They’re all double counting in some sense. It’s an inherent property of
tagtime, that it’s only accurate in the long run, on average. If you’re
counting on it down to the last hour, it’s just not as accurate as
Beeminder requires, so you could end up derailing even though you did the
work you committed to.
Think of it this way: You’re working along, using tagtime. You really
need a ping. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just conjure up a ping right
now? Sure, would, so let’s do that: ping. Now you don’t have a problem,
but you also don’t have an accurate record of how long you worked. When
you start a timer that gives you a guaranteed data point, you’re conjuring
a ping.
If you work for 45 minutes and you happen to get a regularly scheduled ping
during that time, but you disregard the ping, or alternatively discard the
timer time, then you’re still on track as far as the averages go. But that
would have to happen every single time you try this stunt, and you would
have to work for exactly 45 minutes.
Another thing to consider is why we use tagtime in the first place instead
of a stopwatch. Many people find that they sit down to do a certain task,
but then find that somehow Facebook opened all by itself right in front of
their face and they were compelled to start reading. If they get a ping
while that’s going on, then in the long run they can tell of much time they
spend doing that. If they were just using a stopwatch, they might get to
the end of 45 minutes and think that they spent 45 minutes or nearly 45
minutes on the task, when in fact 30 minutes in total of those 45 were
spent appeasing Facebook’s demands to be read.
If the Facebook situation or something similar doesn’t apply to your
situation (i.e., you can really be certain that if your stopwatch says 45
minutes then you spent the full 45 minutes on the task), then you should
probably just time it directly and enter it. It’s more accurate and less
likely to get you stressed when you get close to derailing.
On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 6:43 PM, Justin K justingkwok@gmail.com wrote:
I’m using Android, so I have the TagTime and Beeminder apps. I use the
timer in the Beeminder app to measure the time for some goals.
I recently switched to using TagTime for some ‘do more’ goals. Previously
I’ve used the timer to measure those activities. My ‘do more’ goal is less
than 45 mins per day, so sometimes if I’m on an emergency day, I use the
timer to guarantee that I can hit the goal instead of waiting for a ping.
Is this double counting?
Some possible scenarios
- Have a policy to void any ping that happens while the timer is on.
Pre-commit to only submitting the timer value.
- Have a policy to cancel discard any clock time on the timer if a ping
occurs, otherwise submit the timer value.
- Submit both timer value and pings.
I’m confident 3 is double counting. I think scenario 2 also double counts
my effort. While I’m unsure about 1.
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