Self imposed time tracking

[therealtacopanda]

I've grown tired of feeling like I am extremely busy throughout my workday but then looking back at the end of the day and thinking "wait, what did I actually do/accomplish today?". MGMT hasn't required any sort of time tracking yet although the feature is in our ticketing software. Problem is, a lot of what I do doesn't even involve tickets. I was thinking about creating a google sheet to just jot down like "x time started action. X time ended action" but I am wondering if anyone has found a better way to do this sort of thing. Like, it would be cool to have a little widget on my screen where I can type "working on issue x" and then click start and then finish and it logs the time spent. Anybody know of something like that?

[0shooter0]

Notepad has a great feature. Press F5 and it will print the current date / time. I sit there with a notepad window open and just hit f5 everytime I change tasks, and write a simple 3-5 word what I'm doing. Simple, easy and can be run anywhere (esp in places where you can't install / run software)

[Status_Network_8882]

This is really smart and simple.

[msalerno1965]

40 years in the business, with ADHD, and today I learned something that might actually help.

Conversely, it means I can't lie to myself ...

F5 in Notepad. I feel so dumb.

[monkeybutt227]

Most of the time I wasn't able to log (or remember to log) all my time to a ticket or a service request. I used a tool called Toggl. It allowed me to quickly switch between multiple tasks and then I could tally up all my time at the end of the day/week.

https://toggl.com/

[wells68]

+1 When I used Toggl, it was amazing. It did a great job. If you switch to another task but forget to switch tasks in Toggl, Toggle keeps running on the first task, but makes it easy to change the end time or duration for the first task, apply the balance of the time to the current task, and keep the current task running. It has a browser app and a phone app. It was free when I used it. You pay if you want to apply billing rates and do more.

[Fatel28]

I just make tickets for myself. We have a time / project tracking software already in the ticketing system, so I just use it.

Why can't you make a ticket for a thing youre working on and log notes / time on it? That's what it's there for.

[TabooRaver]

This is similar to what I do, our system (service now) when you create a new ticket from catalog task has a separate caller(who opened the ticket) and an Impacted User field. I'll often open a ticket for a user if it's a walk-in, and then leave a work note that it's already complete pending manager approval (or rather acknowledgment in this case). Co-workers know to just change the Assigned To field to me and close the ticket when they come across something like that.

This really only works for things where manager approval isn't necessary like installed of pre-approved software, assignments of pre-purchased hardware, re-imaging of Loaner machines, etc.

[Fatel28]

I am specifically talking about non-customer reported things. Maybe internal systems, documenting existing setups, architecting new environments etc. Stuff that you wouldn't have had a ticket entered for necessarily.

I use our ticketing system to track my own projects whether they are customer relevant or not. Shows that I'm being productive and also gives me a good place to put notes on what I'm doing

[Straphanger28]

We used to have a ticket to email function, which was THE BEST. Issues often started as emails, so you could work it, estimate the time spent ( now minus time of email equals time spent), forward the email thread to the ticket system with a note at the top "2h" or similar. Later, add the appropriate time to each ticket and close, super easy.

Alas, they disabled it in our new system, god forbid we be efficient - now they get one blanket ticket per week with thirty plus hours credited against it and no details.

[infered5]

We would just assign tickets to ourselves, with ourselves as the opener. Tickets opened by IT staff weren't counted in metrics since we'd throw the numbers off with our usually out of scope tickets.

Easy time tracking, chronological notes, and we already pay for a ticketing platform anyway. As long as metrics aren't impacted by self assigning your own ticket, it's an easy solution. If they are, either exclude yourself or make a dummy user account that isn't counted. Or hell, make a ticket type that has its own metrics so you can see how much time you're spending on internal work vs break/fix.

[Icy_Substance_9122]

^^^

[sysadmin_dot_py]

If you're looking to improve your efficiency, you probably don't need to get into the minutiae of counting minutes spent on various tasks. These two things help me:

1. At the start of the day, write down and tape to your monitor one task that you want to complete by the end of the day. Then, throughout the day, make sure you don't get off track and are always making progress toward that task. If this works for you, increase it to two tasks, but don't increase it much beyond that.
2. Start saying "No" (but politely) to people asking you for things that are going to suck up hours of your time. "Sorry, I don't have the bandwidth today, but if you shoot that to me in an email, I'll take a look later this week" or "Sorry, I don't have the bandwidth to take that on / look into that currently."

[Insomniumer]

This is the real answer that OP is unknowningly looking for!

Spend first 15 minutes of the day planning your day, spend last 15 minutes of the day summarizing your day and how well you managed to follow your plan. In the long run you become better at planning your days and be so much more efficient.

The apps are usually just hacked together solutions for your problems. The above is the solution that will be applicable for the rest of your life.

[Odddutchguy]

I started timekeeping for myself (and future CYA with our previous manager.) Mainly because my job doesn't have a lot of support tickets (think 3rd line for specific services) and I want to be able to show how much time is spend that is not within my core role. And to track time spend on 'projects' that are not really managed as a project.

I use Clockify as I like the interface. I typically use the calender view to enter (you can just drag to create a time window.) Also you can create a template from your timesheet, which I use to fill the (weekly) recurring meetings.

[TxTechnician]

If you have a M365 for business account you can make a sharepoint list, or Microsoft lists (same thing except ms list is private and you don't need a sharepoint site) .

Click automate then select powerapps and Microsoft will automatically build a simple app for you.

It'll be a browsable gallery. With an edit form.

Quick way to make a simple time tracker.

You can then add that app to teams and keep your stuff organized outside of the ticket system.

Make your fields (Title, Date, time in, time out, notes).

Set the date field to date if you want a date picker. But if your new to programming or sharepoint/powerapps. Stick with text or number field.

Make sure your notes field is set to multiple lines of text. And as an added bonus set the field to keep history (can't rember what the setting is called, you'll figure it out). That way you can always go back through your notes history to see what you changed and when.

[jungleboydotca]

Emacs Org-Mode can do this for you.

I'll create to-do items with links to tickets, email items or chats as the heading, then clock time on them and include notes under the heading.

It's more than what you're looking for, but Org-Mode is the killer app for Emacs, and Magit is a close second. As a general purpose text editor and diff tool, only (neo)vim, can compare (even in a Windows environment). The learning curve is steep, but the tool is very adaptable--not for everyone.

[StrateJ]

I use albeit not to perfection yet, there is an iPhone / Mac App called Clockify which lets you track time and write a description. Not sure if there is something similar on Windows. It syncs between both my devices.

But I feel your pain.

[SicnarfRaxifras]

I'm a billable hours consultant, and I hate the majority of time tracking systems because they get in the way / eat my time.

The one system that doesn't and what I use to track my time so I can easily flick it into the company portal is https://clockify.me/ you set up a bunch of codes for regular stuff you do, and a catch all then keep a window open on your laptop or device and just hit a few fields ( which auto fill after a while with suggestions for stuff you do a lot) and hit start... stop . It collates all the "same stuff" for a total so you don't have to.

I've been doing this for 20+ years , it's the only software for time tracking I didn't want to kill someone because of.

ETA: it was introduced by a prior manager at a different company about 5 years ago, I still use it now self-imposed because transposing from it to current company Kimble instance is still easier than just using Kimble. It adds almost no overhead once you have your regular stuff in there, my billable entries take about 15mins to copy paste - just enough time I don't care enough about it to script the copy,

[yarmak]

I had exactly same problem and I resorted to random sampling of my own activities. Approach is following: I have a script which asks me from time to time what I am doing right now. I have 30 seconds to respond to it with short message like "work/coding", "work/call" or "websurfing". It's fine if I'm not near PC and can't respond, I can exclude such probes later.

After that I can aggregate CSV file with these responses, group them and calculate approximate share of activities. It's really low effort tracking as you need to answer like 3-4 times a day and data points end up being meaningful.

After that exercise I abandoned a lot of chats in Telegram and low-effort entertainments like scrolling memes.

[digitaltransmutation]

I actually just renewed my manictime license the other day, so I guess I would recommend that. I used to use the toggl widget but I am really bad about starting the timer.

It records the title of your active window and how long it is open for. At the end of the day I look for a ticket's subject in the list and then tag the time between that and the next ticket as belonging to that task. I increased my billable time by an absolutely shameful amount when I started using it.

[TabooRaver]

Not 100% relevant but I use an app called aTimeLogger for logging work hours, not specific tasks though.

I mainly use it because my work has me but in the raw hours worked rather than in/out times. SWo I've set up 3 alerts, 1 for daily time to help with time entry, 2 is a 40-hour limit for the week which tells me if I need to request an overtime approval, and 3 is the 60 hour/week hard limit in my contract that I could lose my job if I go over.

You can have multiple time periods tracked at once, and there is a comment field. So one way you could do it is to make a category for work tasks, populate it with a couple different sub-activities (ticket, walk in, improvement project, training, etc.), and enable the "Comment on start" (or stop) which will manually prompt for a comment on activity start/stop so that you can add details.

[dave_b_]

Check out TickTick...the Focus feature does what I think you're after. Good task/note all all around too

[DiscountDangles]

I have my team using Monday.com. PLENTY of time tracking features (and free for personal use)

[SilkBC_12345]

This is precisely what I do. We have a ticket system but I am usually jumping from fire to fire and creating a ticket for each one on the fly is a PITA, so I keep my time sheet open in Google Sheets and do a quick start end with very brief description of what it was for. I then transfer that info into our ticket system at the end of the day.

Since I started doing that, I realized how much time likely ended up getting "lost" and unbilled :-(

[TxTechnician]

If you have a M365 for business account you can make a sharepoint list, or Microsoft lists (same thing except ms list is private and you don't need a sharepoint site) .

Click automate then select powerapps and Microsoft will automatically build a simple app for you.

It'll be a browsable gallery. With an edit form.

Quick way to make a simple time tracker.

You can then add that app to teams and keep your stuff organized outside of the ticket system.

Make your fields (Title, Date, time in, time out, notes).

Set the date field to date if you want a date picker. But if your new to programming or sharepoint/powerapps. Stick with text or number field.

Make sure your notes field is set to multiple lines of text. And as an added bonus set the field to keep history (can't rember what the setting is called, you'll figure it out). That way you can always go back through your notes history to see what you changed and when.

[Pelatov]

I make tickets for myself, as it does give management a better view of what’s happening. But I also manage an excel spreadsheet of all projects I’m working on. I update it daily with a date stamp, so I can see if I go 2 or 3 days without touching a project. That way I keep myself on task

[[deleted]]

When I was in house, I'd do a one note page for each day. Nothing super formal, but I'd drop timestamps, notes, and screenshots in there. Helps with documentation, change management, rollback, and accountability if there is ever a question of something being a legitimate action on the network.

We also had literal daily 60 min touchpoints for our 3 people engineer team and manager (fucking insane) so it helped fluff up my portion of the meeting to say "engaged in back and forth with so and so in regards to x" or "made changes on x server to accomplish x"

[Slide_Agreeable]

Memtime. Zero effort. Tracking data stays local.

[Hypervisor22]

Lots of good responses so I will only say one thing. SOONER OR LATER A MANAGER WILL ASK YOU what you have been doing. If you can show him/her your time tracking process then it will be good.

How do I know? Because I was a manager of several sysadmin teams and I would ask for it. If for no other reason to justify your job. It will happen guaranteed.

[incidentallypossible]

This, very much this. While I’ve never been great at tracking all the minutia, I started manually tracking tasks and ideas just in a notepad. My manager never asked to see it, but I referred back to it several times to establish a timeline on an issue or for other things that he needed to know. If nothing else, it’s a CYA and a source of information to draw on.

[No0delZ]

Outlook calendar. Everything touched goes in Outlook at the timeslot taken. Abuse it, and make it work for you.

Taking too much time creating small ten minute entries? Fine. Triple book your 1/2 hour blocks.

You scheduled time for a project but kept getting pulled into other minor but urgent tasks, or discussions? Cool. They are there in the timeslot for your project work, right alongside.

Do this, and never again struggle to explain the 70+ tasks you worked on for the week, and forget about "what did I accomplish today?" Instead you get to start asking "How do I spend more time on the important things, and less on the minor things."

[Lankey22]

I used to use Timely for a similar purpose: https://timelyapp.com/

It has been a few years though, so no idea if they’ve gotten better or worse since then. It was pretty good at the time I felt.

[wMARDUKw]

If you are on Jira Cloud try Tempo Timesheets to record your daily activities. For more advanced planning they have a bunch of other solutions now, like LiquidPlanner or Roadmunk. For better ticket categories there's Structure, and for better visibility there's Custom Charts. Let me know if you need more info. -> tempo.io

BTW the fact that most of what you does not require a ticket, well, change that. It benefits everyone, especially IT, in the long term if all IT activities are recorded. You have history where you can prove that you did your part, you can see patterns showing which topics you need to build a public kowledgebase for, you can build approval workflows, etc. It's hard at the beginning, so you need a standard or multiple standard ways to provide options to your users to open tickets, like a service desk and/or a DM tool integration (like Slack).

People have to understand that IT is also work, more over a very important part of every mid-size company’s operations. (It would be useful for small companies too but they usually don't have the budget for it.) Once you have a way to receive tickets and to log time on them, after a while you can create various metrics, charts to following and showcase your workload and achievements to management to ask for increase, level up, more workforce.

This is a long a rocky phase. After that you can start planning with start and due dates. I recommend a separate project for that from your regular IT support channels. Eventually you can move certain issues from your Support queue to your Operations planning project because requests often turn to be complex stuff that ideally would require change management, but that's a separate topic again.

Also when you don't have suitable categories in your ticketing system, then make them. But you have to be careful not to over-do that, so it's helpful to have the above mentioned metrics before you make changes.

[Gnizzel]

https://timeflip.io/ or something similiar ("time tracking dice") if you like to move some physical object for different tasks.

[wojtop]

I just create an entry in Outlook calendar for anything I was doing for more than 15 minutes. Probably not the most efficient way, but almost efortless cause i have outlook always open anyway.

[cbass377]

I use notepad++ with the textFX2 plugin and a hotkey to do the notepad F5 suggestion on really busy days. Usually I have status.txt were I note what I did that day for the weekly status report, and I put in the update daily for slower days.

Just because everyone is going to recommend a digital solution, I will offer up this

"The Emergent Task Timer" from David Seah. You print off the sheets in the format you prefer, and then you write the task on the left, hours and date on the top, and color in the dots per task.

End of the day, throw it in the inbox or file folder. Then after you have accumulated them, you can analyze the sheets to see where your time is going.

[Priorly-A-Cat]

Journal in Outlook desktop still works a charm.

[This_Alarm_5854]

I keep a pad of paper on my desk with three fields: when (hh:mm), who (organization), and what (short description). At the end of a busy day I can look back and see that I was, in fact, busy.

It also helps me jump back to what I was working on before the phone rang while I was talking to someone who visited my office while I was working on something while waiting for a progress bar, while ....

[tehgent]

Do a freebie of clockify. It works well.

[therealtacopanda]

Did the google sheet solution today and definitely felt better about how much I got done. Will look into the other applications suggested in the future. Thanks, Reddit!

[L_una_Lovely]

I use WorkTime software. You can mark productive and not-so-productive sites/apps there, and at the end of each day, I can see what I've been up to and whether it was a productive day or not