Single–Tap Start and Stop

Wake up.
Launch Time Journal.
Tap ‘sleep’ clock.
Tap ‘morning routine’.

You’ve just finished logging how long you slept and started logging how long it takes you to go through your morning routine. (You could even add a note about the dream you had.)

It really is that simple.

The State of Things

The clock list is where you spend most of your interaction time with Time Journal as you move through your day and is designed to elegantly overcome issues found in other time journal apps we tried. For smartphones, the clock list uses a wristwatch metaphor with a prominent “Add Clock” clock face, used to separate running clocks from paused clocks for rapid feedback on what you are tracking.

Learning Curve

When you launch Time Journal for the first time, there are only two items to interact with — and both of them accomplish the same thing (adding your first clock). When you add a clock it immediately starts, allowing you to create clocks on–the–fly as new activities you wish to monitor come up. Or, because a time entry is only saved if the clock was running for 10 seconds or more, you can create a bunch of clocks in one sitting, and stop them as soon as they’re created.

screen shots of primary and child clock list views

Detailed Tracking

Child Clocks (back of the watch) are just like primary clocks, and allow you to get a little more in-depth. For example, instead of just tracking your commute, you may want to track the means by which you commute; or, while at work you could track how long you spend in meetings.

The “view child clock button” (left primary clock button) changes to indicate if the primary clock has viewable children, and whether one of the children is running.

When you start a child clock, the parent automatically starts — and, when you stop a parent clock, the children automatically stop — otherwise, the two function independently.

Monitor Your Time

Looking at the journal for a clock you can quickly see how much time you’ve spent performing the task overall, the start and end times for each time you performed the task, and how long you spent each time the clock was running, allowing you to make changes in your life (small or large) to spend your time more effectively.

Entry Notes

Sometimes things don’t go the way they normally do and you want a way to remind yourself why your commute took two hours instead of the normal 20 minutes. Simply stop the clock, go to the time entry’s details and add a note.

Multiple Export Options

Exporting directly to the device’s calendar is a great way to get a visual of how you spent your time overlaid on how you thought you were going to spend your time, but Time Journal can also export to both CSV and XML file formats so you can “slice and dice” the data however you would like.

A Time Journal offers the ability to objectively look at how you spent your time and ask yourself, “Do I want to continue spending my time on this?”

For example.

I must confess, from a traditional perspective, I have no sense of time. Instead, I have a list of things I want/need to accomplish with various deadlines (today, tomorrow, before 2017, etc.). I wake up — start doing what needs doing — go to sleep, wake up…and start again. However, I am a firm believer and proponent of the idea “time is the only commodity that matters.”¹ Put simply, the more time you spend doing things you don’t enjoy or are otherwise unfulfilled by, the less time you have to spend on things you enjoy with the people you care for.

Actual development on Time Journal started when I moved to south–central Maryland. My “day job” is in northern Virginia — about 30 miles away. Every morning I would ride a bus to The Metro,² change trains, and walk a mile to the office. After work, I would do the reverse.

Before Time Journal, I had no idea how long riding The Metro took (felt like an hour, since I’m not a “clock-watcher”), but the whole thing was annoying because it got in the way of me doing something else I would rather be doing than moving from A to B. Even if I brought a book or my laptop to use the time to my advantage, at the end of the trip, I felt drained.

When testing for Time Journal began, I would log my commutes from the time I got to the bus stop to the time I hit the office. After a week, I looked at my journal to see the results. I spent three hours commuting — one way — every day. In other words, I spent 30 hours in a given work week away from my friends, my loved ones, my personal projects, parkour, and everything else I would rather have spent that 30 hours on. My weekly commute was almost equivalent to the amount of time I was expected to be at the office — frustrating.

I decided to do the math. 168 hours in a week. An estimated 40 spent sleeping — leaves 128. A full–time job is about 40 — leaving 88 to spend on things we want/need to do. I was spending a third of un–obligated time going to and from work — and gaining nothing from the experience.

So, I moved.

As of this writing, I live two miles from the office and my girlfriend. It takes roughly 30 minutes to walk either distance. My rent is cheaper. I sold my car as most things I could want are within walking distance (for other things, I use Zip Car or do while out and about). I can’t get the 30 hours a week I spent for those few months back, but I’m not continuing to throw precious time at something unrewarding.

Attention iOS users for Time Journal 1.6. It is highly recommended that you remove Time Journal from your recently used apps list and relaunch before exporting (instruction from Apple): http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4211 & http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5137

We decided to consolidate support contact into one address. Please use the following:

1. Randy Pausch, Time Management
2. The public rail system for the Washington D.C. metro area

* Screen shots are from iPhone, screens and some features may differ between platforms; however, we’re working on this