• February 13, 2025
• in Knowledge Management
• 3 min read

Personal time tracking

Notes about self-tracking time spent on different projects each week using different tools.

Review Slack messages sent during the week

Within Slack, you can search for messages you have sent using the following:

• from:@SlackUsername
• before:2025-02-08
• after:2025-02-02

The actual query would be:

from:@SlackUsername before:2025-02-08 after:2025-02-02

Review GitHub commits during the week

GitHub Docs - Searching commits

Get a list of commits by author or committer:

# using the 'author'
https://github.com/search?q=author%3Agithubusername&type=commits&s=committer-date&o=desc&p=1
# using the 'committer'
https://github.com/search?q=committer%3Agithubusername&type=commits&s=committer-date&o=desc
# using the 'committer-name'
https://github.com/search?q=committer-name%3Agithubusername&type=commits&s=committer-date&o=desc

Try to use the date ranges to get a list of commits, by authored or committed date:

https://github.com/search?q=author%3Agithubusername&type=commits&s=committer-date&created%3A%3E2025-02-07&o=desc

Other syntax to try:

author-date%3A<2025-02-02&type=Commits

author-date
author-date:>2016-01-01

https://github.com/search?q=created%3A%3E2025-02-07&type=Repositories&ref=advsearch&l=&l=

Using your Google Calendar to keep track of time

If you use Google Calendar, you can also use Google Apps Script to print a list of calendar events for a specified date range.

• Create a new project in Google Apps Script, you can name it Calendar info
• In the project, create a new file named CalendarEntries
• Add the following functions:

// Global variables
var START_DATE = new Date('2025-02-23');
var END_DATE = new Date('2025-03-01');  // End date is exclusive, be sure to pick the date AFTER you want to search through
var CALENDAR_ID = 'myemail@gmail.com';

function logAllEventStatuses() {
  var calendar = CalendarApp.getCalendarById(CALENDAR_ID);
  var events = calendar.getEvents(START_DATE, END_DATE);

  events.forEach(function(event) {
    Logger.log('Event: ' + event.getTitle() + ', My Status: ' + event.getMyStatus());
  });
}

function listCalendarEntries() {
  var calendar = CalendarApp.getCalendarById(CALENDAR_ID);
  var events = calendar.getEvents(START_DATE, END_DATE);

  Logger.log('Total events retrieved: ' + events.length);

  // Group events by date
  var eventsByDate = {};
  events.forEach(function(event) {
    var dateStr = Utilities.formatDate(event.getStartTime(), Session.getScriptTimeZone(), 'yyyy-MM-dd');
    if (!eventsByDate[dateStr]) {
      eventsByDate[dateStr] = [];
    }
    // Calculate duration in hours as a decimal
    var durationHours = (event.getEndTime() - event.getStartTime()) / (1000 * 60 * 60);
    eventsByDate[dateStr].push(`${event.getTitle()} (Duration: ${durationHours} hours)`);
  });

  // Create a text output grouped by date
  var output = '';
  Object.keys(eventsByDate).sort().forEach(function(date) {
    output += date + ':\n';
    eventsByDate[date].forEach(function(eventText) {
      output += ' - ' + eventText + '\n';
    });
    output += '\n';
  });

  Logger.log(output);
}

function logAcceptedEvents() {
  // this function does not work as intended yet, need to find out the proper 'myStatus' filter 
  //
  // For this function, you can decide if you want to use a different date range.
  // For now, we'll reuse the global dates.
  var calendar = CalendarApp.getCalendarById(CALENDAR_ID);
  var events = calendar.getEvents(START_DATE, END_DATE);

  Logger.log('Total events retrieved: ' + events.length);

  events.forEach(function(event) {
    var myStatus = event.getMyStatus();
    // Filter events that are either owned or accepted
    if (myStatus === 'OWNER' || myStatus === 'YES' || myStatus === 'accepted') {
      Logger.log('Accepted Event: ' + event.getTitle() +
                 ' | Start: ' + event.getStartTime() +
                 ' | End: ' + event.getEndTime() +
                 ' | Status: ' + myStatus);
    }
  });
}

• Update the CALENDAR_ID with your email address
• Update the START_DATE to the first day you want to get calendar entries for
• Update the END_DATE to the date AFTER you want to search through
  • Example: if you want to search through 2025-03-01, then enter 2025-03-02
• Save the changes to the CalendarEntries file

Running the listCalendarEntries function

Once you have stored your email address in the CALENDAR_ID and updated the START_DATE and END_DATE variables, now you can run the listCalendarEntries function:

• Confirm the variables have been set correctly
• Select the listCalendarEntries in the drop down menu
• Select the Run option in the menu