Idea
Do you know how much time do you spend on social media or working on your project? I like to now how much time do I spend on different projects. We have limited days in our lives so the best if we do what is important. Tracking is important in case of every companies, however tracking some aspects of our lives could give us some insights how do we spend our time.
How
I’m using an application called toggl to track my activities. This application let’s you create projects, tags and description and if you start the timer on your phone, you could stop it on the laptop, on their website. The application itself is very simple, however for tracking simple activities it’s perfect. The only trick is not to forget to start tracking whenever you start these activities. I made a postit note to help me remember. If you forgot to start tracking it’s not an issue as you can start it later and set the start time to the real one, or simply add the whole activity later.
Which activities do I track?
Tracking your time will give you insight when and how much time do you spend on different activities. I think it could be beneficial to track if you really learn that foreign language five hours a week. For me tracking the writing of articles also helps to plan better for the future.
This method might help you eliminate waste as in the Japan lean manufacturing method.
Social media
Some of the social media applications actually let you check how much time did you spend using them.
Facebook
Settings page – Your time on facebook
This feature is in development so you might not be able to use it yet. Facebook has confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature is in development, although it would not say when or even if it’ll be launching for all users. Most probably it is available for some android users.
Instagram
Settings – Your activity (might be called Usage Insights)
This feature is currently also in development, so it might not be shown for all users. Most probably on for some android users.
I think it’s a good idea to mute all push notifications in facebook / instagram as it’s a waste of time to check them each time someone likes your photos or anything else happens.
On instagram app
Settings – Push notifications: switch them off
On facebook app
Settings – Notification settings
Habitlab
Habitlab is an open-source project from Stanford which helps you cut back using some websites. This can be used as a chrome plugin and it could help you to use less of gmail, youtube, netflix, reddit by using artificial intelligence to hide the comment sections or pause the video and suggest that you do something else. As this project is open source, you have to agree that anonymized data is sent back to developers to be able to examine the effects of these kind of interventions. There is an option to opt-out from this.
The watch
The watch on the photo is the ever beautiful Omega Speedmaster Professional, better known as the moon watch.
