Add a “Recharge Multiplier” to reflect realistic work time and reduce guilt around healthy breaks

[gomomentus-nilsd]

I’m very strict with my time tracking — maybe too strict. I log everything precisely and mark breaks as breaks. The problem: I end up either short on hours or mentally drained.

In reality, one hour of deep focus needs about 20% extra for recharging — grabbing coffee, stretching, pacing, or letting the brain cool down. That’s not wasted time; it’s maintenance. In an office, that recovery time blends naturally into the day. In remote work, and especially for neurodivergent brains, it disappears — and the data makes us look “less productive” than we truly are.

Idea:
Add a Recharge Multiplier (e.g. 1.2×) that applies both:

Live to the ongoing “worked today” counter — so the display already reflects realistic energy use.

Later to the rounding screen — when finalizing daily logged time.

Example:
5h of focused work with a 1.2× multiplier shows as 6h total — acknowledging the hidden recharge tax that keeps us stable and effective.

This isn’t about inflating numbers. It’s about tracking the real rhythm of sustainable work — and letting people, especially neurodivergent or remote workers, take breaks without guilt. Because recharging isn’t slacking off — it’s what keeps us operational.

[johannesjo]

Thanks for bringing this up. It's definitely an interesting subject and something we should improve upon. For classic pomdoro you can just count break time as work time, which I think is absolutely fair for mentally draining work. Not sure adding modifiers to tracked time is the best way to achieve this, since it might be a bit unexpected for users expecting exact time tracking. But maybe there are other ways to improve on this?

[tharban]

The default would be 1.0 so no unexpected surcharge. I was thinking initially about adding a separate task like recharge or so. But then I would be billing this to my company and not the projects that I am working on. And a separate task per project would make this tedious to maintain and also way too complex for my brain. It should be kind of invisible to avoid the guilt.

[tharban]

By the way: this is just my private account answering.

[johannesjo]

What do you find problematic with UX when just tracking the break time as work time too?

[tharban]

Because break time is genuine break time. Like lunch. And also recharge time belongs to a task. I was wondering if just distributing the break times on the tasks would be an option. But then lunch and other real break times would be included too. Just removing a fixed amount of time of each day is also not possible because lunch could take longer one day and be nonexistent on the other. Tracking lunch as task would also not be possible because naturally, I am not at my machine when that happens. So the idle timers kick in. For all of these reasons, I thought just having a multiplier would be the most easy and efficient way to handle this. Combine this with a better representation of the rounded times so that this pop up that this is not recoverable gets irrelevant. You could have a buffer time and a rounded time on the finalize your day sheet and be able to switch between these views. So that you don’t get it shoved in your face when you look at it.

This would also accommodate for how people are starting and ending their tasks. Someone already thinks about the task and only starts tracking when he really starts it. Someone else can separate things more easily and tracks immediately when he switches tasks. Also take care of some overlap. So when I’m finishing one task and already starting to think about the next one, the effective time on a task is longer. These five minutes could be counted to two tasks. Of course this blurs real time and effective time. But when you are working with a higher focus while you’re working and not slacking off, then your time might be 20% more effective too. That’s also a use case that would be covered then.

But that’s just my 2 cents.

[gomomentus-nilsd]

Maybe this could also be something like buffer for travel time? You could add the ability to add some buffer time before and after, either based on location and times derived by Google Maps (which would play into the other idea about location based todo lists), or make it a percentage of the time logged/allocated, added either 50% before and 50% after, or 100% after, or maybe a fixed amount of "setup" time. This could be shown on the schedule either explicitly or invisibly (I think this should be a configuration option) so that it enforces gaps between the tasks you schedule or be shown explicitly for people who want to see the schedule filled back to back.