I Tracked Every Hour of 2024 as TimeCamp CEO, Here’s What I Learned 📊

Contents hide

1 TLDR: I Tracked 5995 Hours of My Life in a Year — Here’s What I Learned

2 Why I Started Tracking Every Minute

3 My Daily Time Tracking System

4 My 15 Time Categories Explained

5 Key Takeaways from a Year of Time Tracking

6 My Top Time Allocation by Category

7 Custom Tools That Made It All Work

8 📁 Full Report Access

9 💻 Bonus: My Most Used Apps and Websites

“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:

Open full report in PDF

Open full report in PNG

💻 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.