How can I register a note or casual incident in ATracker?
Even after upgrading ATracker to Pro I noticed that all activities seem to be timed.
I was expecting to see in the pro version the option to register an isolated and instantaneous event, but I couldn't find how to do that.
Let me exemplify the use case. Suppose I have a daily task called meditation, which is certainly timed.
But one day, a few hours after meditation I have a insight, a revelation regarding some problem which was puzzling me, and this breakthrough was in part thanks to the concentration, calmness and clarity gained from previous meditation.
I would like to register that event as well, perhaps with a short note, however:
- While there is a date and time for the insight, It's not really a timed event, so a normal activity doesn't quite work for registering it.
- It's also not a goal, so selecting days of the week or occurrences per time frame doesn't apply.
So how to register such an event?
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Official comment
Thanks for using ATracker!
In ATracker, all task entries have start/end time stamps. Maybe you can configure the task so it gets excluded in the piechart (there is a setting in the task edit form). By doing so, it will not appear in the pie chart. You can assign any start/end time for it (e.g., the same end time as the start time).
Comment actions -
You misuderstood my point.
When I said such an event wasn't really a timed one, I meant that ideally one should be able to touch the activity have immediately a dialog with a single time and date, instead of an internal timer which you then have to stop so that activity gets actually registered and you can fill other details.
In the particular example I used this might be a rare event, but if I could use another event to illustrate the same principle: suppose you are a smoker who wants quit and would like to track how many times you resisted the desire to light a cigarrette. This would be a much more common event and you would probably want to track in the chart how many times you applied self-control daily.
In other words, the way ATracker is currently implemented, it lacks functionality for this kind of use case, which is a shame since it's otherwise such a useful application. -
From the UI side the changes could be minimal.
In task creation, you could simply insert a "Duration" switch before the "Timer" switch. If disabled, other fields in that group could be disabled as well, since it doesn't make sense having a timer, or alarm for duration, or countdown when user specified there was no duration.
Duration switch could remain enabled by default to minimize breaking things. This way, if user creates a task with no duration, instead of beginning counting elapsed time when clicked on, it could simply take the user to the edit screen to confirm date and time or write a note, if switch was enabled for the task.
In task registration you could remove second date/time picker (and duration as well), and rename "Start time" to simply "Time".
Maintaining registration time would be useful for example to see in history how some events might custer in certain times of the day.
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