I've heard for years about the concept of tracking how you spend your time. I hear that over a long period of time, it provides a really useful way to understand better how you spend your time, and gives insight into how you want to improve.

So, I figured I'll give time tracking a shot. I don't really know what I'm looking for, honestly - the idea is that I'll look over the numbers every 3-4 months, see what looks good and what I'd like to change, and figure it out from there.

The downside of not having a starting point is not really knowing what different categories I should keep track of - or how granularly I should track them. Is "day job" vs "side job" sufficient enough? Or should I break it down by project, or by "kind of work?" (design/code/admin, etc) As I understand it, that's something else that I'll have a better idea of as I get more data and more used to the whole idea.

As I think about this I keep thinking back to my financial budget. It's pretty much the exact same idea, just using time instead of money. I've had a working budget for a couple of years now, and it's still always changing - I just readjusted the categories on it this month, and I'll probably be adjusting it for years to come. (By the way, the technical process of making that spreadsheet was fun and involved lots of formulas I've never used before - I'll probably write on that experience in the future for the benefit of fellow aspiring spreadsheet nerds like myself.)

In that spirit, I'm going to go ahead and start with just my best guess as to how to organize the time entries. I'm using Toggl for this, as I hear that it's the most well-rounded go-to for this sort of thing. I know it's got an API and other apps that can work with it and so on and so forth. More options to open up automation make this whole thing possible long-term.

I'll report back in several months, I suppose! If I can remember to do the actual entries. If I actually see anything in the data. If it's interesting enough to write about. Till then!