A simple but clever system

By being as passive and simple as possible to use, this app definitely gets more use than other time trackers, which alone makes it a more accurate gage of my time. However, I do occasionally miss not having more control.

Some other apps that require you manually start and stop a timer, which quickly becomes a pain, and I stop using them. Others try to automatically track activity based on the app or website you have open, which doesn’t seem very accurate to me.

Daily tries to solve this problem by using a ‘sampling’ method, like in statistics. Every 15 minutes, it asks you what you’re doing. The idea is that, over time, with a lot of samples, you’ll get a more-or-less accurate breakdown of what you do with your day. Because it asks you, rather than you having to start it, it solves the problem of having to remember to set task before starting any activity.

However, Daily is very opinionated in how it works. It’s very difficult to actively tell it what youre doing; theres no way to go back and edit missed/inaccurate information; and the UI and reporting graphs are purposefully very simplistic (it’s basically just the pop-up window you get from clicking on the menu bar icon.) For example, I can find no easy way to tell it about more than one activity at a time that I’ve been doing while I was away from the computer. It also gets kind of distracting, popping up it’s annoying “what are you doing?” dialog all the time, like a clingy girlfriend.

If your main problem is that you try to use time trackers but can never stick with it, Daily may be the solution. However, the simplicity also keeps it from being as useful as other options. Still, it’s currently my favorite time tracker, simply because I actually use it, which is more than I can so for other apps.

DamnableNook about Daily – Hours & Time Tracker