Time planning

See also
A time budgeting workflow
How to set up a time budget
Simon's hledger time dashboard (2018)

Some notes relating to time tracking and budgeting.

A time budgeting workflow

A summary of Simon's 2018-2019 time budgeting workflow:

I keep a hledger timedot file open in a text-mode Emacs in a drop-down iTerm hotkey window.

Each 15-minute chunk is logged with a dot. I group the dots into hours for quick visual scanning. I use comments as temporary reminders, if needed. Sometimes I use M-x align-regexp, [.;] to line up the dots (or comments)

2019-01-08
fos.hledger.sup          .
adm.email                ..
adm.finance              .... .... ..
fos.hledger.issues.941   .... .
fos.plaintextaccounting  ; 1045
biz.dev                  ; do such and such

I've trained myself to update this often while at the computer, and before walking away. If I forget, retroactive logging is also pretty easy. These help:

work in quarter/half/whole hour chunks, preferably synced with the clock
have a script or updating terminal pane showing today's sleep/wake/timelog-saved times, to jog the memory.

Not every day is the same; this system has been quick and flexible enough to suit a range of conditions.

How to set up a time budget

I can set daily/weekly/monthly time budgets if I want:

create a time.journal which includes your (timedot or timeclock) time log file (assuming you're not tracking time in journal format)
```
# time.journal
include time.timedot
```
choose a budget interval, eg daily, weekly or monthly
if you have some historical timelog data, review average spending on that interval to get a baseline
```
$ hledger -f time.journal date:thisyear bal -WA
```
in time.journal add a periodic transaction rule to allocate budget amounts, similar to baseline, on that interval
```
~ weekly
    (adm:time)       1h
    (ser:some:proj)  4h
```

run a budget report, using the same interval:

$ hledger -f time.journal bal --budget -W
Balance changes in 2017/11/27w48:

            ||     2017/11/27w48 
===============++===================
adm:time      || 0.25h [25% of 1h] 
ser:some:proj || 0.75h [19% of 4h] 
---------------++-------------------
            ||             1.00h

Simon's hledger time dashboard (2018)

Here's how I have been logging time for a few years. I have four files:

time-2018.timedot is the current year's time log. It contains daily entries in timedot-ish format, like:

2018/5/7
adm.email             20m
inc.client1.enh.1342  .... .
inc.client1.enh.1188  .
inc.client1.enh.1335  ..
fos.hledger.support

time.journal is in journal format so it can include multiple timedot file(s) and provide an account alias allowing period instead of colon in account names:
```
; allow . as subaccount separator in timedot files
alias /\./=:

;include time-2016.timedot
;include time-2017.timedot
include time-2018.timedot
```

time-daily.budget defines some daily goals, optionally date-bounded, using periodic transaction(s):

~ daily  ; [from Y/M/D] [to Y/M/D]
    (adm)    1  ; your goals here
    (inc)    1
    (fos)    1

time-weekly.budget defines some weekly goals. I like to set these independently of the above, which in current hledger means they must be in a separate file:
```
~ weekly  ; [from Y/M/D] [to Y/M/D]
    (adm)    1
    (biz)    1
    (inc)    1
    (fos)    1
```

The monthly budget reuses the weekly goals.

I have an iTerm2 Hotkey Window (a terminal that drops down on ALT-space) with six panes:

a bash script showing latest laptop wake/sleep and timelog save times, as a memory aid for time logging:

tlogwatch

(Here's that script, useful only to mac users; please show me something better!):

 # record timelog update times
 export TIMELOG=$HOME/time-2018.timedot
 alias timelogsaved="ls -lT $TIMELOG | cut -d' ' -f8-11"
 alias timelogaccessed="ls -lTu $TIMELOG | cut -d' ' -f8-11"
 alias timelogcreated="ls -lTU $TIMELOG | cut -d' ' -f8-11"
 
 # show mac sleep/wake & display on/off  events
 alias wakelog="pmset -g log | egrep -E '((Sleep|Wake) +\t|Display is)' | sed -E \
       -e 's/(Notification|Sleep|Wake) *	//' \
       -e 's/is turned //' \
       -e 's/Entering Sleep state/Sleep/' \
       "
 
 # show recent wakeup/timelog save times to help with time logging, clipped to screen width
 # The width clipping is to help watch display this in dashboard.
 function tlog()
 {
   LINES=${1:-20}
   ( wakelog | tail -$LINES
     printf " \n"
     printf "$(timelogcreated) timelog created\n"
     printf "$(timelogsaved) timelog saved\n"
     printf "$(timelogaccessed) timelog accessed\n"
   ) | cut -c-$(expr $COLUMNS - 1)
 }
 
 # run a brief tlog report periodically, passing any args to watch
 function tlogwatch()
 {
   LINES=${1:-20}
   shift
   watch -t -n60 $@ "bash -ic 'tlog '$LINES"
 }
 # TODO why does "tlogwatch 10" give "sh: 10: command not found" ?

a text-mode emacs for updating the time log:
```
emacs -nw time-2018.timedot
```

-5: updating (using entr) time budget reports for the current day/week/month, using hledger 1.9.1+:

ls time.journal time-2018.timedot time-daily.budget  | entr sh -c 'clear; hledger -f time.journal -f time-daily.budget  bal --budget -1 -D date:today-tomorrow'

ls time.journal time-2018.timedot time-weekly.budget | entr sh -c 'clear; hledger -f time.journal -f time-weekly.budget bal --budget -1 -W date:thisweek-nextweek'

ls time.journal time-2018.timedot time-weekly.budget | entr sh -c 'clear; hledger -f time.journal -f time-weekly.budget bal --budget -1 -M date:thismonth-nextmonth'

an updating hledger-ui for exploring time usage (shift-up/down to resize period, shift-left/right to step through time, t to return to today):
```
hledger-ui --watch --change date:today -f time.journal
```

hledger

Time planning

See also

A time budgeting workflow

How to set up a time budget

Simon's hledger time dashboard (2018)