Time Tracking Categories

Stephen and I dug deep into time tracking in this week’s episode of the Mac Power Users. Throughout the show, I kept referencing my saved timers. I thought this would be a good place to share them in detail with a bit of explanation.

As I explained in the episode, the idea of saved timers is to give you a way to make sure you are consistently tracking and get more reliable data. In the Timing App, they are projects. In the Timery App, they are saved timers. One of the tricks of doing time tracking is getting data that’s specific enough to help you out and flexible enough to adjust with your active projects.

I explain in the episode how I use different time tracking apps, so you’ll have to listen to that if you want a further explanation, but having the same group of projects or saved timers makes the process easy.

So my main projects are as follows:

Project: Family and Friends

Subprojects: Family, Friends, Ahsoka (the dog)

Project: Personal

Subprojects: Altruism, Comms, Cooking, Down Time, Eating, Errands, Fiction, Finance, Gaming, Household, Media, Music, News, Shopping, Woodworking
This serves as a catch-all for all of my personal tasks, whether reading a book or pulling weeds.

Project: Health

Subprojects: Exercise, Gardening, Hiking, Meditation, Medical, Nap
This is another one that has evolved. Originally it was for exercise and bicycling, but now it’s where I keep anything health-related.

Project: Focus

Subprojects: Incremental Planning, sparkyOS, Planning, Journaling, Time Tracking
I do a variety of tasks to hold things together. They’re both related to my work and my personal life. They drifted between various categories for a long time, but I created a separate project called “Focus” a couple of years ago. These tasks include reading books, journaling, planning, and general work on sparkyOS. “Planning” is what I do day to day. “Incremental Planning” is what I do weekly/monthly/quarterly.

MacSparky

So Many Subprojects: Admin, Blog, Comms, Customer Support, Field Guides (with sub-sub categories for each title), MacSparky Labs, Newsletter, Planning (MacSparky planning only), Podcasts (with sub-sub categories for each show), Research, Screencast Contract Work, Social Media, Speaking, Sponsor Work, The Creator’s Guild, Webinars, Writing, YouTube, Studio Build-Out.

This is another one that has expanded over the years. Anything I do related to being MacSparky goes into this category. And again, because I like data, I don’t mind having quite a few entries under this heading.

Project: DLR Field Guide

No Subprojects
My wife and I have been having a little bit of fun making some videos at Disneyland. This one probably belongs under the personal category. It is a personal project with not any big plans for the future. But ultimately, I decided to give it its own project to keep it separate from other personal time.

Project: Unintentional

No Subprojects

Sometimes, you find yourself drifting off into the unknown when you track time without any real plan. Maybe I spend an hour on Amazon or in front of YouTube or sorting out screws in my hardware drawer. These are voids of time that I follow without any real plan. Whenever I catch myself doing that, I log in as unintentional time. I find the reporting of this to be helpful. When I see unintentional time trending up, it’s a warning sign that I need to look at what’s going on.

I have several friends that, upon learning how much time I track, think I’m crazy. They usually don’t say it to my face, but I can see it in their eyes. The significant benefit for me is getting feedback on where I’m actually spending time. It lets me identify time traps where I’m spending more time than I thought and points out areas of my life that may lend themselves to things like automation and delegation. The trick for me is not to worry too much about the minutes and think more about the hours.

There’s a lot more time tracking, and we covered it in depth in this week’s episode of the Mac Power Users. We’ve also covered it in the past on the Automators and even the Focused podcast if you’d like to learn more.

Mac Power Users 637: Digging Deep on Tracking Time

Stephen and I both track how we spend our time. In this episode of Mac Power Users, we discuss the approaches and tools we use to see how we spend our days.

This episode of Mac Power Users is sponsored by:

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Improve Your Email Workflows with SaneBox (Sponsor)

How much time are you spending on emails? How much time are you wasting on emails? You know by now that you don’t get time back, but you can at least spend it wisely. Thanks to SaneBox, this week’s sponsor at MacSparky, you can do just that. You don’t have to use your time digging through countless emails in your inbox to figure out what is high priority, what can wait, and what can be deleted. 

So, how is SaneBox going to help you? This is where SaneBox’s AI comes in. SaneBox’s AI pays attention to how you interact with new email in your inbox. You’ll train SaneBox and it will learn how to handle your new emails automatically and filter unimportant emails out of your inbox. It’s not just time you’re freeing up. In terms of productivity, think about the mental space you’re freeing up that allows you to focus on the important things, and not get distracted by unimportant or low-priority emails that you can deal with later.  

Get through your inbox quickly. Get more productive. Get SaneBox. Sign up for your free trial, and you’ll get a $10 credit you can use towards a SaneBox subscription.

Automators 100: Celebrating 100 Automations, and More

In this episode of Automators, Rosemary and I look at our favorite automations, most wished-for features, and how our automation has evolved in 100 episodes.

This episode of Automators is sponsored by:

The MacSparky Labs Weekly Update Podcast (MacSparky Labs)

This morning I dropped my first weekly update in the MacSparky Labs podcast feed. If you are a labs member, you should be able to download it now. This short episode includes some additional commentary on the Mac Studio vs. MacBook Air debate, uses for Obsidian, and some interesting Apple news from the week… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

Project Management with Obsidian (MacSparky Labs)

I’ve been busy evolving a project management system from inside Obsidian. This system relies upon the use of status folders (instead of tags) and the DataView plugin to auto-sort and display relevant projects. I believe this system could work for all sorts of work but it is, admittedly, still a work in progress. In this video, I walk you through how I’m using it and what I’m up to… This is a post for MacSparky Labs Early Access and Backstage Members only. Care to join? Or perhaps do you need to sign in?

The MacBook Pro Check-In

Now that the dust is settling on the new Mac Studio and we’re waiting for the next penny to drop on the Apple silicon Mac Pro, I wanted to check in on my Apple silicon MacBook Pro, which I’ve now been using for six months.

For most of my years using a Mac, my computer has nearly always felt like a no-compromise machine. That changed for me during the last few years of Intel Macs. For a while, it seemed like every guest interview on the Mac Power Users started with the guest explaining why their Mac no longer had the ports they needed or the keyboard wasn’t working. They were rough times. Many of us nerds began to wonder if Apple was even serious anymore about the Mac.

And then Apple announced Apple silicon Macs. Two years ago Apple proved that they hadn’t lost interest in the Mac. (In hindsight, it feels like they were marking time on the Mac for the years before that as Apple silicon made its way to release.)

The Build

My MacBook Pro is loaded: 16-inch screen, M1 Max chip, 64 GB RAM, 4TB of storage. I overpay for Apple storage, but I always find ways to use it. Indeed, I currently have some storage management work to do.

The port situation is better on this MacBook Pro than on other Apple laptops in the last few years. That said, I still need extra input/output. I bought the CalDigit Elements Hub for this purpose, and it has worked without fail.

I haven’t missed the Touch Bar, and the keyboard works just fine. Isn’t it nice when your laptop’s keyboard barely merits a sentence?

Use Cases

Historically, I’ve been a desktop Mac kind of guy. I like having my machine always on and always able to do bits of work in the background. I also like the contextual nature of knowing, “This is my desk. This is where I work.”

I went with a MacBook Pro because I am currently a technology hobo. I have a desk set up, but it’s in the middle of our home, and sometimes other people would like to enjoy our home. So in those cases I have a foldable desk upstairs where I can alternatively work (and record). For the time being, I need my main machine to be mobile.

This MacBook Pro is perfect for that. I can record screencasts straight onto the laptop with or without an external monitor. All my files are with me no matter where I set up shop. I’d add that the historical problem of connecting a laptop to an external monitor and dealing with the shenanigans required to make sure the monitor sees the laptop, the laptop sees the external drives, and all of that are all nonexistent for me with this laptop and my Apple monitor. It just works.

The screens on the new MacBook Pros are stunning. When I need a change of scenery, even when not recording, I bring the MacBook Pro to the kitchen table or the couch and work from there. Again, I’ve got plenty of screen real estate and all my files on board.

Whenever I’m not actively using the MacBook Pro as a laptop in another room, I keep it plugged into my screen and external drives. That gives me most of the benefits of having a desktop Mac (Hazel and Apple Mail rules in the background, for instance). When at my desk, I keep it on a shelf with the side that has the HDMI, SD Card, and Thunderbolt port pointing out. This gives me easy access to input and output.

Performance

Performance on the M1 Max chip is, unsurprisingly, bananas. These days I’m doing a lot of videos. Video in Final Cut on this thing renders faster than I should be allowed to render video. The same goes for audio and video filters and effects, image processing, and any other processor-intensive work I do.

I’ve owned it for six months, and this thing tears through anything I throw at it. Also, I’ve never heard the fans spin up. I’m sure they have turned on at some point, but I’ve never heard them.

The Front Door Problem

I love everything about my MacBook Pro while using it in my house. The problems, for me, start at the front door. It’s big (it doesn’t fit in my favorite backpack), and it is heavy. Moreover, it costs more than my first car, so every time I take it out the door, I’m worried about damaging, dropping, or losing it. Do I leave my expensive laptop in the hotel room? I have to use a gigantic backpack with it, and on one flight the stewardess made me put it in overhead, where I wondered about it getting crushed.

So I take this MacBook Pro out the front door only when I absolutely must. This means I leave it home when it would be a nice-to-have, and I miss having a Mac on those occasions as well.

While this is a great Mac, its size presents issues with travel. That’s my only complaint. The solution, for me, would be a MacBook Air for trips. I’d still get all my Mac automation goodness without the raw horsepower of the MacBook Pro. If it weren’t for all the rumors of a new MacBook Air looming in the future, I’d probably already have solved the front door problem.

Getting Back the Thread

To be clear, I love this Mac. It’s fast, the screen is beautiful, and it has I/O to spare. The MacBook Pro is awesome again. If you need a powerful Mac that you can move around with, check out the new MacBook Pro.

Why I Like the Shortform Book Summary Service

There is a growing crop of non-fiction book summary services on the web. I understand that these can be fraught with peril. When you have someone else summarize a thing for you, you’ll never know what they chose to leave out.

I’ve tried a few, and none of them have stuck until recently when I found Shortform. Shortform has several features that I particularly like:

  • One-page Summaries – Each book has a one-page summary. I’ll read these to decide if I want to go any deeper. Often one page is enough for me to decide a book isn’t for me.
  • Much Longer Summaries – If I get past the one-page summary, the actual Shortform summary is much longer than any other summary service I’ve ever used. The summaries go into greater detail and even cross-reference other summaries in its library. I get a lot of good information from the Shortform summaries. Once I finish a summary, I often know whether I want to go to the next step and read the actual book. This often happens, but not always. In that regard, I think of Shortform as more of a book “filter” service than a book “summary” service.
  • The app is good. It makes it easy to read the summaries on iPhone or iPad. You can also access your account directly from the web. It retains your reading position and highlights.
  • You can also download the summaries as PDF files (limited to three downloads per week.)
  • It integrates with Readwise, so my highlights automatically find their way into my spaced repetition system.

My Shortform subscription recently came up for renewal, and I gladly paid for it. I believe it more than paid for itself in helping me find better books for me and avoid a lot of turds. I contacted Shortform folks and told them I was planning to write about their service, and they gave my readers a discount code if you’re interested.