I was getting pretty fed up with my kitchen timer-based Emergent Task Timer sheet. The sheet itself I like a lot, but I was continuously getting out of sync with my kitchen timer. I sometimes would get lost in my work and forget to mark where I was leaving off between tasks. Very annoying.
To resolve the kitchen timer issue, I put together a quick Flash 8 prototype. Once I got going, I added more of the functionality of the paper-based form and ended up with something that is usable day-to-day. It’s useful enough to release to the public, I think: Emergent Task Tracker Online Tool. This is an alpha-quality release, but I am finding it already useful in my day-to-day.
Basic Instructions
As this is a functional prototype, a lot of the UI hasn’t yet been worked out and may be confusing. The basic operation is this:
Choose a start hour. If you’re starting work at 9AM, set the start hour to 9. The timer uses 24 hour time, which I am partial too because it makes it easier to calculate things like time durations.
Enter some names of tasks on the left side. I don’t have drag and drop working yet, so you’ll have to make do with just filling text in.
Track the current time by looking for the red vertical line. If you don’t see it, it’s possibly not visible on the current range of hours you have displayed. Just adjust the start time (base it on the current time) and you’ll see it.
Optionally turn on the 15-minute alarm by checking the box in the lower left corner.
Print your sheet when you need a hardcopy with the PRINT button in the lower right.
Don’t Worry about Closing the Window…I’m using “Local Shared Objects” that save data persistently between sessions; it’s sort of like a “Flash Cookie”. The upshot is that if you accidently close the browser window, you won’t lose your data…just open it up again and it should all be there.
Workarounds
Right now, the ETT tool tracks a single day consisting of 24 hours.
There currently isn’t a convenient way to browse the day. To see other parts of the day, just set the start time to something else. I’ll be adding those kinds of UI elements as the feature set starts to finalize.
If you want to erase the current day and start a new sheet, you need to go into the debugger:
Click the movie, type CTRL-SHIFT-~ (tilde, usually upper left of your keyboard).
Click in the bottom line of the console (the input line) and type
lso clear. This erases the persistent storage (the local shared object, or LSO).Reload the web page, and the hour tracking information for the CURRENT DAY will be created.
More Later
I’m pretty tired and I still have to clean up the house for Creative Retreating this weekend, but I’m jazzed to have gotten one of my backburnered projects actually off the ground. Yay! GTD helped me maintain momentum with all that next-action talk. Dang…it actually worked!
There’s some interesting things about the software design, particularly the data structures for the tasks and hours, that would be fun to talk about. In the meantime, please feel free to give the prototype a browse and let me know what you think. Thanks!
Updates
- Additional changes are noted in this post
Michael 
Steven Reeves 
John F. Schank III 
bert 
p.s. Now i just need to get a timer :o)
Dave, I have used your wonderful emergent task planner tool and only wished I found a way to time myself accurately. This version has addressed that weakness and it’s great at tracking my tasks at work. Thank you so much for this and for all the other tools. My suggestion would be to echo GTD’s, to be able to shade half a bubble instead of one full one. After all, 7 or 8 mins can still add up to a lot, accummulated. Lovely chime, btw.
I really appreciate the work gone into this prototype. I’ve found that it’s increased by productivity and reduced time wasted on distractions. I have used the information it stores to record my day in your task progress tracker.
Since I use your tool in this way, I wondered if you could combine it with the task progress tracker. Why? well mainly I’ve spent 3 days on the same big task and seeing the high priority green colour would encourage me further.
Here’s my wish list (in order of significance to me):
1. Allow priority colouring for each task similar to your concrete goals tracker.
2. Have a ‘done’ button to show a task is completed, which could change the background highlight to the goal priority colour.
3. Allow up to 15 tasks to be recorded as I often max out the 12.
Thanks again
Darroch
Eliza: Sorry I missed your comment earlier! I may add sub-bubble shading (the internal data structure can store down to the 1-minute resolution) if that’s a request. You can feel free to shade multiple bubbles though…I like to see where I’m thrashing back and forth between multiple tasks.
Darroch: Those are good suggestions. I’m not sure how DONE would work in the context of an ongoing task. I’m thinking of a task flow model that allows changing from ETT view to TPT view, which would be pretty cool. Maybe the TPT view is what would have the DONE field in it. And yes, an expanded view (scrolling) is something I’d like. Right after I get data saving to work. Unfortunately I am busy with other projects and haven’t had time to learn how to do this.
Awesome!
Seems churlish of me to ask for a “total” function at the end of the day.
:-)
Very cool stuff and easy on the eyes! Looking forward to further refinements of the web-based tracker.
Best regards,
John
Usability suggestion: when clicking on an empty box make it go to the same type (full or “/”) as the last one filled in on the same row, to make it easier to fill in multiple boxes as “/”.
It appears there’s a bug in the Persistent Data Storage. It sometimes forgets bubbles I’ve filled in, or restores what should be a “/” as a full bubble.
Also, doing some experiments changing the time, it doesn’t appear to remove previous days data. I actually consider that a feature, because I’ve been taking screenshots each day for a record and when my browser crashed at the end of the day I was able to set the time back and get the screenshot I wanted. I do wonder where the data is stored though and if there are any space or speed implications to it accumulating without being removed; although it would be interesting if you could use it in some way to show a summary for a week.
Resizable standalone please! )
David,
Can’t see a “movie” to click to open the debug console: where should I be looking?
Thanks and regards
Will
Got it: for some reason its ctrl-shift-@ on my keyboard.
Is there a list of commands somewhere?
Cheers!
Will
Will: Type “help” in the console window, and you’ll see a list of commands. Good luck! :-)
Very nice! Thanks!
Put a Contributions (Paypal) link up when you do cool stuff like this!
really helpful little fellow. haven’t read all the comments so this may be redundant, but I’d love to be able to choose my own audio file for the alarm.
Wonderful tool!
Please work on the saving of prior day data!
I forget to print at the end of the day and lose everything (I could solve by being more disciplined …but).
I’d be willing to pay something for this if presented as shareware … it better than most anything I have seen.
I’m loving Emergent Task Timer – using the alpa flash version for the past week has been great for helping keep track of what I’m actually doing – especially separating billable from unbillable time.
Are you still working on this project? I hope so . . .
I love it. It saves me from having to build something. :-)
I know that you can zap a sheet with the command console but here’s my two cents: An erase button at the end of each line. First click clears the dots, second click clears the text. Better yet make the first click sound a warning of some sort just so I don’t wipe out a whole line when trying to click on the last dot of the day. :-)
Cheers!
This has been great for tracking time and helping to keep me focused on the task at hand. I’m new to billing on an hourly basis. I’m using this in conjunction with Fanurio which is time tracking software for freelancers. I track the time with the Emergent Task Timer and then enter the info into Fanurio. Thanks for sharing this.
I NEVER post comments on blogs—that’s how much I LOVE this little flash program. I spent all day looking for a good time tracking tool (toggl, tickspot, time tracker 3.0, multi-timer, egg timer plus, clockingit, slimtimer) but this one is the best because 1) it forces you to stay on task and 2) it works offline!
Some suggestions:
- A Column that autocalculates the total time of each task so far
- Allow switching between 24hr and 12hr time format
- Ability to export data
Thanks Dave!
I am planning on expanding and finishing this prototype at some point, but I have to finish my paying projects first. I may open source what exists no, thogh, to help get the bal rollig.
What a cool tool!
I adore the simplicity of ETT. I’m looking forward to seeing a new version coming to life some day. If you need a beta tester someday just drop me a line.
Cheers.
Um, by the way, do you think it’s possible to release the current downloadable flash alpha as a universal binary for Mac users or at least as an intel binary?
The current PPC version is grabbing a single processor all for itself and spinning up the fans :(
Michael: Goodness, has it been so long since I updated this that it’s still a PPC binary? I will see if I can compile a newer version today. Maybe I can check out AS3.0 while I’m at it…I haven’t even opened Flash CS3 yet.
The idea of anything I’ve written grabbing a whole processor to itself and heating it up is really awful. Fans spinning! Processes lagging! Ugh.
Thanks Dave. A new binary would be great.
Michael: I just uploaded the universal binary on the main page. I haven’t tested it since I’m not running MacOS X, so let me know if it works.
David: Everything is fine. CPU dropped to 8%. ETT behaves just like the PPC one.
Thanks a lot for the prompt release.
Any chance of making it work on Pocket PC (windows mobile)?
Great tool. Your notes on clearing the LSO are incorrect. you need to type ‘lso clear’ (note the space).
I like the tool but some of the instructions for clearing the data need rewording.
Like someone else said, on my keyboard you have to do CTRL SHIFT @ to open the debug console, and you have to type “lso clear” not “lsoclear”. If you changed the instructions it would be a lot clearer to people.
Thanks
Jason, Rose: Thanks for pointing that out. I had expanded the lso command at one point but only updated the notes on the release page. I don’t know why, Rose, your keyboard requires ctrl-shift-@ to open the debug console…perhaps it is because I’m using a US keyboard layout and you may not be?
Yeah, shortcuts on different language keyboards do not always work as intended.
On a German Mac keyboard it’s ctrl-shift->, which is right next to the left shift key.
On a German PC keyboard ctrl-shift-รถ, which is right next to the ‘L’ key.
In ETT’s browser version I have to click in the application first to move the focus to the app.
This is a fantastic tool; I use it every day. Would it be possible to reduce the duration of the chime in the downloadable version, say to about half its current value? It’s slightly anxiety-inducing :).
Hey David,
Will you ever release the .fla file and create an open source project of it.
There is now a full blown web application version of David’s Emergent Task Timer available at http://www.bubbletimer.com/.
Check it out and let me know what you think of it.
Thanks,
Sean
Dave, are you involved in the BubbleTimer project?
Michael,
Dave’s not involved officially, no. I talked to Dave on the phone a couple of days before starting the project to make sure he was OK with it. Then twice during the course of development Dave took a look at BubbleTimer and gave me his feedback (he’s a great designer, the feedback was awesome).
But no, he’s not officially involved. I consider him BubbleTimer’s godfather.
Thanks,
Sean
I use this almost every day, when I remember. For those of us with adhd, it’s a lifesaver. It keeps me on track, especially when I’m browsing the internet.
Thank you!
Thank you Dave,
this is so good, I hope it helps me in meeting deadlines, next time! ;-)
Mr Seah,
discovered this tool only this morning, very useful, thanks. I like the chime which helps me to re-sync between what I’m doing vs. what I should be doing, and, at the end of the day I’ve got a list of what I’ve spend the day on.
This would make a pretty nice iPad app.
I second this. I would love to have an iPhone/iPad app for this!
Dave, I see this has been around a few years now, is there a finished version? is there a ways to have more rowes for more work like in the paper version? Any progress on the server version? -Steven