I am actually using both systems you mentioned. I have been using toggl to track the total time spent on the goal for a long time. The tagtime is just a recent addition that added something of a gamification element to the process.
The thing is, I found myself prone to get distracted “just for a second,” especially when doing the more tedious types of project-related activities (e.g. reading theoretical studies or staring at a blank page trying to write my own - to the contrary, other project-related activities do not really need such a safety net, e.g. looking up books in a library if I had specifically traveled to work with this library’s collections).
So, I initially introduced tagtime to randomly ping me to see if I am really working on what toggl believes I am. (If it catches me distracted, I am removing half of the time since the last ping or the start of the toggl recording. Even if it’s “but I only opened instagram for a second”. Also works fantastically! Bathroom and grab-another-tea breaks are legit, however.)
And then, since I have been already using tagtime alongside “real” time tracking, I decided to add the “gamified” system described in my comments above.
So, yeah, as a countermeasure against the staleness of a previously working system, would totally recommend.
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