How to time multiple activities simultaneously
If I take the subway home from work and I click on "Commute", but I want to read a book, should I continue to record "Commute" time or switch to "Read" time? Can we keep track of both times together?
To remember together, select "Continue ongoing activities and start new activities" when setting up and starting a new activity. This way, when you newly enable an activity, the old one won't pause and will continue to clock.
But this method is not recommended! Because when you record multiple activities at the same time, you end up with more than 24 hours of time data in a day, and this baseline value changes, there is no way to guarantee equality of time.
We proactively avoid timeouts, but you may also find time fluctuations after exporting the data.
Why is it that the 1 day shown in the exported data is sometimes not 24 hours？
It's because time is timed across days for "sleep". If you go to bed at 1:00am and get up at 8:00am every day, then the time of the day is 24 hours, but if you go to bed at 22:00 that day and get up at 6:00 the next day, although they are both 7 hours, but because the second workday spans days, your time of the day will be 2 hours more (22:00-00:00), which is 26 hours, and the time of the next day will be 2 hours less, becoming 22 hours.
This can be very upsetting to some of the little mates, as the 24 hour a day rule is broken.
The first thing I thought about was to artificially fix it by "changing my routine", forcing myself to go to bed on time at zero, or splitting up the data in the export, but then I realized that it wasn't necessary, and that it would be putting the cart before the horse if someone needed to satisfy the data.
In fact, looking at the time lengthening period, 24 hours is definitely constant, because 2 hours more the day before and 2 hours less the day after, the lengthening period analysis, the data will have little effect. That's something that people can care less about.
If you find it unbearable, you can modify the software's daily start time.
By the time you set the start time, the software ends the day.
For example, if the normal time is 00:00, but you are used to going to bed at 22:00, you can set the start time of the day to "22:00".
When I use TimeTrack for timing, I must ensure that "only one activity is recorded at the same time, <24 hours per day (23:59)".
So back to the first question, the first thing we have to rule out is to record both "commuting" and "reading", so what do we choose between the two?
I provide three ways of reference.
1.Gain time priority (and vice versa)
It's not good to have a long "commute", but "reading" is a good habit, and I would prefer to keep track of "good times" relatively speaking.
2.Efficiency values take precedence
What is an "efficiency value", which is no longer a single indicator, but a ratio .
Again, when I "read" during my "commute", I record it as "commute", but note "#read" in the comments field so that when I export the data to Excel, I can filter out the time I spent reading during my commute and the time I spent purely commuting, and divide the two to get the efficiency value (utilization rate) of my "commute" activity.
3.Purpose oriented
Let's say I go shopping, do I record "travel" or "shopping"? Since my purpose is to "shop" and not "travel", I record the time as "shopping".
Here comes a little trick for writing notes, called "Marking with symbols".
For example, when I record "#Reading" in the notes section of my "Commute" time, this "#" mark helps me to locate the "presence of an activity that can calculate an efficiency value" directly in my Excel analysis.
For example, I only have one category "Entertainment", which is used to record TV shows, play games, and swipe phones. You can also put a symbol in front of one of the notes, and I'll put an "@" symbol in front of all the movies, and I'll be able to filter which ones I've seen in Excel right away.
Pick a movie or TV show to screen "@"
In addition to the question of "how to do multiple activities at the same time in a timely manner", you may find that early on "what to remember" also becomes a tangle.
For example, under which category should a new "Banking" be recorded?
We need an "Activity Definition Table" to clarify which activities are included under each activity, so that everything can be put into the correct category.
So in the next section, let's see how this "Activity Definition Table" works.