Estimated read time: 6 minutes
As many other, I found myself primarily working from home all of a sudden. The lines between working and not working was fading. I suspected I worked too many hours (spoiler; 1), and also that real development work got overshadowed by an increasing amount of Slack and video meetings (spoiler; 2). 😬
So I created this Window Activity Logger (WAL, not an overload term at all!) -
a tool to collect and make stats of your application use (in Linux). Previously
known as window-activity-logger, but as a friend pointed out, TorWAL was
more fitting. I only use it for tracking work hours (more on the how later),
but it is also applicable tracking and categorizing all your activates.
Example
Looking back at September i.e.:
$ torwal stats --since 2021-09-01 --before 2021-10-01
--- Top 10 uncategories ---
[...]
--- Top 10 active windows ---
[...]
--- Top 10 categories ---
49h42m (31%) of Slack
27h55m (18%) of Firefox (uncategorized)
18h47m (12%) of Video Meeting
15h19m (10%) of Firefox - Business internal documentaion tool
10h36m (7%) of Terminal (uncategorized)
10h13m (6%) of VIM (in dev folders)
09h52m (6%) of Terminal (in dev folders)
07h42m (5%) of Firefox - Monitoring stack tools
04h54m (3%) of Firefox - Google Cloud Platform
03h55m (2%) of Firefox - GitHub Pull Request
--- Active time (at all hours) ---
2021-09-01 (Wed): 08h04m ( 00h34m) | ▃▃▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▅▆▇▇▅▄▁▇▇▅ |
2021-09-02 (Thu): 06h40m (-00h49m) | ▆▇▇▇▇▆▇▇▇▇▇▇▅▇▇▂ |
2021-09-03 (Fri): 05h43m (-01h46m) | ▇▇▇▆▇▅▂▇▇▇▇▇▄▃ ▅ |
2021-09-04 (Sat): 00h00m
2021-09-05 (Sun): 00h23m ( 00h23m) | ▄▂ |
2021-09-06 (Mon): 06h17m (-01h12m) | ▅▂▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▁ |
2021-09-07 (Tue): 07h03m (-00h26m) | ▄▇▇▅▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▃▆ |
2021-09-08 (Wed): 06h40m (-00h49m) | ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▄ ▁ |
2021-09-09 (Thu): 06h43m (-00h47m) | ▁▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▂ |
2021-09-10 (Fri): 06h24m (-01h05m) | ▁▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▂ |
2021-09-11 (Sat): 00h00m
2021-09-12 (Sun): 00h00m
2021-09-13 (Mon): 08h26m ( 00h56m) | ▃▇▇▇▅▂▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▅▇▇▃ |
2021-09-14 (Tue): 08h07m ( 00h37m) | ▁▇▇▇▇▆▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▁▆▇▇▇▂▁ |
2021-09-15 (Wed): 08h56m ( 01h26m) | ▁▆▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▅▇▅▇▇▇▄ ▆▅ |
2021-09-16 (Thu): 08h08m ( 00h38m) | ▁▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▅▇▇▇ |
2021-09-17 (Fri): 05h03m (-02h26m) | ▇▁▂▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▂ |
2021-09-18 (Sat): 00h00m ( 00h00m) | ▁ |
2021-09-19 (Sun): 00h51m ( 00h51m) | ▆▁ |
2021-09-20 (Mon): 08h54m ( 01h24m) | ▇▇▇▁ ▇▆▄▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▄▂ |
2021-09-21 (Tue): 06h59m (-00h30m) | ▅▇▇▇▇▇▆▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ |
2021-09-22 (Wed): 08h13m ( 00h43m) | ▄▇▇▆▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▆▅▂ ▄▇▇▇▇▆▁▁|
2021-09-23 (Thu): 08h08m ( 00h38m) | ▆▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▅▂ ▂▇▁ |
2021-09-24 (Fri): 07h30m ( 00h00m) | ▃▇▇▇▇▇▇▂▆▇▃▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▃▁▁ |
2021-09-25 (Sat): 02h59m ( 02h59m) | ▃ ▄▁▇▇|
2021-09-26 (Sun): 03h22m ( 03h22m) | ▇▇▇▇▆ ▄▇▄ ▁ |
2021-09-27 (Mon): 08h13m ( 00h43m) | ▂▇▇▇▆▆▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▆▇▄▄▃ |
2021-09-28 (Tue): 04h53m (-02h36m) | ▃▄▇▃▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▅ |
2021-09-29 (Wed): 07h49m ( 00h19m) | ▅▇▇▇▆▇▇▇▇▇▂▃▆▆▇▇▅ ▃▇▆ |
2021-09-30 (Thu): 09h39m ( 02h09m) | ▄▇▇▇▆▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▅ |
170h19m total
05h19m off balance during this period
What you see is a list of categories I spend my time in. Slack is shockingly high. I think it is a result of poor async communication adaptation and the supporting nature of being a Reliability Engineer. Slack is the new open landscape. 🤷
Secondly, you get a list of days. Each with the sum of all active time, and weather or not I've hit my target of 7h30m. It also holds a nice ASCII histogram of the full day, where as one full bar is 30 min of activity.
As you can see, the second last week, I had on-call duties. 🤙
How does it work?
You'll find the code here https://github.com/torvald/TorWAL.
Each 10 seconds, or for each tick, I save a row in a SQLite3 database with the title of the currently active window on and for how long I've been inactive.
A tick counts as active time if you have been idle for less then a idle threshold (I use 5 min). If I attend a virtual meeting I use slightly higher thresholds, as virtual meetings tend to lead to some inactivity (from your window managers point of view).
IDLE_TIME_GENERAL = 5 * 60 # Five min
IDLE_TIME_VIDEO_CONFERENCING = 20 * 60 # Twenty min
VIDEO_CONFERENCING_APP_PATTERN = "%<insert tool here>%"
Now, after working from the office more and more, I added this post-pandemic feature where I also track which SSID I'm connected to. This way, I know exactly how long I've been to the office, and I count all of that as active time.
SSIDS_PATTERNS = ['%office_SSID%', '%old_office_SSID%']
I personally check if Slack is running, as a signal to whether I'm «working» or not. If I close Slack, I don't register active time. This is configurable. This has the side effect of making me more mindful about closing work related programs when I'm actually not working.
ACTIVITY_FILTER_CMD = "ps aux | grep 'usr/lib/slac[k]/'"
To create an incentive of not overspending time on activities that are not strictly work, I can add these to the list of IGNORE_PATTERNS. That also works well as an escape hatch if I suddenly find myself head deep into YouTube videos of Honda Monkeys.
IGNORE_PATTERNS = ["%WeeChat%", "%Reddit%", "%1,000 Miles in Baja on Honda Monkeys%"]
Bottom line
If not fully restored, my work-life balanced has at least improved drastically.
I've become way more mindful about where I spend my time. Also, as of
before, I could pull through a couple days with some extra hours – but not
knowing exactly how many, it's hard to justify taking a day of. That is now
justified by a quick torwal stats, without even touching my conscience.