About

Fifty notes on keeping a personal time record for years rather than for a fortnight.

Who this is for

Anybody whose record needs to run for years: people who bill for time, contractors building an estimating history, people tracking something medical across a long recovery, students and researchers on long programmes, and people who want a record of their own life.

What makes a long record different

A fortnight of tracking needs discipline. A decade needs a design that survives tool changes, missed weeks, a changing job and boredom.

The five predictable killers: tool death, missed days, category drift, boredom at around month four, and accumulated weight.

And the trade that shapes everything: durability beats accuracy. A record accurate to fifteen minutes kept for five years answers questions a perfect record of one month cannot.

What is deliberately absent

Product names. Any tool named here would be discontinued before the record was, and the useful distinctions are between formats and conventions rather than between applications.

Percentages. The research base on personal tracking is thinner than the market implies, and figures in circulation mostly do not have sources that support them.

And advice about whether to track at all. This collection assumes you have decided; the question of whether it is worth it is a different one with a different answer for most people.

About this domain

This address previously carried AP History teaching materials by the site's owner, who has since moved on from that work.

If you arrived looking for those materials, there is a page explaining what happened to them.