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How do *you* use Bubble Timer?
I'm hoping this topic might provide other users with some inspiration on how to use Bubble Timer to your satisfaction. Obviously if I'm the only one talking in this topic it won't be of much use, so please let the others know how *you* use Bubble Timer.
I use Bubble Timer both at home, and at university, in order to track my distractions and performance in both places. I try to fill out every bubble from the moment I wake up till the moment I go to bed. I don't bubble sleep because I find that takes up too much space in the pie-graphs. Usually I fill out the bubbles every 45 minutes to an hour when I think of it. At home I usually have Bubble timer open in a google chrome window together with my gmail inbox and calendar.
To give you a better idea of how I use Bubble Timer, I guess the more specific question to ask is: "What do I keep track of?" Here's a summary of what I keep track of:
Time-wasters (i.e. I have goals to limit this time):
* time I spend on the computer that has no real value
* playing games
* time I spend on a little hobby of mine (movie-related)
* watching TV
Neutral activities:
* I have one activity called 'Survival' which encompasses everything from showering, eating, cleaning dishes to travelling and taking a little break.
* Social activities: everything from being on the phone with a friend, to talking to housemates, or going out. While this could be a waste of time, I'm not really setting any 'less than x hours' goals here since social activities usually help me 'living' ;).
* appointments: no point setting any goals here, either I have an appointment or I don't.
Goals:
* work I do on my research project
* time I spend on classes I'm taking
* playing volleyball
* reading
How do *you* use Bubble Timer and what do you keep track of? Please let us know!
I use Bubble Timer both at home, and at university, in order to track my distractions and performance in both places. I try to fill out every bubble from the moment I wake up till the moment I go to bed. I don't bubble sleep because I find that takes up too much space in the pie-graphs. Usually I fill out the bubbles every 45 minutes to an hour when I think of it. At home I usually have Bubble timer open in a google chrome window together with my gmail inbox and calendar.
To give you a better idea of how I use Bubble Timer, I guess the more specific question to ask is: "What do I keep track of?" Here's a summary of what I keep track of:
Time-wasters (i.e. I have goals to limit this time):
* time I spend on the computer that has no real value
* playing games
* time I spend on a little hobby of mine (movie-related)
* watching TV
Neutral activities:
* I have one activity called 'Survival' which encompasses everything from showering, eating, cleaning dishes to travelling and taking a little break.
* Social activities: everything from being on the phone with a friend, to talking to housemates, or going out. While this could be a waste of time, I'm not really setting any 'less than x hours' goals here since social activities usually help me 'living' ;).
* appointments: no point setting any goals here, either I have an appointment or I don't.
Goals:
* work I do on my research project
* time I spend on classes I'm taking
* playing volleyball
* reading
How do *you* use Bubble Timer and what do you keep track of? Please let us know!
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Inappropriate?Thank you for posting this Tijl, I have found it most helpful and will prob. be stealing that "Social Activities" one!
What I am finding out works best for me (a non-single type) is to mainly focus on keeping track of the things that tend to get overdone or underdone. The rest can be filed under Broad categories so I don't spend too much time over analyzing stuff, which I tend to do to a flaw.
So in my case it looks a bit like this:
-Personal time:
* Anything I do for myself and by myself which mainly benefits... myself(?). For example showering, time on the web. eating, staring at the moon etc.
-Family Time:
* Watching a movie or tv (unless done alone, if alone then it gets done under personal time), dishes and any other house chores are family time since it is done for everyone's wellbeing. Having conversations/interacting around the house would also count as family Time.
*Hanky panky = damn right it counts as family time.
* Changing a DIAPER = SMELLY FAMILY TIME.
(I never realized how much I do until bubbletiming these, I swear that pie-chart will make the wifee appreciate me more!)
- Work:
*To almost quote that office space guy... "all told I have found that I do about 3 hours of real work each day."
Those are the BIG ones and take most of my day, and I am learning to self regulate using this tool. Now I know where I can make the time so I can get to the other activities that do need to be singled out and nurtured. Things like
-Exercise,
-Reading,
-Business Project
etc.
1 person says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Tijl,
What a fantastic question! I think I'll be posting something like this to the blog so that maybe we'll get more users feedback since everyone will see it. I guess it is only fair that I say how I use it since I wrote the thing:
My main issue is that I have WAY, WAY more ideas for how I want to spend my time then there actually is time in a day. If things I wanted to do were food, I'd weigh 800 pounds. I work, I have a small business, I do some consulting, I go to school, I volunteer at a non-profit, I'm writing a book, I play on multiple sports teams, and I have a family. It makes me tired just thinking about it all. I don't sleep much and I don't watch much TV, so those two are covered!
I don't bubble in all my time. For me, it's about making sure the time during the "work day" is well spent. The "work day" for me is 4AM to 7PM, give or take an hour. I don't track time outside of those hours because I'm either with the wife or family or sleeping. I do have an activity called "Personal" that I use for many things during the 4AM-7PM block. If I take a shower, go out to lunch with my wife, go to a function at my kid's school, etc.
Other than that, it's about making sure I spend my time where I need to to achieve the important things in my life. 8 hours minimum on the job during the week, and then 7 hours left to make sure each project is getting enough attention to keep it moving forward each day. Am I spending enough time on BubbleTimer? On my school work? All of my goals are "greater thans", not "less thans". I just wish I had any time to spend on something I wanted to be doing less of!
When I get goals for different days of the week and weekly goals implemented in BubbleTimer I will benefit as they both fit very well with what I do. My weekend goals are very different than my weekday goals and for some of my projects what matters is that I put in enough time each week, and on others (such as BubbleTimer customer support!) what matters is that I spend a little time on it each day.
In the end... I consider myself a very successful and productive person. Unlike most people I've made a conscious decision about where I want to spend the time in my day and I measure it and compare it to what I'm actually doing, trying to keep the two as aligned as possible. Since I've been doing this (starting with David Seah's paper sheets) my life has gotten considerably better and I'm happier.
Thanks for the great conversation starter.
Sean
I’m exhausted
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This answers the question
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It's still on my list of things to blog about. Hopefully more people will see it then. I'll work that into the blog schedule next week.
-Sean -
Inappropriate?I use BubbleTimer for several reasons.
The most importand first: A few weeks ago I was asked about my main goals. Since I am GTD-addicted it was completely aware of what my goals are. Then I asked myself how much time I invest every day to achieve these goals.. and to my surprise I HAD NO CLUE! I really did not know.
So I started searching for a nice, clean solution to track the time I spend every day. And I'm really impressed by how I actually use and waste time..
As a reaction to the results, I am now using BubbleTimer to motivate myself to spend more time on productive stuff and less time on surfing, doing nothing, watching tv.
It also helps me to get a complete picture of the time I have for doing non-scheduled stuff.
Btw I use BubbleTimer in Firefox (opens with Quicksilver via Apple+B) and can't wait to track my time via iPhone.
I’m sooo happy!
1 person says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?I was gonna post this in a separate topic, but then decided not to since it really is just a humorous question of out of pure curiosity...
When you spend time here on Get Satisfaction reading the topics about Bubble Timer, what activity do you file this under?
Personally, I file it under 'Wasted CPU Time', which could pretty much be 'frivoling' under Qrystal's definition. In a sense, spending time here is a good thing, ' cause hopefully it'll make Bubble Timer better which in turn should make my life more productive, but then... I should really be working on my research project right now, not browsing support forums, so... :P... dilemma.
I’m amused
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This answers the question
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That's a good meta question.... along with, when you are pondering what activity to bubble something under, what activity is that? And what activity is wondering what activity that is?
I for one am lucky. I bubble my time here under an activity called "BubbleTimer" and I get to count it as productive time. If any of the rest of you (except Eric) has an activity called "BubbleTimer" than I have failed miserably and need to go back to the drawing board.
-Sean -
I think there's a difference though between "using bubbletimer" and "giving feedback to bubbletimer employees ;)". I think I do stay around that 5 minutes for allowed BubbleTimer use you allowed yourself, but when it comes to feedback it takes a lot more time. But then... I think it's time worth spending :).
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Inappropriate?Tijl,
I'm glad you do think it's worthwhile. When everyone is learning more about themselves from their BubbleTimer powered Tijl heatmap they will be glad too.
-Sean -
Inappropriate?I just started using Bubble Timer and it's been wonderful so far. I use the service to track essential categories of my life. I don't bother with sleep, eating, cleaning, showering, etc. Only categories like reading, travel, exercise, email, personal development, etc. Categories that I feel I need time management to make more efficient. I will keep BubbleTimer open 24 hours a day in a Chrome window along with my music. On my personal computer, I had Chrome make BubbleTimer into a program so now it runs on its own.
There is one issue with BubbleTimer which I think would be EXTREMELY valuable:
the ability to have multiple bubble sheets.
If I could have one sheet for work with my meetings, different queues I spend time in, travel, email, etc. and then one for life with entirely different items in it, I would dance with happiness. Right now if I wanted to do this, I would have to spend $40 on two separate accounts and then log in and out of each account any time I wanted to add time. This would be a hassle and expensive. Right now it works alright to put everything on one sheet but it would be fantastic if I could analyze how I spend time at work separately from how I spend my time at home.
Other than that one improvement, BubbleTimer is perfect for its purpose. Keep up the fantastic work and I really hope you implement multiple time sheets somewhere down the road. Thanks!
I’m happy
1 person says
this answers the question
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This answers the question
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I agree. My current sheet is becoming unwieldy... so it takes me a few secs to locate the item, and bubble, every 15 minutes. Just enough time for me to ponder if it is worth it.
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cmagnuson,
I've been thinking on this one a bit. If you had categories that were collapsible (meaning they would collapse down to just one line) then each "sheet" could be a collapsed category. This would give you nearly the same functionality as multiple "sheets". Think this would work well for you?
Thanks,
Sean -
Sean-
That sounds great! Actually, your idea probably works better than having different 'sheets'. If the categories could collapse/expand without the page having to reload, that would be best. The reload time would get very annoying if I was trying to rapidly move between different categories.
Do you think color coating different categories would also be possible? I work visually so if there is a clear distinction, even beyond the separation into categories, my eyes and mind will be a lot happier.
Thanks for being so receptive to our ideas! I feel like very few web services actually have this kind of dialogue with their users but when they do it makes a huge difference.
-Charles -
Charles,
OK, great... I'm glad it will work. Tijl has also pushed for the ability to color code the activities (and everything else, Tijl loves color).
As much as all that extra color will hurt my color minimalism soul... At this point I plan on supporting color coding the activities. I'll post some mockups here in the forums soon.
Like most things in BubbleTimer, the collapse/expand will happen without a page refresh. You've probably noticed, other than leaving the app. (like going to the blog or support tabs) the only thing that causes a page refresh is changing days. Refreshing the page takes a few seconds for you and is pretty expensive on the server... so I'm committed to keeping refreshes to just changing the day.
Thanks,
Sean -
Haha, let me clarify a little bit. I'm all for *subtle* colors. I don't want a colored mess like MySpace where every page causes your eyes to feel as if they were ears next to a bunch of concert speakers. Since your lovely blue has quite the pastel feel to it, I'd vote for other subdued pastel colors to distinguish categories.
I like your idea for the collapsible categories/sheets! -
Alright, I have you down as a +1 vote on the new MySpace theme for BubbleTimer. Got it.
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Inappropriate?Abe, cmagnuson,
Hmm... that is interesting... it never occurred to me. Let me think on this a bit.
Thanks!
Sean
I’m thinking about a neat idea
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This answers the question
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Thanks Sean. Because the truth is, as the novelty wears off, I'm using BT a little less each day. I need to be able to find the item I'm working on quickly, and without too much fuss.
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Abe,
There are some features coming that will help with these, auto-completion of activity names on add and joining them up with their previous instance means you can more freely delete activities that you won't be doing for a bit of time. Categories with collapse will also help you to find the activity quickly as well.
You should probably take a few minutes to ask yourself some questions about the granularity at which you are tracking activities however. You've already made the decision to only track time in 15 minute increments (or you wouldn't use BubbleTimer) because you agree that time tracking is a means, not an ends, and you agree that it is inherently imprecise. So also question the activities you are tracking. Is knowing you are spending 15 minutes on A and 15 minutes on B more helpful than knowing you are spending 30 minutes on AB? What are you going to do with the knowledge? You may be able to answer in the affirmative, if so, keep A and B. But for those where you can't, consider if a less granular activity (AB) would work just as well for you.
Thanks,
Sean -
"Is knowing you are spending 15 minutes on A and 15 minutes on B more helpful than knowing you are spending 30 minutes on AB? What are you going to do with the knowledge?"
Good point to consider when adding more activities. It might be fun to know how much time you spend making love to your girl friend vs playing volleyball, but... It's both (social) exercise, right? :D -
Tijl,
You BETTER hope your (soon to be ex?) girlfriend doesn't ever read this. If I were to categorize making love to my wife with playing hockey I'd have a new to-do on my list... read over the divorce papers.
:D -
Luckily (?) I'm without girl friend at the moment, so I'm pretty safe.
:D -
Sean's forthcoming features
"auto-completion of activity names on add and joining them up with their previous instance means you can more freely delete activities that you won't be doing for a bit of time. Categories with collapse will also help you to find the activity quickly as well."
sound fantastic - I've just been dealing with the unwieldy long list too, but was worrying about deleting activities because I might not name them the same next time and then I'd have no continuity, so you've totally answered my worry. I look forward to the categorisation and all this new stuff! -
Emily, delete away. This feature has been there for a a few months (though was broken for much of April, how embarrassing).
Thanks,
Sean -
Inappropriate?My bubble sheet is definitely getting rather unwieldy, because of so many items on it. See?
I try to keep things organized by the symbols I put around each activity name, and by the order of activities listed. I'm definitely looking forward to categories though, so all the positive recreational stuff (marked with a tilde ~) can be collapsed! I really like to make sure my recreational time is well spent on things that are important to me, so that I am not tempted to use work time on those things... and to further reduce the temptation, it would be nice to hide them when I'm working. :)
My categories would probably be: Life, Work, Play, and Waste -- or Frivoling might just be a top-level, uncategorized thing, depending on how graphing and goals are done with categories. We'll see! :)
To answer the meta-questions:
I sometimes count my time here at GetSatisfaction as 'Frivoling', but sometimes I count it as 'writing', because it is a good way for me to practice presenting my thoughts and ideas to others.
Pondering which Bubble (or going back to fill in past bubbles that were missed) I classify as 'organizing'. There's lots of other things I do that fit into this activity though, which is why it warrants its own spot on my chart. I have a goal to keep this under 30 minutes a day, but Mondays I usually fail because I'm planning my week, and Fridays I'll also probably fail because I intend to do my Weekly Review then.
Cheers~!
I’m enjoying this!
1 person says
this answers the question
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This answers the question
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Thanks for posting that shot. I love how you decided to use all the symbols... { [ ~ etc. That's a really good visual key to latch onto for the activity. It may help some other people struggling to quickly find the right one in a long list of activities (Abe, I'm thinking about you here).
It's a good enough idea I've added it to the list to blog about.. and I'm thinking it might be worth adding to the app. at some point (let you pick graphical glyph that goes with the task).
Do you mind if I use your screenshot in the blog?
Thanks!
Sean -
While it probably works well to put symbols around your activities, I think the implementation of (colored) categories will be the more professional looking path to distinguish your activities. :P (No offense intended ;))
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We've got a monkey with a bubble pipe.... we left professionalism at the door long ago.
:D -
Soap smoking monkeys, myspace themes,... Great.
**starts googling for "alternative time tracking applications"**
Nah, just kidding ;) -
Personally, I think my use of symbols is a bit tacky... I'd much rather just have categories, and/or colours, and/or line separators. I may still use some symbols, when all is said and done, but for now it's really just a work in progress. I'd be happy to post a new screenie when the time is right. :)
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Thanks for teaching me another new word: "tacky" --> lacking style or good taste :). Agreed! :D
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Now that your tackiness has been blogged about. It's permanent. Google already has it in its grasp. The Internet NEVER forgets.
-Sean -
You know... I never thought support forums could be so much fun. Seriously :D. Kudos to the crew for that! ;)
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I've always thought, if you can't make something fun, you probably shouldn't be doing it.
-Sean -
Inappropriate?In addition to all the great input here. I've been deluged with this request in email over the last week. It's definitely got everyone's attention.
I'm going to revise my priorities a little bit and tackle categories before notes.
Thanks,
Sean
I’m seeing categories zoom to the top of the wish list.
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This answers the question
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Great!
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It's only because BubbleTimer rocks, and people want to do SO MUCH with it! Goodspeed with the categories!
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