I did the same thing for a while (I had a habit of watching a 5 minute timelapse of my screen at the end of each workday). At some point I hit diminishing returns and it became a chore, so I took a break. That said, I highly recommend trying this (not only for programming!).
BTW I implemented it in the same way as OP (screenshot every N seconds, put together with ffmpeg). Actual screen recording software was too resource heavy and didn’t support very low fps well.
Nice! How long did it take you to hit diminishing returns? (Days/weeks/months/etc?) And what other activities did you try it for? I plan to apply it to writing at some point.
For a few days it was very enlightening and I cared enough to reflect upon them. Then I continued for a few more months.
In my case it also covered data analysis work, video meetings etc.
I annotated all the screenshots with time, so I could immediately see how much time I spent on things (system clock was too small and not visible in full screen mode).
For meetings specifically it helped me reflect upon how much time I spent in various kind of meetings and how useful they were. It also let me easily see how much time I spent afk (e.g. how long was my lunch break).
I did the same thing for a while (I had a habit of watching a 5 minute timelapse of my screen at the end of each workday). At some point I hit diminishing returns and it became a chore, so I took a break. That said, I highly recommend trying this (not only for programming!).
BTW I implemented it in the same way as OP (screenshot every N seconds, put together with ffmpeg). Actual screen recording software was too resource heavy and didn’t support very low fps well.
Nice! How long did it take you to hit diminishing returns? (Days/weeks/months/etc?) And what other activities did you try it for? I plan to apply it to writing at some point.
For a few days it was very enlightening and I cared enough to reflect upon them. Then I continued for a few more months.
In my case it also covered data analysis work, video meetings etc.
I annotated all the screenshots with time, so I could immediately see how much time I spent on things (system clock was too small and not visible in full screen mode).
For meetings specifically it helped me reflect upon how much time I spent in various kind of meetings and how useful they were. It also let me easily see how much time I spent afk (e.g. how long was my lunch break).