Know how long it actually takes
Log the hours. Insight works out how far your estimates run over, and what that means for everything still on your plate.
Insight is invite-only for now. Send a request, and once I've approved it you'll get a link to set your password.
How it works
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1
Put it all on the board
Projects, chores, ideas you don't want to lose. Each one goes in as a task with an estimate in hours, or as a rough chunk of work you'll break down once you know more.
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2
Log your time
When you work on something, log how long you spent and how hard it felt. Logging time is also what moves a task into In progress.
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3
Look back
Once a project has a few finished tasks, Insight compares what you estimated with what it took. If your tasks usually take 1.8 times as long as you thought, a 3-hour estimate shows up as about 5.4.
At the end of the day you can also rate how you feel: fresh, fine or drained. After a few months, that shows which parts of your life wear you out.
Why I built it
I forget things, and I'm bad at guessing how long work will take. I've tried notes apps and to-do lists, and each one turned into a mess I stopped opening after a few weeks. Insight is my attempt at something with enough structure to last. It's built around three things.
Somewhere for everything on my plate
Responsibilities, tasks and half-formed ideas all go into one structure: areas of life, the projects in them, and the tasks inside those. Whenever I open the board I can see what I've committed to and what's waiting, so none of it relies on me remembering.
Estimates I can plan with
Work starts with a rough estimate, before I know the details, and gets split into concrete tasks once I do. With hours attached to everything, I can see how much I've taken on and decide where my week should go.
Learning from what actually happened
Every hour I log adds to a record. Over time it shows how far off my estimates tend to be, which parts of my life drain me, and whether my guesses are getting better.
What it is
- A small side project
- I built it for myself and opened it up to a few friends. I read every request to join myself.
- Private
- Other accounts can't see your tasks or hours, and that's enforced by the database as well as the app. Because I run the server, I could read the database directly, the same as anyone who runs a web app. Backups go off the server every night, and once a week one is restored to check it works.
- In your browser
- There's nothing to install. It works on your phone or your laptop, and logging time takes a couple of taps.
- Doesn't send email
- Insight doesn't send newsletters or notifications. Your invite link comes straight from me.