How to run a one-week time audit on your Mac
A time audit written by hand, one entry every fifteen minutes, can still be filled in on the grid on the first day. After meetings, an edit, and a string of messages, the empty cells by the third day join into long gaps, and what you miss is often the stretch you later most want to see clearly. Hina sits in the macOS menu bar, and apps, duration, and input counts are recorded as you use the computer. This week you can let the computer record first and only fill in what it cannot see, such as meetings and thinking on paper. On the weekend, look at the Trail to see where the time went.
Let the computer record the week first
Hina records the app you actually switch to the foreground, and the duration and input count in that stretch. Window titles and page paths are available only if you turn on Record window titles and page paths on the Privacy tab of Settings. When the audit has them, it is easier to tell which piece of work the time went to. A week is counted from Monday. A day runs from 4:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. the next day, so an editor still open past midnight stays in the same day and is not split in two.
Writing by hand means you have to stop and fill in the fifteen-minute grid. As long as Hina is still running in the macOS menu bar, every switch to the browser, the terminal, or a document lands on the Trail. Stretches when Hina was not running stay empty. If you forgot to open Hina in the morning, do not use later editor time to fill in the hour from 9:00 to 10:00.
Fill in Away when you come back
Meetings, outlining on paper, or getting up to think through something you have not written down often leave no matching app on the screen. Hina will not guess where you were. When you come back to the computer, it only asks about blanks between ten minutes and two hours long that are not the lock screen or sleep and that the machine cannot recognize. The choices are Meeting, Reading / thinking, Watching, and Away. Choosing any of the first three writes that choice into the record for the stretch.
Choosing Meeting puts it under Meeting. Choosing Reading / thinking matches the stretch spent reading on paper or thinking off the screen. Choosing Away leaves it as Away. The word Away does not prove you were resting. What you add is only a category, not an estimate that turns unrecorded hours into a whole number and fills them back in.
Three questions after a week
After the week is recorded, open that week in the Week view. First see which projects the time went to, and how much the blog repository, the client site repository, and the design drafts each took. Leave hours that match no project on their own. Do not force them into the largest project. Then see which part of the day Deep work fell in, morning, afternoon, or early evening. Deep work is a stretch that stays continuously in work apps. If the editor stays in the foreground all morning, for example, that block falls in the morning.
The third question is how much time you used from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. the next day. Chat, the browser, and the editor, if still in the foreground during that stretch, all count toward that day’s late hours. They are not merged into the next morning. The numbers for the three questions come from app time already recorded, plus the Meeting, Reading and thinking, and Away you added. Check unrecorded stretches separately; these numbers cannot tell you how busy the whole week was.
Change only one thing next week
After the three questions, you do not need to score the week. Changing one thing next week is enough, for example moving one Deep work block to the part of the day that showed up more often in this week’s record, or closing either the editor or the browser still open after 22:00. Change one thing, and next week you can look again with the same three questions to see whether it moved, instead of laying out another, finer fifteen-minute grid.
What Hina keeps is apps, duration, and input counts, plus the Meeting, Reading and thinking, and Away you added. Whether something is finished still means checking your own notes, files, or commits. For example, the piece in the blog repository is still a draft, and the changes in the client site repository are still local. Once the audit stops at the one thing to change next week, you can close this week’s Trail.