Wow, this is great. Does anyone know of something like this for Linux? I love it popping up and asking at regular intervals whether I'm still doing the same thing, since I don't want to have to manually switch things when I switch tasks.

I'm going to try this out with Wine, who knows, maybe it'll work fine. :)

epaga

Sweet! I was looking for a program like this. I tried some programs mentioned earlier on LH, but none fitted my needs. Let's see how this one turns out. I am supposed to keep track what I am doing for which customer at work. At the end of the day, it is sometimes very hard to recall exactly how long I spent on which task. Maybe this program will actually help me finally master the art of knowing what I am doing.

muffinimal

Crashes for me on Vista. It crashed every time I tried to delete one of my test tasks, no matter which of 3 methods I used. I tried just leaving it running, and it crashed after a few minutes on its own.

When Lifehacker covered RescueTime, I found TimeTracker thanks to Commenter Niccoco [lifehacker.com]

It hasn't crashed, uses csv files instead of an Access database, and allows you to add rules to your tasks. You could make a rule, for instance, that would change the active task to "Surfing" if the active window has "Lifehacker" or "YouTube" or "Digg" somewhere in the text of the window caption, or a rule that would make "email" the active task if the active window was either thunderbird.exe or had "Gmail" and/or your Gmail address in the window caption. It even has a setting to lock your workstation after a specified number of idle seconds.

It doesn't remind you to update the active task every 10 minutes, but the rules make this unnecessary - or you could just set a timer to go off every 10 minutes. It includes a simple pie-chart view of program activity, but you can graph the csv file all you want in Excel or OpenOffice. It works as well as PTM without any complicated setup, but the rules make it much more powerful.

It's also open source, and also a simple executable that requires no installation.

joelena

@Dronak: I did see something on the forums about linking programs to certain tasks. The developer was positive about trying to implement this. So it's a feature which just might one of the future versions of PTM.

I am using the program for almost a day now and I think I might stick with it. For some reason the program automatiscally sets the task to idle a bit too much to my liking... I wonder why that might be ;-)

muffinimal

I normally use my Palm OS PDA to track time, with the Timesheet program. To record what I did, I use the daily journal feature of DateBk6. However, this does look like an interesting program since it can track what programs you're using. I'm guessing you'd still have to tie that to some particular work/project manually though. Just tracking open applications wouldn't tell you if, for example, your word processor is open because you're using it for Project A or for Project B. It looks like it knows when you're not on the computer, which is good, but any non-computer work time would have to get manually covered then, too (e.g., you went to a colloquium/seminar). This does look like a useful program, especially if nearly everything you do is on the computer, but I think I'll stick to my PDA for now. It's always with me, and I'm already used to using it to do this sort of tracking. Thanks for the info though; I'm sure it will help others.

Dronak

So let me see if I understand this: It shows me which program I was running while I worked.

I am trying to see how this is useful, as I spend 99% of my time in either Excel, IE (5 different web based databases) or Outlook.

Now if it told me which website I was at, then I could at least figure out that I spent 23% of my time in DataBaseYellow, and 5% of my time in DataBaseTom.

Another alternative (which I currently use) is running TaskTimerPlugin ([www.TiddlyTools.com]) in a TiddlyWiki ([tiddlywiki.com]). Push a button when you start a task, push it again when done, type in a description (Re-worded the Wilson Proposal), click OK. It creates a table telling you the description, start, stop, and elapsed times. Record them by day, or by project. Open Source and easy to customize.

KenGirard

@KenGirard: Sounds like it wouldn't be good for you or me since I use one application mainly for development.

inajeep

@KenGirard: If you used Firefox, you could use MeeTimer to track which web sites you were spending your time on. I dunno if there's an equivalent program or plugin for IE.

It even gives you a nice way to categorize pages as Work, Procrastination, Search, etc.

libelle

In a world where increasingly virtually all work and procrastination is done using the same application (web browser), this is of very little use.

brundlefly76

@brundlefly76: @inajeep: @KenGirard: TimeTracker, which I mentioned above, keeps track of the window title as well as the program, so you know what document you were working on in Excel, for instance. With browsing, you're depending on the page's author for the description, but it should work pretty well. If you click through to PTM's screenshots, it looks like it might do something similar.

joelena

I've just tried PTM for a few days, and it provides pretty good information, but the application tracking feature seems is a minimal part of the program. The main source of data comes from the program nagging you every 10-minutes (by default) with a little taskbar popup, asking what your current task is:
"What are you doing now?"
"Are you still reading emails? If not, choose what you are doing now from this list!"
"How 'bout now, active or inactive task?"
"C'mon, what are you doing right now!?!"

Well, its not quite as juvenile as that, but you get my point as to how annoying it could be. Basically, it then takes that data to make the fancy time tables detailing your daily activities, but there is nothing automatic about it. This may be useful to those looking to track hourly billing of multiple projects, but its too intrusive for me. RescueTime may be a better option for those just looking for an application tracker.

LastVigilante