I have twomain tools I use to manage my time and encourage me to get things done.

  1. Beeminder
  2. Tagtime (the Android app)

Tagtime

The general concept behind Tagtime is that it does stochastic sampling of your time to see how you spend it.

It is in a sense the only honest way to do time tracking - if I’m not currently paying attention when the buzzer goes off, I don’t count it.

It turns out a distressingly small fraction of time is spent actually doing useful things.

Currently my main Tagtime use is just a binary “Is what I’m currently doing useful?”, where useful is a bit woolly in its definition but includes work, chores, etc.

Beeminder

The main non-tagtime goals I have set up with Beeminder are:

  1. Update these docs (tracked with Gitminder)
  2. Do exercise.

Exercise

The way my exercise beeminding works is as follows:

Firstly, I have a notion of “a unit of exercise”. This is either seven minutes of running or 40 of any body weight exercise (pushups, leg raises or squats mainly).

I additionally have goals for number of pushups done per week and total amount of running.