RE: [Orgmode] Feature idea: Automatic clocking

[Nuxoll, Andrew]

So, I dig the idea of automatic clocking.  I've been trying to use the manual 
clock feature and I haven't been able to train myself to do it very reliably.  
I think the big problem is that I don't have a big stake in it.  I'm not 
billing different accounts for my time.  The only one who sees the clock data 
is me.  So, the motivation is low.

Here's an alternative implementation of autoclocking:
1.  You specify what hours you're typically working on tasks.  For example, if 
your org list was used it work this might be 9am-5pm except for lunch break: 
12pm-1pm.  Alternatively, if it was your at home org list then it would be 
6pm-10pm and also 7am-8am.  
2.  Whenever you mark a TODO item as DONE, the org-mode assumes that's all 
you've been working on since the last time you marked something DONE.

Obviously this is flawed in a number of ways, but it is easy to implement and I 
think you could get a reasonable measure of what you're spending your time on.  
For those of us, like me, who don't have a strong motivation to clock our time 
that might be plenty sufficient.  The fact that automatic CLOCK: entries would 
appear when I marked an item as DONE would motivate me to go and edit the entry 
to be more accurate if it wasn't.  

I would really value a feature like this.

:AMN:




-----Original Message-----
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:35:27 +0000 (UTC)
From: PT <address@hidden>
Subject: [Orgmode] Feature idea: Automatic clocking
To: address@hidden
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

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?

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