Projects, activities and life areas: how your time is filed

Every entry in your log answers two questions: what the time was for (its project) and what you were doing (its activity). Projects then roll up into a handful of life areas, which is how the app shows whether your week looks the way you want it to.

When to use it

Mostly on your first day, and then whenever your life changes shape: a new job, a new side project, a habit you want to keep an eye on. You'll do all of it in Settings, under Time log (Projects, Activities) and Life setup (Life areas).

The three ideas

Project: what the time was for. "Work", "Home", "Family & friends", "The kitchen remodel". A project can belong to one life area, or to none. You can also mark a project as Generates income, which tells the app that time on it counts as work.

Activity: what you were doing. "Meetings", "Deep work", "Exercise", "Meals", "Sleep". The same activity can happen on any project: a meeting can be for work or for the school board. An activity can also carry a target, which turns it into a habit you can track (more on that below).

Life area: the big bucket. Work, Health, People, Learning and so on. Areas give projects their colour, group your goals and monthly priorities, and can carry a weekly target in hours.

So an hour on the phone with your sister might be the project "Family & friends" (in the People area) and the activity "Time together". An hour at the gym is the project "Health" and the activity "Exercise".

How to use it

Add or change a project

Open Settings → Projects and press + Add, or tap a row to edit it.
Give it a Name and, if you like, a Description.
Choose its Life area. The project takes that area's colour unless you pick a Colour of its own.
Tick Generates income if it's paid work. That counts it as work on Time spent and offers the On it or in it? choice when you log it.
Press Save.

Add or change an activity

Open Settings → Activities and press + Add, or tap a row.
Give it a Name and an optional Description.
Set a Role only if it's one the app has features for: Sleep, Meals, Workouts, Intimacy or Entertainment. For example, the Meals role is where meal photos attach, and the Workouts role shows the set logger. Most activities have no role, and each role belongs to one activity at a time.
Optionally set a Target (see Habits below), then Save.

If you track what your time is worth (Settings → Profile), each activity also has Ask what it's worth: tick it for things you could hand off, at work or at home, and the log asks Worth per hour only for those. The Ask worth column in the Activities table sets it without opening each one.

Set up your life areas

Open Settings → Life areas. If you have none yet, pick a template and press Use this.
Press + Add for a new area, or tap one to edit its Name, Colour, Icon or Logo.
Other names for this area helps the app match goals and priorities you've filed under a different name.
Drag rows to reorder them. The order carries through to Goals and Priorities.

Give an area a weekly target

In the area's editor, fill in Hours a week with what you'd like that area to get. Under the field you'll see what it has actually been getting lately, with a Use button if you'd like to start from your real week. Leave it empty and Home compares the area with your usual week instead.

On Home, under This week, by life area, a solid mark shows your target and a dotted one shows where you'd be by now on that pace.

Turn an activity into a habit

In an activity's editor, set a Target: a number, minutes or hours, and a day or a week. "15 minutes a day" of meditation, or "3 hours a week" of exercise. The editor shows what you've logged recently and, as you type, how often that target would have been met.

Habits show on Home under Habits. A daily target is judged day by day (a filled square for each day you hit it). A weekly one is one total, whichever days it happens on. An entry counts when either of its activities is the habit's activity.

Archive instead of delete

Projects and activities you've finished with can be archived: open one and press Archive. They disappear from the Log form but keep their history in your reports. Turn on Show archived to see them again and Restore one.

Life areas can be deleted. Projects that used a deleted area keep their own colour or fall back to a generated one.

Why the Log form can't create projects or activities

You'll notice that typing a new name into the Project or Activity field on the Log only says No match. New ones are added in Settings → Projects and Activities. That's on purpose. One typo and a fast Tab would otherwise create a near-duplicate ("Planng") that lives in your reports forever. Keeping creation in Settings means every name in your log is one you meant.

Tips

Start broad. A few projects per area is plenty; you can always split one later.
Use the Description field to remind yourself what belongs where, especially for activities that sound alike.
A project with no life area shows on Home as time no target can see. Give every project an area if you want the weekly view to add up.
Project 2 and Activity 2 (under + More fields on the Log) are for entries that really are two things at once. The entry then counts in both rows of your reports, and once in the totals.

Questions

Can I rename a project without breaking my old entries? Yes. Entries point at the project, not its name, so a rename shows everywhere at once, past entries included.

What's the difference between a life area target and a habit? An area target asks "is my week balanced?" across everything filed under that area. A habit asks "did I do the thing?" for one activity. An entry has both a project and an activity, so the two never need to add up to each other.

Why don't activities have colours? Projects already colour your day by life area. A second set of colours on the same ribbon would make it harder to read, not easier.

Can a project belong to two life areas? No, one at most. If a project really spans two, it's usually two projects.

I gave a second activity the Meals role and the first one lost it. Why? Each role belongs to one activity at a time, so giving it to one takes it from whichever had it before.