What Insights shows

At the end of a day the question is where the time went, and the answer usually goes missing, because the day left a feeling and no record. Untimer writes it down. Every session keeps how long it was planned to be against how long it ran, and how it ended. It keeps the interruptions you noticed and whether they came from inside or outside. It keeps the task it went to and the time zone you were in. After a few weeks there is enough of it that the record starts answering questions, and Insights is where it answers them.

Days

Days lists every day that has a session on it, newest first. Each day shows one small hourglass for every session that ran its length, and a line such as 3 sessions, 1 hour 15 minutes focused. Open a day to see it from midnight to midnight, with each session standing at the time it ran. Under that strip each session is listed with its time, its length, its task and the interruptions you noticed. Show earlier days loads older days one page at a time.

This is the part that does the most, and it is free. In 2009 Michie and colleagues reviewed techniques for changing behaviour. They found that keeping track of what you do is one of the most effective techniques, and that it works better combined with feedback, intention formation and goal review. Days is that record, and Sessions by task reads each finished task against the estimate you made for it.

Active days

Active days counts how many of the last forty five days had at least one session, and it is free. It also shows your current run of days in a row and your longest run. It holds through a gap, because a few days away lower the count by those days and leave the rest as it was. It shows whether you are still coming back.

Sessions by task

With Plus, the record goes deeper, and the first panel answers the question of where the time went. Every task you finished is listed against what you said it would take: Said 6, took 9, with the three extra sessions drawn after a line. Under that, the last three months appear as a share for each task.

After a while this shows what your guesses are worth, and they get better, because the gap is in front of you each time. It also tells you what you actually spent the quarter on, which is rarely what you would have said. The sessions without a task sit in a row of their own called Unnamed, and that share is a fact worth knowing.

Sessions by hour and Sessions by weekday

With Plus you also get Sessions by hour, which shows how many sessions started in each hour of the day over the last year. Sessions by weekday shows the same for each day of the week, Monday first. Most people have a shape to their week and see it here for the first time. The demo account in the pictures on the Plus page has a tall morning from nine to one and a shorter afternoon from three to six. Its best day is a Tuesday, and its weekends run at about a third of a weekday.

Once you can see the shape you can use it. The hard thing goes in the tall part. The email goes in the short part.

Start and end times

With Plus, Start and end times says where the edges of the working day are: when the first session usually starts and the last one usually ends, read from the last three months. For most people both edges are later than they would have guessed.

Interruptions

Interruptions is the panel about your usual blockers, and it is built from the smallest thing Untimer asks of you. When something pulls you away during a session you press Interruption and choose whether it came from inside or outside. If you want, you write one line about what it was. It takes about five seconds, and then you are back in the session.

With Plus, the panel adds those up. It counts the interruptions you noticed from inside, such as a thought or an urge. It also counts those from outside, such as a person or a phone. A bar for each month covers the last year. Most people find that about half of what pulls at them comes from inside.

The lines are the useful part. After a month of writing them you know your usual three. For the founder they are the phone, a thought about a different project and the door. Knowing which three is most of the way to doing something about them, and the doing is ordinary: the phone goes in the other room and the thought gets a note.

Totals, and Best day, week and month

With Plus, the rest of Insights is the long view. Totals counts everything that ran here, once each. It holds sessions, measured hours and days with a session on them. It also holds breaks taken to the end, finished tasks and sets completed, and the date you started. Best day, week and month shows the most sessions you ran in a day, in a week and in a month over the last year.

The year

With Plus, The year gives one square to each day of the last year, darker the more sessions ran that day. It is the picture of a working year that most people do not have. The holidays read as holes, the quiet weeks read as quiet, and a dense stretch is the stretch you remember being tired. A day without a session is a pale square, drawn like every other day.

Every panel in Insights keeps its plain colours and says what happened, and after a few weeks that is a useful thing to be told.

Insights has ten panels. Days and Active days are free, and the other eight are what Plus is for.