About
Project Hamster is time tracking for masses. It helps you to keep track on how much time you have spent during the day on activities you have set up.
Check screenshots category for more visuals!
Whenever you change from doing one task to other, you change your current activity in Hamster. After a while you can see some statistics of how many hours you have spent on what. Maybe print it out, or export to some suitable format, if time reporting is a request of your employee.
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Hamster is written in PyGTK, using SQLite for data storage.
Ideas and bug reports are most welcome in bug tracker @ bugzilla.gnome.org
Hi! That is a perfect little app, thank you very much! You would not believe that I was thinking just a few weeks ago how nice it would be to have such a small applet in the panel for project tracking. Cool.
May be Hamster could track not only virtual desktop change but active application window change? I’m searching for this application for a long time but never seen some thing like.
Preved
Tracking currently active application is the other approach to time tracking.
Although it is doable, the resulting log would clash with the manual approach, thus user would have to choose mode in which the time should be tracked.
I’m a little concerned that we could easily get into featuritis here.
Could you maybe tell, why are you looking for an app that would track when and for how long you have been staring into firefox window and what could be the practical benefits from it?
Привет
Actually I’d like to know how long I use IM for example. I can’t change task every time when I open IM window to read message or write an answer. But I think that it can be about 10% of work time in the worst. Firefox case can be the same if I check for GMail or read RSS.
If I will know how long I use my working instrument (Eclipse, terminal, etc) it will be very usefull. And I’d like it to be counted automatically.
In that case, maybe Timeline is what you are looking for:
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-doc-list/2008-April/msg00064.html
If it would be more finished – yes. Actially somethink like Wakoopa is needed.
Another interesting feature might be to prompt the user to enter an “old fact” for the last X (configurable) minutes if no activity has been logged during that time. This is the approach the DailyBilling Yahoo widget (http://widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/dailybilling) takes, operating more on a timer basis instead of requiring the user to proactively indicate what they’re working on.
Hi.
Hamster is cool and helps me a lot.
One small idea: What about a tooltip for the panel when you move your mouse over Hamster that shows the list of all tracked tasks of the actual day?
Good work! Go on
Love this Hamster. I’ve been using Gnotime, but spent more time entering records than doing stuff.
For me, it would be good to be able to add a note to each fact (so I know what I did during the time). I guess I could probably get what I need with evolution integration or perhaps the notes could be kept in Tomboy?
I think we will add simple text processing some time soon, which would make use of anything after a comma in activity field – turn it into tags or a comment. I still have to sit on this for a while to figure out how to make it simple and easily discoverable.
best project i’ve seen in a while! thanks
Any chance of turning this into a standalone app rather than purely a panel applet? I’d like to use it, but I tend to use Xfce far more often than Gnome.
You can run it from command line, adding “-w” switch – but it won’t look too good
Maybe XfApplet (http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/panel-plugins/xfce4-xfapplet-plugin) could work for you?
Ah yes! I’d forgotten about XfApplet! Got it up and running now. Cheers! This is a beaut little project you’ve got here!
Hey, this is a brilliant idea for an app. I’ve also been struggling to use Gnotime as some others have as well. Hamster is so simple it’s like a dream in comparison. Thanks!
I know you have a number of things on the plate, but I was wondering if you have any intention of making it possible to create a hierarchy with categories. It would be nice to be able subdivide a little bit more. Additionally, it would be nice to be able to focus on a specific category in the overview. You had mentioned tagging, so maybe tags will fill this void.
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Yup yup – tags.
I just don’t know how to pull myself together and step out of sun, into the world of the illuminated screens
But we certainly will get there!
A couple of things spring to mind. I haven’t used Hamster yet, but I did use Gnotime for a while, and I found it quite inaccurate.
The main problem is I start a task, or stop to read some non-work web site or answer the phone or whatever, and later remember to update the time tracker – sometimes. Most often, I found that I simply forgot to tell the time tracker about work things I’d been doing.
Ok, that’s a personal discipline problem. I casually skip between things too readily, perhaps.
But here’s the ideas that spring to mind, which I imagine could be useful to people like me:
1. After using Firefox / etc. for x minutes, a little pop-up “You’ve been using Firefox for a while now – are you still working on Project X or would you like me to stop that task at the time you started using the Firefox window?”. The program knows when that time was much better than I do of course. (Distinguishing Firefoxes between virtual desktops would be a nice bonus since it is used for work, and quite easy to remember to use a work desktop when appropriate.)
2. After a stretch of idle time, or power off “You’ve not touched the keyboard for a while now – are you still working on Project X ?” Same thing: it remembers when idle started, so I don’t have to, but doesn’t ask if that time was really idle until a while later.
3. When I open any files in ~/Projects/X/ (e.g. in Emacs – but it would be great if it used inotify to detect any open generically), later it says “You’ve opened files associated with Project X 20 minutes ago but not started a task in Project X – would you like to start a task, from the time you first opened those files?”. Perhaps similar following long period of time _not_ accessing any of those files. This would require an ability to associate directories with projects / tasks, but that’s quite natural I think.
4. Generalise the above, so you don’t implement all those details in Hamster. Provide a config file so user can specify what counts as a thing to monitor/detect. E.g. I might then provide a program which notes whenever I use ssh to a work-related machine, and the config file would say to pop up a message after 10 minutes following my program saying I ssh’d, asking if I want to activate a related task (if I didn’t already).
I don’t know if those things would help people like me track and account for their time better, but I think they might. Now only thing remaining would be to monitor the logs on my phone to account for work-related phone calls, and same in IM client and email client
I wrote a tool for doing this kind of thing on Windows (using automatic tracking of currently used app) a little while ago. It is quite fiddly to get the balance right with what features to have. We decided automatic tracking with the ability to override was probably best. One problem is that people do tend to leap wildly from task to task (including me) and you don’t always remember to update what you are doing. If you want to try it out the name is Qlockwork – I’m always happy to get feedback. BTW – it does monitor IM and email, but only on Windows.
Great tool. Thanks for putting this together, I really appreciate it and will use it often. I’ll spread the word.
After using it for a day, there seems to be only one basic thing missing: The quick ability to see what is missing.
After going back to add a few Older Facts and stopping and starting tasks, I notice that there are chunks of time not accounted for through out the day. Minimally, I would like to easily see those chunks of time represented in the “Uncategorized” view to draw attention that perhaps I need to edit the start or end moment of one of my Facts. Ideally, there would be some type of graphical editor (think about some of the UI widgets you see in Partition Editors, or simply in resizing/moving columns in a spreadsheet) to adjust the start/end times and/or to combine an uncategorized/unnamed chunk of time to a named Fact.
If you think something like this would be possible. I could draw up a more detailed specification and some pictures.
You mean I must MANUALLY tell the software what I’m doing right now? I understand this might have some use for some very organized and careful people, but these people do not actually need this type of app…
We lazy procrastinators, which are the natural target for a software like this (and are really “the masses”) need some tool that will tell us AUTOMATICALLY which apps we’ve been using for how long, which sites we’ve been visiting, how much time we’ve spent writing e-mails or playing games, etc.
Asigning one workspace to each specific task might do, although we would know how to cheat that…. Having it all manual is definitely useless.
Wakoopa to the rescue
sicofante – http://projecthamster.wordpress.com/#comment-116
Very well executed. I’m with Lokier above (can’t remember if I had his thoughts before or after!). Since Hamster is simple and low impact, the obvious implementations would be:
* Optionally log screensaver/DPMS events, probably just as a user pref. Let the user sort these out in reporting later. (“Time” vs. “Time-Screensaver” columns, say.)
* Instead of annoying dialogs, implement a ‘live man’s switch’ by making the Hamster applet become clickable at an interval (default: turns red for 30 seconds every 15 minutes; tunable). Then have a column for “intervals acknowledged” in the report. If you’re paying attention and want Hamster to track you, you’ll click. If you ignore it, either because you’re not there or know you’re on a different task, you’ll miss the interval and be reminded of that in the logs. (Note: Part of the applet needs to remain a normal clickable target to get into Hamster during a ‘click me’ event if you’re reminded to change the task!)
[For HIG, also let it annoy with a balloon for the colorblind, or a tone + keystroke combo for the blind.]
* Finally, dunno about the annoyance level, but “keyboard/mouse active intervals” (default: 5 minute granularity?) wouldn’t hurt, monitored however screensavers themselves monitor those events (if possible, I forget if they just get the timeout from the X server re: keystrokes into windows the process doesn’t own).
For graphing, indicate these as broken colored bars, say, so users can reflect on their day and mentally review any big blanks. (Clicking live-man but not typing here… Clicking “I’m alive” and typing here… typing but not clicking here…)
Brian might also have a good idea, but if you go both ways it could complicate the UI. Maybe prepend with magic verbs, like “-” and “!”, so “-Got a soda” would retag the previous “interval” (15 minutes?) and “!Conference call” would retag an entire block of time — you sat down to write a blog post and the phone rang instead. Save that metadata too, “Conference call” becomes the new category but “was: Writing Blog Post” goes into some harmless “Comments”-type field.
…
It’d also be amusing to be able to monitor the system microphone for activity. Set a threshhold and only preserve a binary value, “enough noise” or “no noise.” This would be enough to tell if you’re at the desk on the phone… build up an average over 5 minutes and then apply the boolean “noise?” value to those 5 minutes just past.
Hmm. Reviewing that, a very calm tone might not be a bad idea, even at a “surprising” 15 minute interval. Like a very slow metronome. Think of the ignorable soft bell-like tone they use to page people at airports.
Also, @sicofante:
I’m with you on the laziness, but there are certain professions (especially the ones called “professions” instead of “jobs”) that are expected to honestly bill their time. If you *are* honest, and it bothers you not to be honest, imagine having to track all this on paper time slips to make sure you get paid at all!
Then imagine realizing how many “little, unimportant” things you missed… the metadata helps everyone’s memory (per suggestions above), but there are a lot of people who *are* trained to write down what they’re doing, and an app like this would help fill in the blanks and keep better track.
(Instead of fudging “that felt like two hours,” modestly disciplined use of Hamster could help you realize it was more like 1.5 or 2.5. That can be a real difference in money, either for the professional or the customer, and if you suffer from *too much* honesty, can keep you from lowballing your hard work.)
A final PS for today: @Anne, Tracking by app is great for some people, but in the above situation, you have professionals flipping app-to-app-to-app-to-app all for the same person/client/task.
I’d love to automate as much as possible, and same would be useful metadata (and maybe turn up bottlenecks — are you wasting hours on downloads? decompression? compiles?), but it’s hard to extract “who is all this for?” metadata.
I guess one place you *could* extract that would be OO.o window titles if they had the full path of the document being worked on. But that only works after the file is named, and OO.o doesn’t put full paths up there, so in an environment with paths like “/Client/Client Name/Letter.odt”, all that would get recorded is “Letter.odt.” And as you can imagine, there’s a “Letter.odt” for each of 500 clients, oops.
[PPS: For people not using a Blackberry or Palm Pilot like a stopwatch -- and the software required to do that and integrate it with a billing system is somewhere between thousands-of-dollars-expensive and nonexistant, unless you have a year to hack together your own -- I imagine they'll take a Hamster report and use it to fill in, or print and substitute for, a paper time sheet/time slips at the end of the day, applying their own notation and judgment.]
A.Peon – thanks for the comments!
An application that keeps getting in your way, even if in configurable intervals, is not exactly what we would ever like to produce. And modern ages are loud enough to not pollute your desktop even more.
What happened to good times? – Hammers do not have alarm clocks, do they? Nor does fork come with a lamp
Anyway, I still agree, that some kind of notification, a humble reminder, or little helper that would somehow magically (well, or not so magically if it turns out that magic doesn’t work on gnome) let you get back on track, would be nice, and is on the list (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=529098 )
As for me – whenever i look on hamster and notice that i’ve forgotten to do the switch, i can still recover in my memory at least last 2 hours. The problem is, when you try to do that a week later. So, ummm, blueberries (http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/10-foods-that-boost-memory.html), anyone?
Interesting application to check out! And I’d like to chime in with the “please don’t add a lamp to my fork” approach
Just have a plugin or so for people who can track their activity based on the active application, but that won’t work for me.
In fact, I used to work with a time tracker on Windows, and making the conscious click to start a task was good to also set my focus: “I am going to work on this now”.
Maybe then also offer a plugin to take tasks from other back-ends (like the Evolution tasks now). I’d love to see a link to Gnome Planner, so that I can track time on projects I plan with that system without any re-entering of data, and with progress monitoring in there.
And the idea to quickly see in the overview if I have gaps in my working day would be helpful! Just a quick check at the end of a day to fill in the blanks and be able to forget what I did today
Hi,
Just wanted to drop in my thanks. And also support your refusal to add lamps to forks. Great little app. Helps me focus, easy to fill in gaps in the day.
Only improvement I see is a bit more of structure to the tasks (hierarchical categories or tags)
Thanks a lot
Awesome tool… this has revolutionized the way I track my time.
Any thought as to different output formats for the report. IE: CSV for importing into a spreadsheet or XML / XSLT?
I send out spreadsheet timesheets every month and basically just transcribe them from Hamster’s overview window…
Seems to me that a data collection tool is as useful as the mechanisms for retrieving and using said data…
fastest for now could be create report -> copy/paste to spreadsheet -> do whatever you can do in spreadsheet afterwards
there will be also DBUS API some time soon after gnome 2.24
Love this app!, it’s a great way to keep myself organized all day. I realize this might not be possible within the framework of what Hamster is but it would be amazing if I could update it remotely via email or txt message, that way I could keep my records up to date when I’m away from my workstation (via my cellphone or mobile device).
Just a suggestion though, keep up the good work!
Thanks, Carleton.
Regarding remote updates – will see where the DBUS API brings us!
Hi, I’m a freelance and this little app is what I was searching for.. thanks!
One thing: can you give me the ability to get the report for a selected activity?
thanks in advance,
antonio
hi,
after installing the deb package, I cannot find the command to launch the application…I cannot find it in the list “Right click on an empty area on a panel and select Add to Panel. Select Hamster from the list and click Add.”
could you help me out ?
MIke, Hamster has been renamed to Time Tracker – so look for that in your applet list.
Could you please tell me where you read the instructions?
ok, I got it ! (I red the instructions on your website …)
another question : how to remove the tasks and activities that have been set per default ?
Mike – could you be more specific with “on your website”?
And you delete stuff with the Delete button on keyboard, obviously
Hey! I think it would be great if whenever you opened a certain program Hamster automatically updated the activity that it was tracking. Like for example if you opened Firefox it would switch to a Browsing Websites activity or if you opened Adobe Acrobat or something it would switch to Reading.
Dudes, karm has been around for ages. I prefer Gnome but this is the one tiny spot where KDE have been better – an “integrated” time tracker.
http://pim.kde.org/components/karm.php
screw you Frederik
but thanks for the pointer
I love you man! Thank you so much for the slickness that is Hamster, every time I realize “oh, I need to do this” I see that I already can do it, in the simplest way. A great, great app that allows me to work without having to worry about retroactively fitting my time to my invoices later. Thanks much.
Ah, the only thing that I would add is the ability to generate a csv (comma seperated values) file instead of just a html file, for ease of transferring the information to spreadsheets (or anywhere else that supports a csv).
Two Ideas that I have:
- making the ‘Tracking when Idle’ and ‘Tracking on shutdown’ option category or even activity specific. Because ‘Tracking while Idle’ would be good in context with ‘watering flowers’ for obvious reasons, but for ‘hacking on gnome’ it probably wouldn’t.
- second thing is: make different colors for different categories (preferably user changeable) this would enable me to see how much time I spend on fun/work/whatever with one glance at the weekly or monthly overview…
Monthly overview:
one line per category and one for all together
Weekly overview:
these bars are stacked, so the total height stays the same, but “internally” they are different. i.e. like here http://www.decisionedge.com/images/DCforMSP/MSResourceHoursAcrossProjects-30bar-web.JPG
my two cents,
cfchris6
Second shout out for karm here. I was just checking to see if I could switch back to Gnome, but I still can’t find a replacement for karm.
The killer feature for karm is the automatic switch based on workspace.
Love your Application – would be nice if you create a Sync Tool for PalmOS 5.4 or a integreation in Evolution (and form that sync).
Many Thanks,
PalmUser and Gnome-Lover!
This is absolutely terrific – beats everything else I’ve tried (and I’ve tried them ALL). Thanks so much for creating Hamster!
Hey Toms, just wanted to say thanks for Hamster. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and its great. It’s completely replaced my old spreadsheet-based time tracking system.
Cheers
Joe
I have worked with a number of time tracking applications before (including one I built myself). Useful features are:
> Ability to stop tracking when idle for XX minutes
> Add descriptions to time recordings
> Assign activities to clients (clients have activities/projects) for tracking time by client
> Detect active windows / applications and record based on that (thunderbird = emailing for example)
> Specify min & max time for activities to know if over or under budget
> Specify due date to know if on track to meet deadline
Here is a link to a windows based project a built some time ago…
http://www.olmec.co.nz/abode/getProduct.do/_productId__95752/_siteId__43/method__getProduct/resultSetStart__0/resultSetCount__10/_categoryId__2778
Thank you so much, Tom! You’re my hero for making this.
I love the app! Thank you Tom.
Just to throw out two quick feature suggestions:
1. Show the total amount of time spent on a project.
2. Add an inverted graph that shows only one project and the different times that the project was worked on. (As opposed to showing one date and many projects.)
Hello,
I have written a tool to convert a GnoTime database into a Hamster database. The tool can also be used to merge a GnoTime database into an existing Hamster database. It supports version 4 and version 5 (development) of Hamster DB format. With version 5, GnoTime memo’s are included as Hamster “descriptions”.
http://software.marcus-brinkmann.org/projects/show/hamster-tools
I have used this tool to convert a GnoTime database with 60 projects (= activities) and 1550 intervals (= facts), and am happy to report that Hamster deals with such volumes of data without a glitch.
will a windows version be developed?
I just swithed from Ubuntu to windows.
and very miss hamster. can not find an similar software under windows.
jibbidy – i am afraid, i had to moderate your comment
beta – we might get there at some point. i know that pidgin works quite well on windows, so it is certainly doable. but it’s just – there is no priority for that and no hands, really.
but if somebody would like to give it a go – she or he will be most welcome!
Marcus, thanks a lot for the GnoTime migration script! Glad I had a look here before migrating a bunch of data from GnoTime by hand or home-grown scripting
Thanks a lot! This is indeed *exactly* what I was looking for. Have been using it for a couple of days, and here’s a couple things I find a bit nagging:
I maybe overdoing it a bit, but I have 20+ activities on my list. It would be nice to have the drop down list be organized in two levels: first by category (Day to Day), then the activities in the category (Lunch)
I can add categories and activities to those categories, and I can rename them, but I can’t delete them!
And a personal wish: a script (similar to the one Marcus did for GnoTime) to merge the Hamster data from two different laptops. I switch from my 14″ laptop to a small Netbook when I’m on a business trip, and I would like to be able to continue tracking what I do, and merge back witht he database on the 14″
Thanks again!
I would suggest to use autocomplete to switch tasks instead of clicking through – that should improve things.
As for deletion, you delete stuff with the Del button on keyboard. Will add an onscreen button (there is an enhancement request for that) bit later.
Renaming stuff is just like in evolution – doubleclick entry in preferences to make it editable.
As for the migration, we will have conduit backend at some point, that will allow to perform all the syncing. For now – all you need to do is copy one file accross. It is ~/.gnome2/hamster-applet/hamster.db
Just wanted to say that I have implemented the first half of a conduit sync plugin reading hamster facts using the messagebus. It’s not that hard, took me about an hour using d-feet and the tomboy and google modules. No support for writing data to hamster yet. Anyone want a look at some code?
Great gadget!
One suggestion: When it returns from screensaver, could there be an option to keep tracking the task that was there, before screensaver was activated?
Sometimes I go to the bathroom, or receive a call, and I return keep on the same task but I forget to set it again, on Hamer.
Thanks.
ciclonpy: it is an option
right-click on applet and untick the “stop tracking when computer becomes idle”
I love this app, but I’d like to see the ability to output the data into XML. My work requires a different set of charting than in built into the application. If we could get XML reporting output, then reporting could be much more customizable.
You can copy from the HTML report and paste it into spreadsheet and do there whatever needs to be done.
A bit sloppy, i admit, but hey – what would you possibly do with XML?
Hi, I was on a trip, and just now reading your response. Let me explain myself better.
or started other task without your computar, your computer goes idle, screensaver activates and it stops tracking, as commanded with the option you pointed (by the way I knew about the option, I’m using it).
- Your are tracking task ABC.
- You went some other place (buy some beer, gum, whatever
- You return, from wherever makes your computer go idle, and it continues to track task ABC.
That was what I suggested, a third check button “Keep tracking after idle” or something like that, that depends on “Stop tracking when computer becomes idle” being checked.
I’m using 2.24.1 that comes with ubuntu 8.10 repository.
Wonderful app!
Small Feature Suggestion: Time increment rounding.
When we log time for work where I’m at we always do it on 15 minute increments… so if you start tracking something now and finish 10 minutes later- you would log 15 minutes.
heya,
Looks very, very awesome. I could definitely see this helping me in managing time…haha….
Only problem is of course, that it’s a Gnome app…and I run KDE. And AFAIK, there’s no way to run a Gnome applet on KDE (although you can do the reverse apparently, but as a freestanding window).
Toms, any chance of a KDE port ever? Or a standalone app version?
Cheers,
Victor
heya,
And yeah, I know about ktime-tracker, but that lacks the polish, as well as some of the features (e.g. graphing) of Hamster.
Cheers,
Victor
Well we kind of started to talk about all the non-applety thing because of the pressure to move on, so, i hope there will be.
Technically it is not so hard, we just have to convert that drop-down into a standalone window, and it’s not like that is too hard, just have to lay out things sensibly.
I can suggest filing a bug
This is a really awsome little app, and a nice demonstration of building good desktop apps in python, good work. I’m using it now control my ADD style multitasking in work. appreciate your work alot, and an inspiration for me to pull up my pygtk / pyqt socks and get my own first app out the door.
glad to hear, lukeab!
As has been said before, a wonderful and well-thought through application. It beats all the competition I’ve tried hands down.
Slightly off-topic, but in the past couple of months I’ve come across several apps that have impressed me enormously. They all seem to be very well thought out, and simply work. For anyone interested, try Hamster-Applet, Keepnote, Rainlendar2, and / or Gentoo File Manager (gtk2 version).
One request. I would love to be able to order my Categories in the same way that I can order my Activities. As it is at the moment, all the activities that I seem to want to use appear at the bottom of quite a long list, as a result of their Category being at the bottom of the Categories list, and I can’t find a way of moving them to the top.
Thanks for Hamster-Applet.
hum, the drag and drop of categories to reorder has gone somewhere (it was there a while ago, heheh). you can file a bug or hope that i won’t forget this bug. whacha gonna do?
Hey just want to say that this a a fantastic app. I see a lot of room for growth (monitor email, open window titles, browsing), but really this app is fantastic. Interaction is really slick. I love the -time and tagging. Overall fantastic!
I think y’all need a place for people to express love for Hamster. Give me a list of places where I can vote for you guys (ubuntu, distros, Gnome) and I would totally do it.
Keep up the good work!
This application is *perfect* for me. I’ve been looking for something that is simple and low-drag, and supports my job — which tends not to be easily captured in individual projects, but is instead very fluid. The interface is so well designed that I was up and running in five minutes, and had already input seven hours’ worth of today’s work and rearranged the categories and work functions to suit my needs. The reports are readable and attractive, and I think they’ll be very helpful in the future as I look at the way I spend my time and use it to “tune” my job performance.
I’m glad this app doesn’t do tricks with window management, because often I’m looking at several windows at once, or have to context switch between reading on the Web or RSS, and communicating that material in email. I’ve found that tracking in that fashion doeesn’t work well for me, but Hamster looks to be just what the doctor ordered. Can’t wait to try this out for the next week and see how I do!
Hehe, thanks Paul!
Great app! I just love it. It does have all the functions I want and more.
Tnx!
Hi, love the application.
Is there any way to change activity using a keystroke – one thing that I would like to track are how much time I spend being interrupted during my working day…. ti seems kinda rude to open up Hamster and select “interruption” everytime someone comes and talks to me
Is it possible to set keystrokes to do this?
Hey Jack!
Currently it is not possible.
I can suggest instead of an activity called “interruption”, create something like “consultations” or “chat” or similar, so it’s not offensive to your colleague. And with all fairness that would be what you would be having.
Also, when this colleague comes to you, you say “wait”, press Super+H (the default keystroke to bring up hamster applet) and start tracking “chat” and then say “ok let’s talk!”. This will mentally switch you to the person and also show that you care (at least a little), thus establishing a positive ground for the chat.
One thing i think you will find is that time you spend on those interruptions is just a fraction. What you can not track is the amount of time it takes to “get in the zone” or immerse again, which is roughly estimated around 15 minutes per interruption, but can get higher as you tire.
You might find interesting also that people that are constantly interrupted, are more productive at the cost of increased stress. One way to fight it with the method described above – enjoy your interruptions!
You have been listening to all knowing Tom’s wisdom of interruptions, ahaha.
Oh, and the gnome-do plugin is somewhat ready, you can grab it from Ashton:
https://code.launchpad.net/~ashtonkemerling/+junk/hamster-plugin
As for install instructions one has to google up gnome-do and how to build plugins or something
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the reply. Good suggestions, I’m adding “chat” right now to hamster. I already use Gnome-do so I’ll definitely give the plug-in a go. Interesting info about interruptions too. I’ll just have to get more optimistic about things!
I’m only a few days into using hamster but already really enjoying using it. The timed notifications are really good too – I think that it really helps me to focus and not get distracted.
Excellent work, keep it up!
Hi,
I’d just like to thank you for this great app!
Greetings from Germany,
Michael
Is there any chance to see an integration of the hamster-applet with a project planning software like “openproj” or something similar?
Thank You!
Harry
Ah, tough one! To be honest, i don’t know. It is pretty much about scratching one’s own itch. Maybe somebody with an itch and a scratcher will come along. Until then – our reports should at least ease remembering ‘what was that I was working on, two weeks ago’
It’s great application for tracking time.
This looks great. I haven’t used it yet but could definitely help me. A lot of people have suggested other tools for planning and time tracking. Is there a linux time management wiki somewhere that could allow people to add short descriptions of their favourite time management apps along with hyperlinks. If there is, could you add a link to it somewhere obvious at the top of your site. And could other developers be encouraged to link to that wiki too?