i'd like to talk up Simple Time Tracker
Feb. 20th, 2024 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doodlemancy
i should say first off this is android-only, so... sorry iphone users lol. here is the google play store link and here is the github link. (i guess it does seem to be available for something called F-Droid. i don't know what that is.) this is a 100% free app with no ads and no paid features (so far) and it is absurdly high quality and frequently gets (GOOD!!) updates. someone's just... making something nice here that i would honestly like to pay a yearly subscription for, even if nothing was paywalled as an incentive LOL
below the cut(*): several paragraphs of rambling about how i use this app and how it has helped me manage my ADHD, spend more time doing things i need and/or want to do and less time into things i don't want to be doing or that don't serve me.
* well, there was going to be a cut, but lately dreamwidth doesn't seem to let me want to use cuts at all. i have no idea why lmao, it probably has something to do with my unorthodox usage of headers and stuff
i started using this app in 2021 to track how much time i was spending on shop stuff, partly for pricing items, partly for tracking my total work hours for food stamps reasons. then i realized it was Having An Effect on me. i found that i was having an easier time staying on task, because... i had pressed a button that said i was doing the task and i didn't want my tracking to be inaccurate. after 20-something years of my life spent failing at time management, apparently that is what did it for me. it totally changed my approach to my work time. my therapist and i have talked about it and determined that like... basically it's helping me act with intent and maintain awareness of what i'm supposed to be doing. it's a bit like body doubling except it doesn't require another person. i COULD be showing my records regularly to other people if i needed to, but i don't really need to. as someone who's always struggled with self-motivation/self-control without an external force, this is wild to me. apparently this is External Force, to me. i couldn't tell you why. i do occasionally send a screenshot of my little pie chart to someone as a "look at me kicking ass this week" brag, and i think i did that more frequently early on, but now it's mostly just me and my graphs and i don't really need anyone else to hold me accountable.
i started using it to track other things, and developed this color-coding system. pink (my fav color!!) is creative activities, blue is meatsack maintenance stuff ("pretty time" is for like painting my nails and doing skincare stuff and w/e LOL), all the green stuff is shop related, yellow is mundane/household tasks (no shade on baking, it's also creative, i think it just fits better in the category right next to housework because i'm usually doing both in the same block of time), black is for time-wasters i should not have to fucking deal with ("brain prison" being that state in which my executive function is failing and i'm not doing anything i want or need to do, Dealing With Some Fuckin Garbage is for whenever i'm stuck fighting with USPS or calling a billion pharmacies or that sort of thing, etc...)
while time blindness isn't as much of a problem for me as it is for others with the disorder (i am VERY aware of the clock!! when i was little Mario taught me that being late results in a startling musical sting followed by panic and death), i do still struggle with it. to some degree. a lot of it's like, i feel like i'm "not doing enough", and anything that happened more than 24 hours ago basically doesn't factor into how i feel about that. doing this for a couple of years now has given me a greater awareness of how long tasks are going to take. it's allowed me to plan my days/weeks better, take breaks and chill when i need to, and see when and how i end up spending too much time on things i shouldn't. it's also helped me see how long tasks i tend to avoid actually take, which makes them easier to do, because i know how long i'm going to be stuck in Chores Hell. i also have chronic pain like whoa and it's given me a better idea of how long i can do certain tasks before i should Fucking Stop.
a really significant example of how this has helped me: when i'm writing some sort of email to customer service/tech support/USPS/etc. sometimes i will sit there and revise it for hours, because i also have anxiety about being understood and i'm very good at re-reading my own writing and thinking of every way it could be misinterpreted. i started seeing how much of my time that kind of thing was eating up, and i was like... okay. multiple hours devoted to nitpicking an email a few paragraphs long is bonkers. that is time i will never get back that could have been spent drawing my blorbos or designing a sticker or something. why am i doing this? and slowly but surely, i'm getting better at just firing off an email in 10-20 minutes and saying STOOOOOOOOOOPPPPP to the Anxiety Editor Impulse.
this does, obviously, take some spoons to use. you have to be willing to stop, take out your phone, open the app, hit a button. and you have to... remember to do that. and you have to remember to stop the tracker later. a lot of times i kind of have to edit things down to a guess, often using clues like when i made posts or sent messages during the day to see where i changed tasks. it wasn't a simple habit to build, but the app does have a built-in reminder clock where you can tell it to ping you if you've been untracked for a while. i also just... drew a clock on my hand in sharpie for a week LOL. you can't see it in the screenshot but i do have an "unwell" square that i just tapped when i came down with covid-19 and left running until i felt better. so now i know exactly how many hours of 2023 covid-19 ruined for me which is a little depressing but also funny
you also have to decide for yourself, i think, what's important to track. i track things that i either find interesting/useful to know, or that i want to change. like i wanted to change how much time i was spending spacing off in the shower (a very dangerous void where time does not exist to the ADHD mind, tbh) and after a few weeks of tracking that, i got it down from 25 minutes to 10 or 15 most days. i don't know why, but it was way more effective than just setting an alarm. at the beginning of this year, i pruned/consolidated a lot of squares. sometimes when i have a big project i'll make it its own square for a while to see how long it took me. when you don't need one of your activities in the list anymore, you can archive it without deleting all the data.
updates have been making it more and more customizable and easy to use! you can choose whether or not to allow multitasking (tracking multiple things at once), there are lots of ways to group and view your tracked data, it's got dark mode, it's got automatic backups, lots and lots of notification options to meet your reminder needs. i appreciate that i can always have the timer visible in my notifications, AND, since i am a Wrong Button Hitter Extraordinare, i was able to set it up to erase records less than 1 minute, so whenever i hit the wrong thing and then quickly hit the right thing, i don't have to go erase a 3 second record or something.
i think for some brains it's also entirely possible that tracking stuff like this could Get Weird and Not Good, in the same way you can get Weird and Not Good about Exercise or Productivity(TM). as we are all aware thanks to social media, no matter what kind of brain you have, numbers are a volatile substance that should be introduced carefully. i think it's important not to think of this a game that you want to win at or a perfect and all-encompassing record of every single thing you do. the way i think of it is... it's more like i'm studying myself like some sort of mysterious little creature, so that i can be happier and healthier and spend my time in ways i actually want to spend it.
somehow, despite having a goldfish memory, garbage executive dysfunction issues, a shaky-at-best grasp on time, dyscalculia like whoa, and a persistent tendency to fall off or clip through metaphorical wagons, i have held fast to this habit for over 2 years. i still forget sometimes but the spoon requirement has dropped and i usually just do it automatically. i think "i need to do the dishes," i pick up my phone to start my podcast, i open the app and i hit the little "chores" button," i go do the dishes, i come back to my desk to draw, i hit "drawing".
anyway. that's my pitch. if you wanna try this, start small. figure out what's important to you. maybe it won't work out! maybe it will! i think it's very much worth a shot. and hey, come bak and tell me if it worked for you/what you did to make it work for you!! it'd be interested to hear!!
small secondary recommendation: i also use this app in conjunction with blipblip, an app that lets you set up a simple hourly chime. pretty customizable, some features are paid but the basics are free and there are no ads. i have it set up to do a quiet casio watch beep every hour (and to be quiet at night). it helps keep me aware of the passage of time when i'm hyperfocused on something, without being particularly disruptive. when i start tuning out the sound i switch to a different one for a while
wooahh :0
Date: 2024-11-10 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-10 04:27 pm (UTC)F-Droid is great. It's for Free and Open-Source (FOSS) software. You know much about FOSS?
Some people don't like F-Droid because updates for the apps tend to lag behind other sources, which some consider a security risk. However, I feel the benefits outweigh the risk. Automatic updates, a centralized source for programs, and they even evaluate each program for "anti-features," or features which run contrary to FOSS philosophy.