How to measure procrastination?

rlp10

How to measure procrastination? — LessWrong

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If both your work and your procrastination are computer-based (and isn't that a concise description of all my problems!), Beeminder plus TagTime looks like a pretty promising combination. Beeminder keeps track of personal goal-related data for you, and TagTime is a random sampling-based way of seeing how you spend your computer time. They're put out by (at least some of) the same people, and TagTime can automatically send your data to the relevant Beeminder graph.

NB: TagTime is only available in a developer version right now, which means that I haven't tried it because I don't know how to clone a git repository (not a skill much needed among musicologists). So this is just going from the description on their website of how it works. They say it will be available in a user-friendly version eventually. Beeminder, on the other hand, I've been using for a few things, and it's cool.

dreeves14y20

Thanks for the plug for Beeminder and TagTime! They are indeed by exactly the same people, me and Bethany Soule.

In case anyone missed our big pre-launch thing here on LessWrong: http://lesswrong.com/lw/7z1/antiakrasia_tool_like_stickkcom_for_data_nerds/

And, yes, TagTime+Beeminder is an amazing combination, IMHO. We'd love to get a friendlier version of TagTime out the door. There is an Android app that Bethany wrote that's friendlier than the desktop version, but I think there's a lot less value for it on a phone than on your main work computer.

2Manax14y

Interestingly I wrote something very similar to tagtime a number of years ago, and am still using it. I don't do random sampling (didn't think of it at the time), but at 15 minute intervals. I've got short cuts and defaults to remember the last thing I was working on, automatic (and manual) time division when I've worked on multiple projects in the interval. Over the last year, I've gotten it the point where it automatically fills in timesheets for me. Mine too is Perl. Of course, this sort of thing only works as long as you're honest about what you're working on. Sometimes I'm very good about being honest when I've gone off-task, sometimes less so. But it's easy to go back through my logs and find out how much time I've wasted when I intended to be working.

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