Wastime
Where do your
days actually go?
Write down the time that means something alongside the time that quietly slips away, so the patterns are there when you're ready to look at them.
The Time Diary in Wastime helps you capture what your day is actually made of. You write it down by topic, either by hand or with a timer, and then look back at the totals and trends whenever you feel like it. Nobody is keeping score here, and the picture that comes back is yours to do something with.
- Keep a diary of Meaningful and Wasted time by topic
- Add entries by hand or with a timer
- Review totals, trends, and consistency
- Offline-first and private by default
The moment you notice
You start the week with good intentions, and then somehow it's Friday and you can't really say where the time went.
Nothing went wrong exactly. The week simply drifted past while you were busy inside it.
- Small scroll sessions that stack up
- Tabs you opened for a reason you have already forgotten
- Busy days that still feel unlived
A clearer look at the week you actually lived tends to do more for you than another push to try harder.
A diary that acts like a mirror
The whole idea is that facts work better than guessing, and you can have them without turning your life into a spreadsheet.
Perfect coverage was never the point, and a few honest weeks are usually enough for the patterns to show themselves.
What patterns become visible
Once the entries are close to the truth, trade-offs stop feeling abstract.
- What consistently drains you, even when it feels small
- What you keep investing in and what you keep postponing
- Whether your week matches your values or only the to-do list you happened to write
- Which topics consume most of your week, by real totals instead of feelings
- Whether your consistency is improving or slipping for the topics that matter
- How your current pace sits against the quotas and deadlines you set yourself
Where Meaningful ends and Wasted begins
Nobody here is grading your choices. It's a language for seeing things clearly, and you're the one who decides what goes where.
Meaningful Time
Time you consider an investment.
Even rest belongs here when it actually restores you.
Wasted Time
Time you personally experience as a drain.
Usually it's the scrolling you never quite decided to start.
Topics so your time has names
A generic “2 hours” tells you very little a month later, so time goes into topics that match your real life.
Topic examples
Topic management
- Group topics into categories
- Rename and refine as priorities change
- Archive old topics without losing history
Two ways to keep the diary
Manual entries (when you just want it written down)
Add an entry with date, duration, topic, and optional note.
- Date
- Duration (HH:MM)
- Topic
- Optional note
Durations round up to the nearest 5 minutes, which keeps each entry quick to add.
Timers (when accuracy matters)
Pick a topic, start, pause/resume, and save when done.
- Pause history is visible
- Done flow confirms duration, topic, and date before save
- Only one active timer is allowed across the app
One timer at a time keeps the diary honest, so a forgotten second timer never adds hours in the background.
From diary entries to analysis
This is where a vague “I feel behind” turns into numbers you can actually do something with.
Core analysis views
- Total time per topic for day, week, or month
- Meaningful vs Wasted balance over a selected period
- Trend slides to show direction, not only totals
Filters that cut the noise
- Date range
- Multiple topics
- Keyword search in notes
- Minimum duration
- Sorting by created and updated time
Quotas, deadlines and forecasts for goals you want to keep in sight
Structure is here when you want it, and it stays quiet when you don't.
Quotas
Set a target amount of time for a topic in a period.
Deadlines
Aim for a number of hours on a topic by a date you choose.
Forecasts
See where your current pace leads and what pace would get you there.
What the plan view shows
A compact view that turns a goal into plain numbers you can check yourself against.
- 1How much time you meant to give a topic and how much it actually got
- 2How much is still left before you reach what you set out to do
- 3Where your current pace brings you by the date you picked
- 4The average pace that would still get you there, if you want it to
Consistency that counts showing up
- Consistency is the share of days in a period where a topic has any time in the diary (>0 minutes).
- Example: 21 active days out of 30 equals 70% consistency.
- It rewards small actions you actually did. Even 15-20 minutes counts.
Private by default
Time data can feel intimate, and the app is built so that you can be honest in it without performing for anyone.
- Works fully offline by default
- Nothing leaves the device unless you publish a calendar
- JSON export/import for backup and device migration
How to start in one week
A setup small enough that it survives an ordinary week.
If one habit already bothers you, the Wasted Time Calculator can give you a rough number for it before your first entry.
- 1Create 3 Meaningful topics you actually care about.
- 2Create 1 Wasted topic that reflects your main time leak.
- 3Keep the diary for 7 days, by hand when that is easier and with the timer when accuracy matters.
- 4Sit with one question at the end, “What surprised me?”
- 5Change one small thing next week, even if it's only a topic name you never got right.
Some things, sometimes
Maybe one of these is close to yours, maybe none of them are.
“My evenings disappear”
Start a timer when you reach for the usual app, and leave the habit alone for now. One week is usually enough to show what it really costs you.
“I'm building a habit and it isn't sticking”
Keep that one topic in the diary for 30 days and see what consistency says. If it comes back low, make the bar smaller until you can actually clear it.
“There's something I keep putting off”
Give it a deadline measured in hours, maybe twenty hours of guitar before summer ends, and the weekly pace it would take is right there to look at, which tends to make the whole thing feel much closer.
“Writing everything down isn't for me”
You don't have to. Keep a single topic, or reach for the timer only when something really matters to you, and even that little tells you more than guessing does.
FAQ
Short answers before you write your first entry.
Where to look next
Each tool looks at the same time from a different side, and sometimes the next one is what makes the first number make sense.
Wasted Calculator
What one small daily habit really adds up to once you count it across a whole year.
Money to Time Converter
Any price shown as the hours of work behind it, so you can decide whether it's worth them.
Reflection Questions
More than 600 prompts about time and meaning, for the moments when a number alone doesn't tell you what to do.
Start with the week you're in
Keep the diary for one ordinary week, look at what comes back, and change one small thing. That kind of quiet repetition is usually what makes the picture clear.
