Which Method Fits Which Question

Each method answers some questions well and others not at all. Matching them is the whole of the decision. When this method moves from a personal experiment to a team process, this implementation note can reduce manual reconstruction, provided everyone knows what is recorded and the organisation keeps only the detail needed to answer the stated question.

The questions

Coverage: where does my week go.

Duration: how long does this particular thing take.

Alignment: am I spending time on what I said mattered.

Capacity: can I fit something new in.

Billing: what do I invoice, defensibly.

The methods against them

Coverage → sampling. Two weeks, a minute a day, answers it adequately. A diary answers it better at ten times the cost.

Duration → diary, on that one task only. Track three or four instances, not the whole week.

Alignment → sampling with categories applied afterwards. The categories are the hard part and have their own note.

Capacity → corrected calendar. You need to know what is already committed, which the calendar holds.

Billing → contemporaneous diary. Nothing cheaper is defensible, and the standard is different from everything else here.

The cost side

Sampling: about a minute a day. Two weeks.

Retrospective estimation: three to five minutes a day. Indefinite.

Calendar correction: five minutes a day. Indefinite.

Automatic capture: setup only, then nothing.

Diary: fifteen to thirty minutes a day. Two weeks maximum before it degrades.

The expensive one is last on the list for a reason, and it is the one most people reach for first.

Combinations worth using

Sampling plus a targeted diary: find where the time goes, then investigate the one thing that surprised you. This is the default recommendation.

Automatic capture plus a daily two-line note: precision about the screen, meaning from the note.

Calendar plus estimation: the fixed points from one, the rest from the other. Costs almost nothing and is adequate for capacity questions.

Diary plus nothing, for a fortnight, when billing starts.

Combinations to avoid

Diary plus automatic capture plus categories, all at once. This is the configuration people build on day one and abandon in week two.

Any method chosen before the question.

And continuous anything, unless billing requires it. Repeated short investigations beat a permanent system, because the data stays trustworthy.

Switching methods

Expect to. The method that answers this month's question is not the one for next quarter's.

Which is an argument against elaborate setups: anything that takes a weekend to configure will be kept past its usefulness because of the sunk effort.

The two-minute decision

Write the question. Pick the row above. Note the cost. Set an end date.

If the cost looks disproportionate to the answer, take the cheaper method and accept the lower accuracy — which is almost always the right trade in personal tracking.

What to check

Does your current method match your current question?

Are you paying diary cost for a coverage question?

Is anything running that you have not read in a month?

And could you state the accuracy you actually need?

Worth keeping in mind

Expect to switch methods. The one that answers this month's question is not the one for next quarter's, which is an argument against any setup elaborate enough that sunk effort keeps it running past its usefulness.

The short version

The expensive method is not the best method. It is the most accurate one, and accuracy beyond what the question needs is waste — which is the single most useful sentence in this section.

In short

Anything that takes a weekend to configure will be kept past its usefulness because of the sunk effort.

That is an argument for the simplest tool that answers the question, and usually for plain text.

The point

Write the question, pick the matching row, note the cost, set an end date.

Two minutes, and it prevents a month of the wrong method. For a complementary perspective on work, measurement or planning, consult Todoist.