Introduction

The rtimelog program is a time-tracking and reporting system that has grown over several years to meet my needs. It’s main features are a simple log file format and a straight-forward command line tool.

Unlike many time-trackers, rtimelog focuses on entering tasks easily and simple reporting, rather than fancy GUI interfaces. The idea is that in a fancier tracking tool, you are more likely to spend time using the tool to track time rather than getting work accomplished. Moreover, I am quite comfortable working with a command line, that’s all I focused on.

Conventions

Since this is a command line tool, most of the examples show running the program in a shell. The code that you would type in the command line will be in a block and preceded by a $ character. Any lines shown without the $ in the same block are the response from the program.

This is a command without any response.

  $ rtimelog start +project @Code

This is a command with a response.

  $ rtimelog curr
  +project @Code

Using rtimelog

To use rtimelog, you will need to install the program and do at least minimal configuration. The tool supports some customization that you can use to simplify your use of the program and make it more efficient for how you need to track time.

Getting Started

When you are getting started using rtimelog, there are a couple of steps that you will do once and then never again: installing the program and initializing it.

Installation

Since rtimelog is written in Rust, the easiest way to install it is from crates.io using the cargo application. If you have cargo installed, type the following on the command line.

  $ cargo install rtimelog

If you are interested in checking out the source of the tool, you can get the latest version from the gitlab repo. You will still need to build a Rust executable to make use of rtimelog.

Initialization

The rtimelog program requires a directory where it stores its log files. This directory may be specified in the .timelogrc configuration file in your home directory. If that file does not exist, the program defaults to the timelog directory in your home directory.

You can use the init command to set up the configuration file and directory for you. If the default configuration is satisfactory, just run the following command:

  $ rtimelog init

If you would like to change the directory where the logs are stored, supply that directory path as an argument to the init command.

  $ rtimelog init ~/my_timelog

Note

For more information about configuring the program, check out the configuration section of the Manual.

A Day in the Life

In this example, we will see most of the rtimelog commands you would use in a normal day. The start and stop commands are the minimum that you would need, but we will go a bit further.

To begin tracking a task, you use the start command and supply text to describe the task you are beginning. The rtimelog program assumes that you are only working a single thing at a time. I originally tried to support the ability to track more than one task at a time and found that I never actually used it.

Let’s walk through an example. While walking this example, you will probably find the amount of typing to be a bit much. The rtimelog program supports features to reduce the amount of typing. The Customized Day example shows how I would have customized my configuration for this work. It doesn’t have all of the explanation, so you might want to go there next.

Morning

You’ve just started your day and decide to clear your email before focusing on coding. As soon as you’ve logged in, you start a task named Email in the Admin project.

Tip

A project like Admin is useful for administrative tasks that don’t necessarily fit into an actual project. That pseudo-project helps track little tasks that can consume too much of your day if you aren’t paying attention.

A task is made up of several optional parts (at least one of which must be there):

a project (first group of non-whitespace characters beginning with ‘+’)
a task name (first group of non-whitepsace characters beginning with ‘@’)
explanatory details for the task

  $ rtimelog start +Admin @Email

Info

One design decision for rtimelog is that it only tracks one task at a time. Whatever task you are working on is stopped when you start a new one.

After you finish clearing email, you decide to take advantage of the morning quiet and dig into the work on the processing module for the Foo project. This is a fairly intense chunk of work, so you want to take it on when you have time.

  $ rtimelog start +Foo @Code processing module

Tip

We’re going to call this task @Code despite the fact that you will be doing design and writing unit tests while you work on the code. Those kinds of work can all be collected under Code to avoid wasting time with unnecessarily detailed task tracking.

After about an hour and a half, you are pretty comfortable with the changes to the processing module. But, you decide to test the impact of the new code on the performance of the system, so you decide to do a little performance measuring. Since this is a little diversion and you plan to come back to coding when you finish, you decide to push the old task onto the stack while starting a new task. This will simplify returning to the coding task when you are ready.

The push command performs two actions. First, it pushes your current task only the stack so that you can resume it later. Then, it starts the new task that you provided to push.

  $ rtimelog push +Foo @PerfTest processing module

Tip

We are in the same project, so rtimelog will be able to report the cumulative total of the last two tasks when generating a report. Since we plan to come right back to coding after the test, let’s use push instead of start to temporarily move to a new task.

After half an hour, you’ve identified some performance bottlenecks and return to coding in order to fix what you’ve found. So, let’s resume the coding work. Since it’s been half an hour, you might want to confirm that you are resuming what you thought you were working on, so use the stack top command to see what it on the top of the stack.

  $ rtimelog stack top
  +Foo @Code processing module

Since the last item is code work, let’s resume.

  $ rtimelog resume

Info

The resume command restores the task that was current when the last push or pause command was executed. This way you don’t need to type in the whole command (or up-arrow through your command history) for short interruptions. Since we pushed the previous task, the resume command is equivalent to re-typing the original command: start +Foo @Code processing module.

When you finish tidying up the performance work, you decide to move on to the database module. Since this is not a temporary diversion, you will use start again.

  $ rtimelog start +Foo @Code database module

As noon rolls around, it’s time to take a break for lunch. We can use pause to stop what we are doing after pushing the current task on the stack to resume later.

  $ rtimelog pause

Afternoon

When you get back from lunch, you decide to take care of any morning email before your team meeting at 1pm. You start the +Admin @Email task again.

  $ rtimelog start +Admin @Email

Tip

Wouldn’t it be nice to start common tasks with less typing? We’ll revisit this in the next chapter.

At 1pm, the conference call with your team begins. You start that task. Since we are going to be talking about the Foo project, make sure to set the project name appropriately.

  $ rtimelog start +Foo @ConfCall Team Meeting

When the meeting is over, you need to change tasks. During the meeting, you agreed to do some general work on the manual for the project’s software. Enter the task to begin working on that.

  $ rtimelog start +Foo @Docs working on manual

About 20 minutes after you start on the manual, Emma comes by to ask about the project you worked on last week. Since this is will be a temporary interruption, we use the push command. Once again, this will make it easier to restore our task when the interruption is over.

  $ rtimelog push +Bar @Help Emma questions

Tip

Interruptions for questions are a great use case for push. You want to be able to resume right back into your current task when you are finished.

When all of Emma’s questions are answered, you go back to the manual work using the resume command.

  $ rtimelog resume

A while later, you’ve finished with the manual for today and want to finish up the work on the database module for the Foo project. Since you paused for lunch, you can once again use resume to pick up where you left off.

Info

Even though this diversion was hours ago, rtimelog still remembers that you pushed a task. This allows you to resume to restore the previous task.

Once again, you’ll probably want to check the top of the stack to confirm you didn’t have anything else waiting.

  $ rtimelog stack top
  +Foo @Code database module

Since the database work was the last thing you paused, go ahead and resume.

  $ rtimelog resume

You get some good uninterrupted time on this and finish up the module in time to stop at 5.

  $ rtimelog stop

Conclusion

Obviously, using rtimelog adds a little bit of overhead to your daily work. This example doesn’t make use of aliases which can reduce typing dramatically. The Customized Day example shows these features in action.

Once you get used to it (and customize the aliases for your work), you will likely find that the overhead is not a big as it seems. The goal of the tool is to provide some benefits to make this extra work worthwhile. That benefit is the ability to see and understand where you spend time during the day through reports of your work.

Customized Day

The Day in the Life example uses rtimelog without any customization to introduce the features of the program and show the details tracking tasks.

The reality is that many of the tasks you will want to track are repeated either in full or in part every day, or multiple times during the day. The Aliasing feature allows you to customize the command line more to your way of working.

How I Would Customize

Shortening the Command Name

The name of the program is too long for me to type multiple times a day. So, I use a shell alias to make it shorter. In the bash shell, that would be:

alias tl=~/.cargo/bin/rtimelog

Tip

Most command line shells support the ability to alias a command with a string of your choosing. I often use this feature to shorten commands I type a lot. For example, I have single character aliases for my editor and for git.

This allows me to use tl on the command line instead of typing 8 characters. I have added this alias to my .bashrc file to make the alias always available.

Using `rtimelog` Aliases

My ~/.timelogrc configuration file would contain an [alias] section with shorter commands for common tasks. For the example, I’d have probably added at least the following:

[alias]
  email = start +Admin @Email
  foo = start +Foo
  pfoo = push +Foo
  foocode = start +Foo @Code
  foodocs = start +Foo @Docs
  foomtg = start +Foo @ConfCall Team Meeting
  barhelp = push +Bar @Help

Quicker Workday

Note

The following sections are a shortened version of the example from the previous chapter. The text is a shortened form of the description. More importantly, it uses aliases to reduce the typing for the rtimelog commands.

The aliases reduce my task typing to the following:

Morning

Starting the day with email.

  $ tl email

Start on processing module for Foo.

  $ tl foocode processing module

After about an hour and a half, you are pretty comfortable with the changes to the processing module. Make a detour into performance testing

  $ tl pfoo @PerfTest processing module

After half an hour, you’ve identified some performance bottlenecks and return to coding in order to fix what you’ve found. Quick check to verify what’s on top of the stack.

  $ tl stack top
  +Foo @Code processing module

Let’s resume the coding work.

  $ tl resume

When you finish tidying up the performance work, you decide to move on to the database module. Since this is not a temporary diversion, you will use start again.

  $ tl foocode database module

As noon rolls around, it’s time to take a break for lunch. We can use pause to stop what we are doing after pushing the current task on the stack to resume later.

  $ tl pause

Afternoon

When you get back from lunch, you decide to take care of any morning email before your team meeting at 1pm. You start the email task again.

  $ tl email

At 1pm, the conference call with your team begins. You start that task. Since we are going to be talking about the Foo project, make sure to set the project name appropriately.

  $ tl foomtg

When the meeting is over, you need to change tasks. During the meeting, you agreed to do some general work on the manual for the project’s software. Enter the task to begin working on that.

  $ tl foodocs working on manual

  $ tl barhelp Emma questions

When all of Emma’s questions are answered, you go back to the manual work using the resume command.

  $ tl resume

Once again, you’ll probably want to check the top of the stack to confirm you didn’t have anything else waiting.

  $ tl stack top
  +Foo @Code database module

Resume the database work.

  $ tl resume

You get some good uninterrupted time on this and finish up the module in time to stop at 5.

  $ tl stop

Conclusion

Using a shorter name for the command and aliasing common tasks make use of rtimelog more efficient to use. The most important thing to keep in mind for your aliases is to pick what works well for you. There are probably tasks you will do a dozen times a week that I can’t imagine. Customize the aliases to make your work easier.

Events

In addition to timing tasks, rtimelog can be used to track events that don’t have a useful duration. These zero duration events are added to the timelog with the event command. The command tasks a description of the event. For example,

   $ rtimelog event +dog @Walk Evening

The event description follows the same form as a task. The first group of non-whitespace characters beginning with ‘+’ after the start command is considered the project. You can think of the project in this case as being more of a group of events. If there is a string of non-whitespace characters beginning with ‘@’, it is treated as the event name. Any other text is explanatory details for the event.

Note

Events are most helpful for tracking that something happened, not how long it took.

See the Event Reports section for the kinds of reports supported by rtimelog.

Reporting

Time tracking would not be particularly useful without some way to report on the time you are tracking. The rtimelog program has a number of reports, each serving a different purpose.

Detail Report

The report I use the most looks like the following:

  $ rtimelog report detail yesterday

This report shows the data for the given date grouped by project. Although the actual times are missing and the data is re-ordered, you can get a really good sense of where your time went with this report.

2013-07-01  8:08
  Admin          0:19
    Email                0:19
  Bar            0:05
    Help                 0:05 (Emma questions)
  Foo            7:45
    Code                 2:20 (database module)
    Code                 2:50 (processing module)
    ConfCall             1:02 (Team Meeting)
    Docs                 1:03 (working on manual)
    PerfTest             0:30 (processing module)

From this report, we can see that the part of the day we tracked was 8 hours and 8 minutes. Almost all of that was spent on the Foo project, on five separate tasks:

Code work on the database module
Code work on the processing module
Performance testing on the processing module
Documentation on the manual
Team conference call

We also spent some incidental time on email and answering questions.

Summary

Where this report really shines are those days that seems to be one interrupt after another. That was really the origin of the program for me. I found that there were days when I left work tired, but didn’t feel like I had accomplished anything. Looking back at this report showed the day taken up by dozens of interruptions.

Summary Report

Sometimes, the normal report is still too much data. Let’s say I only care about the aggregate amount of time spent on each project. I would then use the following command:

  $ rtimelog report summary yesterday

This report has no task information, it just reports the time on each project for the day.

2013-07-01  8:08
  Admin          0:19
  Bar            0:05
  Foo            7:45

If you only work on one project at a time, this report will not be very useful. However, I have found this report handy for as few as two projects. For example, handing off one project to another team, while beginning a new project. During the beginning of the hand-off, there are usually a number of meetings and interruptions helping the other team take over. It’s not always easy to realize how much time is spent on this kind of activity.

Summary

This report is most useful for people who need to track multiple projects every day. If you use the Admin pseudo-project described earlier, this can still be useful for recognizing how much time you are spending on non-project tasks. Those kinds of time-stealers are easy to lose track of.

Hours Report

Finally, you may only want the amount of time you spent for the whole day. That report is generated by the following command:

  $ rtimelog report hours yesterday

This just tells how long you were working. Sometimes, it is all you need.

2013-07-01  8:08

Summary

This report is particularly useful when you are looking at multiple days. Sometime just a report of the amount of time you have spent each day of the week is useful.

Chart

The report chart command gives a graphical representation of the time spent during the day as an HTML page. The data is displayed as a pie chart breaking down the projects worked during the day. For each project, there is a smaller pie chart for the tasks applied to that project.

Finally, there is a hourly bar chart showing the time in each hour spent on the various projects. The chart report for the example shows the output of this command.

I created this report specifically as an exercise after seeing some of the output from other time tracking programs. Although I use it relatively rarely, someone who is more visually-oriented might find this version more useful.

Summary

This report was a result of someone showing really pretty charts from a fancy time-tracking app. I have usually resisted adding features that I don’t see myself using a lot. But, I built this mostly to show how much this simple tool could do. I still don’t use it much.

Task Listing

The most detailed report you might run is to list all of the entries for a given day. If you executed the following command the day after the example above, you would get a list of the entries for that day.

  $ rtimelog ls yesterday

The output of this command (assuming only the commands from Example Usage) would look like this:

2013-07-01 08:02:15 +Admin @Email
2013-07-01 08:10:31 +Foo @Code processing module
2013-07-01 09:30:42 +Foo @PerfTest processing module
2013-07-01 10:00:38 +Foo @Code processing module
2013-07-01 11:30:22 +Foo @Code database module
2013-07-01 12:00:11 stop
2013-07-01 12:50:02 +Admin @Email
2013-07-01 13:00:21 +Foo @ConfCall Team Meeting
2013-07-01 14:02:43 +Foo @Docs working on manual
2013-07-01 14:22:03 +Bar @Help Emma questions
2013-07-01 14:27:06 +Foo @Docs working on manual
2013-07-01 15:10:20 +Foo @Code database module
2013-07-01 17:00:24 stop

Summary

This is the most detailed report, but it isn’t really useful for much. Usually, you want some form of summarized information. The other reporting commands take care of that.

Event Reports

If you are using the zero duration events feature of rtimelog, you might want to generate reports for those.

The report events command lists your events and the time that they were added grouped by date.

  $ rtimelog report events -p dog yesterday today

If you used events to track letting the dog out, the command could give a report of

2022-12-15
  07:50  +dog Backyard
  14:22  +dog Backyard
  18:33  +dog Walk
2022-12-16
  08:10  +dog Backyard
  14:32  +dog Backyard
  18:27  +dog Walk

Summary

This report is much like the ls report for tasks. No summary or calculations, just a list of the events.

The report intervals command lists the interval between events. So if you track replacing a battery in an outdoor camera, knowing the time since the last change would be useful.

   $ rtimelog report intervals -p camera october today

The above command might report

2022-10-07 19:20 +camera Battery : 29d 12:03
2022-11-06 07:23 +camera Battery : 26d 11:03
2022-12-02 18:27 +camera Battery : 20d 23:51

This shows that we’ll want to check the battery about a week from now.

Summary

The intervals report gives the time interval between events. This actually gives some useful information.

Correcting Entries

There are many reasons why you might not enter an entry exactly correctly:

you mistype the details on a task entry
you realize that a quick interruption is taking a significant amount of time
you begin a task entry for a meeting and find it has been delayed
you start a task entry for a meeting, only to discover it has been canceled
you start working on a new task and then realize that you forgot to enter it

The most general tool for this job is the edit command. This command opens the timelog file in your configured editor and allows you to make any changes. Including editing the text of the task, changing the start time, re-arranging entries or deleting entries.

In many cases, the edit command is too big a hammer for a quick change. The rtimelog program supports a few more targeted commands for manipulating the last task.

Abstract

If we were perfect, there would be no need for these commands. The edit command and the more targetted editing commands are designed to simpify fixing our mistakes. The following sections are focused on fixing particular mistakes.

What if you start a task and decide you won’t do it?

Maybe you start a task for a meeting and it gets cancelled. You can use

   $ rtimelog entry discard

to throw that entry away. If you want to keep a record of the meeting start but not count it in your time reports, you can use the following instead.

   $ rtimelog entry ignore

This command keeps the face that the task was entered, but marks that task as invisible to time tracking.

You accidentally start the task too soon.

I sometimes start the task entry and realize that the activity has not started yet. (Maybe starting a couple of minutes before the meeting actually starts.)

   $ rtimelog entry now

This resets the entry to right now.

You realize that you are working on an activity and did not add an entry.

This happens more than I would like to admit. So, I immediately add a new entry. Then I will want to adjust the time. If I only should have started a few minutes ago, the rewind command allows me to move back a number of minutes.

   $ rtimelog entry rewind 5

On the other hand, if I know the exact time I should have started the task, I would use the was command instead.

   $ rtimelog entry was 9:00

You realize that you forgot to enter a task as you are starting a new one.

I find that forgetting to start a short task is not an unusual occurrence. Unfortunately, I often realize this as I’m starting a new task. The brute force was to handle this would be to add both tasks and then use edit to fix the times afterward.

  $ rtimelog start +Foo @Questions Answer John
  $ rtimelog start +Foo @Admin Create card for reported bug
  $ rtimelog edit

While in the editor, I can now correct the first time entry (maybe setting the time back for the 5 minutes I spent answering John).

You realize that you forgot to enter the previous task as you are starting a new one.

A variation on the previous question would be starting a task and while working on it realize that I forgot to enter the previous one. Let’s say I want to make a card for a bug reported by John.

  $ rtimelog start +Foo @Admin Create card for reported bug

As I finish up that card, I realize that I actually spent 5 minutes talking with John about the issue before creating the card.

  $ rtimelog start +Foo @Questions Answer John
  $ rtimelog edit

Unlike the last time, these events are now out of order. So, in the editor, I’d swap the last two entries and then fix the time for the (now) second-to-last item.

I mistyped the task description when creating an event.

Just as I hit enter while entering a task, I realize that I have misspelled the project name.

  $ rtimelog start +F00 @COde charting code

Obviously, I typed +F00 instead of +Foo, and I also capitalized the O in Code. As a quick fix, I can type:

  $ rtimelog entry rewrite +Foo @Code charting code

This doesn’t change the time, it only rewrites everything from the project to the end of the line.

Temporary Tasks and the Stack

You may find yourself needing to temporarily pause your current task to work on another, with the intent to come right back. This kind of interrupt happens so commonly, that I added functionality to the timelog system early on to deal with it.

Note

The concept of a stack is fairly well-known to developers, but may not be as comfortable to non-developers. A stack makes it easy to deal with temporarily saving something and restoring it later. The useful property of a stack is that you can push multiple things on a stack and then easily remove them in the opposite order. This is known as a “last in, first out” process.

Stack Usage

The push command saves the current task to the stack, and changes to supplied task.

  $ rtimelog curr
  2023-10-24 20:10 +projA @Code
  Duration: 1:23
  $ rtimelog stack top
  $ rtimelog push +projA @Meeting
  $ rtimelog curr
  2023-10-24 21:33 +projA @Meeting
  Duration: 0:00
  $ rtimelog stack top
  +projA @Code

When you are ready to come back to the previous task, you use the resume command.

  $ rtimelog resume
  $ rtimelog curr
  2023-10-24 21:40 +projA @Code
  Duration: 0:00
  $ rtimelog stack top

When you find yourself toggling between two tasks for some reason, the swap command uses the stack in a more advanced way.

Assuming we start work on the Foo project.

  $ rtimelog start +Foo @Monitor
  $ rtimelog curr
  +Foo @Monitor
  $ rtimelog stack top

Later, we want to push the Bar project.

  $ rtimelog push +Bar @Monitor
  $ rtimelog curr
  2023-10-24 21:53 +Bar @Monitor
  Duration: 0:00
  $ rtimelog stack top
  +Foo @Monitor

Next, we want to go back the Foo project, knowing that we will come back to Bar shortly. We can use swap for that, and we’ll use the tools to see the log and the stack.

  $ rtimelog swap
  $ rtimelog curr
  2023-10-24 21:54 +Bar @Monitor
  Duration: 0:00
  $ rtimelog stack top
  +Foo @Monitor

Notice that Foo and Bar have swapped places.

Stack Reporting

To see the task descriptions on the stack, use the stack ls.

  $ rtimelog stack ls

If you just want to know the top item on the stack, use stack top.

  $ rtimelog stack top

Stack Maintenance

If you use the stack a great deal, you may find that it begins to grow out of hand. You’ll probably decide that some of the items on the stack are no longer useful and can be discarded. The following commands support manipulation of the stack.

If you want to discard task descriptions from the top of the stack, use the stack drop command.

  $ rtimelog stack drop

To discard everything on the stack, use stack clear.

  $ rtimelog stack clear

If the most recent task descriptions might still be useful, but the older items could be removed, you can use the stack keep.

  $ rtimelog stack keep

Reducing Typing with Aliases

As you use the rtimelog program more, typing long strings for individual entries becomes annoying. If you are working on the same projects or tasks on a regular basis, you might find typing the detail annoying even if you want it for reporting.

Note

Aliases started out as a really simple text replacement to allow shortening command typing.

Slightly more advanced replacement text is now supported with the idea of trying to reduce the number of aliases.

Defining Aliases

The rtimelog program supports defining aliases in your .timelogrc file. These aliases can be either full events or partial events. The aliases are defined in a [alias] section in your .timelogrc file. They take the following form:

[alias]
   email = start +Misc @Email
   proja = start +ProjectA
   int   = push +Misc @Questions

When rtimelog encounters an alias at the beginning of its command line, it replaces the alias with the string after the equals. This allows you to define full events or partial events easily. To use an alias, use the alias as the command when calling rtimelog:

  $ rtimelog email

This gets converted to

  $ rtimelog start +Misc @Email

The proja alias above is a good example of a partial event. You would use the alias like:

  $ rtimelog proja @ConfCall Client design team

This is equivalent to typing

  $ rtimelog start +ProjectA @ConfCall Client design team

Alias Templates

Over time, I often find myself adding new aliases for events relating to new projects and deleting aliases that I no longer use. After a while, I noticed that I tended to make clusters of aliases for particular projects. All of the extra alias maintenance seemed ridiculous. What I really needed was a way to make aliases that were templates, rather than just replacement strings.

If the expansion string for an alias contains the string {}, it is handled a bit differently. For example, if we assume the following aliases:

    email = start +Misc @Email
    code  = start +client:{} @Code
    doc   = start +client:{} @Doc
    test  = start +client:{} @Test

rtimelog replaces the {} with the argument that comes after the alias. So using the code alias as follows:

  $ rtimelog code Bob New UI

is equivalent to typing

  $ rtimelog start +client:Bob @Code New UI

This expansion continues until all {} strings are replaced. If we try to replace a {} and there is no corresponding argument, the {} will be left in place. This has dramatically improved the entry detail I use without requiring nearly as much maintenance of my aliases.

Timelog Tutorial v1.0