I have been time tracking for about as long as Myke, CGP Grey, Federico, and John have. Myke and Grey introduced me to the concept via their Cortex podcast. Initially, I thought it would be cool to experiment alongside 2 of my favorite podcasters and it was. Most people that time track do so to keep up with projects related to their work. I decided to try both time tracking work related activities as well as home related activities. The data I got from time tracking was interesting but not revelatory so I decided to stop time tracking work related activities and think more about how to time track things that mattered to me.

As some of you may know, I am a fan of the Theme System Journal. About a year ago, I decided to time track certain aspects of my yearly themes. Not to encourage myself to, for example read more but as a way of just noticing whether or not I am doing the things I say I value. Like my initial foray into time tracking, after awhile, the data I was creating seemed to be “telling me” what I already knew.

In a recent episode of AppStories+, Federico and John shared that they had “said goodbye” to time tracking. Listening to them explain why they’d stopped time tracking got me thinking, “Should I stop time tracking?” I sat on this question for a few days. I’d created some really, what I thought were useful, Shortcuts and set ups that took a lot of time to create. Was I just going to give them up, burn it all down?

What I decided to do in the end was based on feelings that I’ve shared here; time tracking was interesting but not something that I was truly getting anything from other than explicit data that I knew implicitly.