Busy Status Bar

I might buy this to use as follows.

I want a work-time tracker that lights a bright LED every 5 minutes or so, and as long as I'm there and working I smash a button and the light goes off for another 5 minutes. Some algorithm tracks the times I have hit the button and displays how long I have been working on said task.

I'm picturing something fairly cheap, like a stop watch or 3 button kitchen timer. A LED, a few buttons, a LCD display, a AAA battery slot, and an internal timing circuit is all that's needed (and a case to hold it together).

This would basically be a stop watch that stops on its own if neglected, and I can imagine a few uses for it.

I assume lawyers have some mechanism like this already. Law firms can require staff to allocate every 6-8 minutes of their day. Which sounds terrible and likely to be wildly inaccurate as people cannot be bothered to invest that much overhead into their job.

> likely to be wildly inaccurate

My gut reaction and prejudiced against all lawyers is it's probably in the law firms interest that these are inaccurate.

For sure that seems the intention. Create an “audit trail” for billing while simultaneously making it so onerous that the employees have to fudge the numbers.

In my experience it just means a lawyer marks each hour via charging you 10 increments, and that in some cases some forms of comms are generally charged at a sub-hourly charge.

In most cases working with a lawyer is a fixed fee or going to be on a retainer basis where the hours pile up regardless, not so much about tracking every moment for every person.

Add an alarm to play VERY LOUD if the button is not pressed in a 5-7 minute window to keep you working. If you fail to do so the entire office/house has to hear your alarm going off

This is how Swiss medical appointments are billed. I forget exactly how granular, but it's pretty small - 5-10 minutes. As a result, you tend to be quite efficient when going to the GP, because it’s a few Francs a minute

If I retain a lawyer at $1k an hour, you bet I want 5 minute billing.

Make it a fidget toy and you're onto something.

I’ve got this, just some simple JS that flashes bgcolor when the time is up, and I click to extend. I just keep a tiny thin browser on my laptop display

I set it to 15 minutes or it’s too frequent.

I’ve considered a hardware device (and have tried some) but I like to also track time in meetings, so I’d be lugging it around with me.

Sadly for you, I think 6 minute increments (i.e., 0.1 of an hour) might be more common.

A big satisfying button to push is welcome.

If your pay depends on it, you magically become very good at it.

I hate time tracking and time sheets and all of that but at any job I had where I would not get paid without it, it got done.