i created a nagging tool that asked me to periodically update the status. and whenever i did this, i had pretty sharp focus for some reason. the only difference here is that is that now i also record the timestamp whenever i add a status update and append the new status to a logfile.

back then i named the tool as tlog as in "time logging". i quite liked the name so i kept it and use it now to refer to the whole method.

i started doing this type of tracking about a year ago. i don't do random sampling because i found that annoying. i just sample myself each ~30 minutes. this works out quite well with meetings. they are usually 30 minutes so if i add a sample just before the meeting, i get the next nag right at the end. and then i can log a quick note about the most important takeaway from the meeting.

# work log

these samples give me very useful work log at the end of the week. i use that to fill a short weekly summary note which is encouraged at work. the weekly summaries aren't mandatory at work but i do it nevertheless. i used to feel like i was doing nothing interesting at work and was very unproductive and useless. but doing this weekly review completely eliminates these dark feelings. and if management ever asks me what was i doing recently or where is my time spent, i can always easily answer that question.

whenever i'm interrupted i either log what i'm doing right now or log where bulk of my time went in the past half hour to ensure the big items are covered. if i finished two tasks, i might add two samples. this biases the timing data but i don't really care about that. the number of samples is already enough for me to see where bulk of my time is going.

i don't mind the interrupt either. if anything, it helps me focus. it serves me as a reminder to get back to work if i started to drift in thoughts.

if i find that i was mostly slacking, browsing, procrastinating in the past half hour, i just log it as "slacking". i feel a bit bad whenever i do that so this encourages me to achieve some useful stuff by the next sampling. writing a nice beefy update feels good. this then motivates me to work more so there's a positive reinforcement cycle to keep me working rather than procrastinating. if i procrastinate too much then i feel depressed due to feeling useless. this method eliminates lot of procrastination for me so thanks to this i feel sad less often. i like this method just from a mental health perspective too.

# tool

this is the command line tool i wrote for this: https://github.com/ypsu/cfg/blob/acdf4f5/utils/tlog.go. if i run `tlog -w` it starts watching ~/.tlog. it wakes up every minute and checks the last modification of that file. if it's older than ~30 minutes, it emits an alert to the terminal via writing the "\a" byte. my tmux is set to highlight the window with an alert and my i3 also alerts me if an xterm window has the alert bit set. that's quite non-intrusive and even if i accidentally clear the alert status, one minute later the tool will re-alert so i can't miss it for long.

the second invocation mode is `tlog [message]`. this simply appends the argument to ~/.tlog along with a human formatted timestamp in the local timezone. so i can just run "tlog slacking" or "tlog myproject: i fxed the race condition bug" in any terminal to log my work from the past half hour.

i can also run `tlog` on its own and it starts vim in insert mode for me to write the update. sometimes editing in vim is more convenient especially if my update contains all sorts of weird quotes.

to review the updates i just open ~/.tlog in a text editor and read through the log. then i summarize the more interesting updates into the work summary tool mentioned above manually.

# log format

i like to categorize my time into broad groups. so the first token of my update is usually the project name and then comes the message. so i might write `tlog project1, some achievement` or `tlog pblog, finished the tool section of the tlogging post`. i use a comma to separate the group name instead of a colon just because it's easier to type, it doesn't require pressing shift. i just write `tlog emails` if i was just reading emails.

this helps me to see where my time is spent in a broad manner. it's clear which project takes up most of my time just by eyeballing the beginning of the updates.

i also track meetings in the form of "meeting, foo sync, discussed x, i proposed y and people liked it" or "meeting, team sync, discussed status updates, nothing interesting". having such data for my meetings is nice to have in case i want to see how much time i spend in meetings and how useful they are.

# consumption log

i've seen a high level, tech-lead-like person who summarizes every document he sees for his own reference. basically every time he reads a work related design doc or roadmap, he makes a 2-3 line long note about the most important takeaways into a notes doc of his own. then if somebody references a doc or asks him about a doc he read a while ago, he doesn't need to re-read it again. i think such summarization is really helpful in remembering the things you consumed. and it also works as a work log of where his time was spent.

i also see a lot of bloggers keep similar notes for all the books they read albeit not timestamped. example: https://sive.rs/book.

i already have lot of private notes about various things. i have a notes file where i just keep appending various notes. for every note i give a short title and timestamp. i wrote about an earlier version of my workflow of this in @/task.

often it's not the note what's the most helpful in this but the very act of intentional summarization. the act of reconstructing the new information with my own words in my own mental world can deepen the understanding and help retain the information.

nevertheless the notes are super useful. i often end up looking up some random tidbits in that file. but i don't do it for every document, every website, every youtube video i consume. mostly because it is a lot of effort: i'd need to open the editor, add the title, timestamp, etc.

now with the tlog tool this is much less effort. and i now started doing this for some content i consume. so my .tlog file not only contains status updates but reference information too. convenience of the tool really helps me be more proactive in keeping notes.

but i don't do it for every document i read or video i watch. i'm not at the level that guy i mentioned above. too much effort. maybe one day.

i also put short, completely random unstructured notes into it occasionally since it's more convenient than opening my proper notes file.

sidenote: i did consider the zettelkasten method for my notes at some point. but i found that a simple structure in a text file is more than enough for me, no need to overcomplicate my life.

# recommendation

doing this requires non-trivial effort. it requires me to periodically summarize my past half hour into a few words. it can be hard sometimes because i have a bad memory. so i only do this for work during my work hours for work items only.

so do i recommend this to others? nope because of the effort it requires. i think i only do this because i have some sort of obsessive mind. but i don't think most people care about such things or even care where their time goes.

even for me this was not the first experiment that worked (e.g. i tried pomodoro too). if a recommendation is needed then i'd say experiment with various things and stick to whatever enjoyable method that works.

published on 2024-05-27

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