When working on projects or to-do items, you might be curious to know the total amount of time you've spent on them. (Or, if you're like me, you enjoy finding ways to procrastinate instead of tackling the steps necessary to complete the project.)
While working on a few personal projects recently, I was curious to understand the amount of time I spend on each one. For example, I started an online course called "Associate Data Analyst in SQL" and — when I saw the estimated completion time on their website was 40 hours — I started wondering how long it would actually take me to finish the course.
So I added a new Time card database to my existing project and task tracker on Notion, which allows me to "clock in" and "clock out" when working on a task. As a result, I know the amount of time I've spent on the above "Associate Data Analyst" course (erm, much higher than 40 hours 😅) and better understand how to estimate the timeline for these kinds of certification courses.
The databases in this template and relationships between them.
The below article includes a links to the databases, a short tutorial showing how to add a new time card to a task, and a few details about the system structured and settings for those who are curious to build a similar time tracking system in Notion.
<aside> <img src="/icons/report_gray.svg" alt="/icons/report_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Here be databases!
The three databases that constitute this template are below. If you are copying this whole page for your own usage, be careful.
</aside>
The below screenshot shows my Tasks database in Notion.
In this example, I’ll open the task called "Assessment: Data Management in SQL."
After opening the task page, click the Create punch button.
After clicking the button, a new page is added to the related Time cards database, and the clock-in time of the new page is set to now.
When finished working on this task, click the Punch out button.
The status of the time card is changed to "Done" and the clock-out time is updated.
You can double check the new time card by navigating to the Time cards database...
...And you can see the newly created time card related to the "Assessment: Data Management in SQL" page.
Important part! If you go back to the Tasks database, there is a Total hours rollup property that displays the sum of all related time cards. It looks like I've spent over 60 hours on this project 🥲
