I Tracked Every Hour of 2024 as TimeCamp CEO, Here’s What I Learned
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Kamil Rudnicki
- May 16, 2025
- 3 min read

“There are constant pressures toward unproductive and wasteful time-use.”
– Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive, 1967
TLDR: I Tracked 5995 Hours of My Life in a Year — Here’s What I Learned
I tracked all my time for a year (5995h, without sleep) using a calendar and 15 types of activities. I’m pretty happy about my time allocation, but I have some insights about relocating time.
Why I Started Tracking Every Minute
The Motivation: Why a CEO Tracked Every Hour of His Life
As the CEO of TimeCamp, a time tracking software company, I wanted to practice and gain deeper insights into my own productivity patterns. I was curious: where does my time actually go each day?
My Daily Time Tracking System
The Time Tracking Method That Took Less Than 5 Minutes a Day
After some experimentation, I found a system that worked for me:
- I used Google Calendar and Apple Calendar rather than real-time timers (which I found created too much cognitive load in my case)
- I updated my calendar a few times daily, using 15-minute increments
- I integrated TimeCamp computer usage tracking as iCal into Apple Calendar to help remember what I was doing when I forgot: the integration filled out my calendar with the time blocks representing apps/sites I was using
- The entire process took me less than 5 minutes per day
This approach worked because I already lived in my weekly calendar, making it easy to visually see where my time was going. The TimeCamp integration automatically copied my calendar to my timesheet and assigned tasks based on automations I’ve created.
My 15 Time Categories Explained
15 Time Tracking Categories I Used (and Why They Matter)
After researching time tracking methods and analyzing posts in the r/dataisbeautiful subreddit, I settled on these categories:
- Work
- Kids
- Morning routine (getting up, getting kids ready, etc)
- Personal tasks (personal tasks or hobby)
- Waste (useless scrolling, cheap dopamine)
- Chores
- Other
- Travelling
- Relaxation
- Home projects
- Family
- Sick
- Eating
- Education
- Meditation (I’m doing Vipassana meditation)
Key Takeaways from a Year of Time Tracking
What I Learned After Tracking Every Hour for a Year
Generally, I’m pleased with my time allocation, but I discovered some areas for improvement:
- Having to enter activities in the “waste” category made me more conscious about reducing unproductive time
- The app Clearspace helped me significantly reduce cheap dopamine-seeking behaviors
- I identified an opportunity to redirect hundreds of hours from “waste,” “morning routine,” and “chores” categories into more meaningful areas like “kids,” “relaxation,” and “spirituality”
My Top Time Allocation by Category
Where My Time Went: Top Categories and Time Splits
Custom Tools That Made It All Work
Tools I Built to Track and Analyze Time (Free & Open Source)
To help analyze my data, I created a small Chrome Plugin that cleans up Google Calendar data and generates statistics. You can find it on GitHub and Chrome Plugin Marketplace.
📁 Full Report Access
Download the Full Time Tracking Report (PDF + PNG)
For those interested in the complete breakdown:
💻 Bonus: My Most Used Apps and Websites
Top Tools & Websites I Spent the Most Time On
In addition to hours, TimeCamp has also been tracking my computer activity, so I could quickly assess which tools I’ve been using the most since the beginning of 2024.

Data source: TimeCamp usage tracking, 2024