A work session timer connected to your daily plan
today's work session timer doesn't just track time — it captures what you worked on, links sessions to your daily outcome, and builds a completion picture for your day.
Work session timers vs. time trackers
A work session timer starts when you begin a task and stops when you finish. A time tracker runs in the background and categorizes time automatically using app or URL detection. Today is firmly a session timer rather than a tracker — you start and stop sessions manually with intentional task labeling. This distinction matters: automatic tracking records what you did; intentional session logging records what you meant to do and whether you did it. The friction of manually starting a session is a feature. If it feels like too much effort to log a session, that's often a signal the task hasn't been clearly enough defined.
Session logging in the context of your time blocks
Work sessions in today are always logged within a day context. You see your full block plan — the 9am deep work block, the 11am email block, the 2pm project review block — and start sessions from within specific blocks. This keeps your time log organized by intent rather than by chronological order. The session record captures: the block it belongs to, the task label you gave it, the duration, whether it was outcome-linked, and your post-session assessment of usefulness. No other session timer connects these dimensions in a single log entry.
Reviewing session data to improve your estimates
One of the most actionable uses of session data is improving task duration estimates. If you consistently plan 30-minute sessions for a recurring task but your logs show it always takes 55 minutes, your planning is structurally off. today's session history makes this visible: you can see the actual duration of similar sessions over time and adjust future block sizes accordingly. Better estimates mean fewer days where you run out of time on important work, fewer cascading schedule failures, and a more accurate picture of your true daily capacity.
Using session logging to reduce phantom work
Phantom work is the time that disappears into email threads, Slack channels, impromptu conversations, and context recovery after interruptions — real time spent that shows up nowhere in your plan or log. Session logging creates visibility into phantom work by contrast: if your day log shows three 45-minute sessions but you worked for 8 hours, the 5+ unlogged hours were phantom. Most knowledge workers are shocked the first time they see this gap. That shock is productive: it motivates boundary-setting around reactive communication that most productivity frameworks only suggest theoretically.
Frequently asked questions
Related
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- FeatureTime Blocking App — todaytoday is a calm time blocking app for knowledge workers. Sketch your day in blocks, log focus sessions, and close the loop each evening.
- FeatureDeep Work Timer — todaytoday's focus sessions act as a deep work timer — start from a named block, track duration, and log whether the session moved your most important work forward.
- FeatureDaily Planner App — todaytoday is a daily planner app for knowledge workers. Plan time blocks, track focus, keep commitments, and reflect — in one quiet place.