Re: Re: Feature idea: Automatic clocking

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

Hi

I am also very skeptical to automate something like this.  This is
a typical are where it is all about the discipline to establish a habit.
May experience is that if you cannot find the discipline to do it,
an automatic process might does *something* for you, but you are
not going to make any use of the collected data.


:-(

- Carsten

On Aug 21, 2009, at 8:26 PM, Bernt Hansen wrote:

> PT <spamfilteraccount@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I just started using clocking and it seems really useful. It
>> occured me it could also be done automatically for certain tasks
>> which are performed in the org buffer.
>>
>> For example, I work on some text which I keep in an org subtree,
>> the branches of the subtree hold the chapters, etc.
>>
>> If the main subtree which is the root of the document has a CLOCK
>> property (put there by a previous manual clocking) and also an
>> AUTOCLOCK or similar property then it could monitor if I modify
>> the text within the subtree and start the clock automatically. If
>> I stop modifying the subtree then after a while (say, 30 seconds,
>> configurable) it would stop the clock automatically.
>>
>> So for subtrees explicitly marked for automatic clocking the user
>> wouldn't have to start/stop the clock manually at all, org could
>> do it itself.
>>
>> What do you think?
>
> Hi PT,
>
> I've been using org-mode clocking since 2006-08-29 Tue 11:44 and I am
> skeptical about how useful this would really be in the general case.
>
> Most of my tasks involve *thinking* not just typing so stopping the
> clock when I'm working on solving a problem would be bad.  I also  
> clock
> tasks while working on another machine which org-mode knows nothing
> about so stopping the clock due to inactivity isn't appropriate.
>
> I don't like the idea of automatic clocking for a number of reasons:
>
>  - It lets you be sloppy about starting and stopping the clock --  
> which
>    means the clock won't be running for some task you are working on
>    (say one that is not marked for automatic clocking).  This means
>    you're going to work on stuff and not have it clocked when you need
>    it to be at some point.  I bill based on clock time and it needs to
>    be correct.
>
>  - Clocking stuff in and out rigorously is a good habit to learn if
>    clock data is really important to you.  Automatic clocking defeats
>    this goal.
>
>  - If you're clocking some important project task and you happen to
>    touch the task marked for automatic clocking you'll clock out the
>    project task and clock in the new task... and a short time later  
> the
>    clock stops when you move back to the project task but you're still
>    really working on that original project task.
>
> Clocking the right task usually takes more intelligence than just what
> part of an org-file changes.
>
> I have org-clock-out-when-done set to nil so that org-mode does not  
> stop
> the clock when a task is marked DONE.  This makes me responsible for
> when the clock starts and stops for all tasks - I clock in and out for
> everything that matters.  I change the clock when I switch tasks and I
> think it's really hard to get that right automatically.
>
> So there's my two cents :)
>
> Regards,
> Bernt
>
>
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