Understand where your time went

Time Analysis turns your recorded sessions into a category breakdown. Use it to answer how much time you tracked, where it went, and whether the mix changed from the previous period. The Project Waddle example separates Penguin Operations, Mission Control, Fish Diplomacy, Orbital Research, and Human Maintenance, while still exposing uncategorized time that needs attention.

On desktop, open Daily OS and select Time Analysis below the sidebar calendar. The dashboard fills the content area so the chart and exact table can be read together. Its controls reflow at narrow widths without changing what they do.

All screenshots

The overview combines headline totals, a seven-day stacked chart, and the exact category table. Switch the manual to mobile or desktop and light or dark to inspect every production layout.

ScreenshotMobile view

Read the headline cards

The first row summarizes the selected period:

• TOTAL is all tracked time. Its caption names the largest category and its share, so the card answers where most time went as well as how much was recorded.
• FOCUS adds the categories you chose to watch. In the example, Penguin Operations and Mission Control form the focus set.
• OTHER is everything outside that focus set.

Before a focus set exists, Lotti shows Choose focus categories instead of two zero-value cards. Select it, choose one or more active categories, and finish with Done. Use the tune button on the Focus card whenever the set needs to change. This preference is local to Lotti and does not alter the categories on any entry.

Choose a useful period

Select the period unit to switch between Day, Week, Month, Quarter, and Year. Use the chevrons to move one complete period at a time. The forward chevron stops at the current period, so the dashboard never navigates into an empty future range.

Select the date label to open the calendar and jump directly to the period containing another day. Week boundaries follow the first weekday configured by the device region.

Two shortcuts cover the most common questions:

• This month shows month-to-date; and
• This year shows year-to-date.

These ranges end today rather than adding empty future days. The label includes (so far), and averages use only elapsed days.

Read the chart and table together

The stacked bars show how each category contributed to every hour, day, or week in the range. Hover or press a bar to see the category values behind that bucket.

Follow the running total

Select Running total when the question changes from “what happened in this bucket?” to “how much have I accumulated since this range began?” Lotti turns each category into a cumulative area:

• the thickness of a coloured band at a date is that category's tracked time from the start of the selected range through that date;
• the top edge of the complete stack is all tracked time accumulated over the same interval; and
• the bands can only hold or rise. A flat section means no time was added in that category during those buckets; it does not subtract earlier work.

All screenshots

Running total accumulates each category from the beginning of the range. The top edge is total tracked time so far; each band shows how much its category contributed to that total.

ScreenshotMobile view

The selected range determines where the count starts. Moving to another period restarts the total at that period's first bucket. Day uses hourly buckets, shorter multi-day ranges use daily buckets, and long ranges use weekly buckets, but the cumulative meaning stays the same. In a current, unfinished period, Lotti stops the area at the latest elapsed bucket instead of drawing a misleading flat line through future dates.

Running total changes only the chart projection. TOTAL, FOCUS, OTHER, and the category table continue to describe the whole selected range. Hover or press the area to see the running value for every category at that point. Select Per day, Per week, or Per hour to return to individual bucket values. If only one bucket has elapsed, Lotti keeps the bars because a one-point running line would not communicate a trend.

The table is the precise lookup. It orders categories by tracked time and shows their total, share, average per day, and a relative data bar. A gray Uncategorized row is deliberate: it makes missing attribution visible instead of silently hiding it. Open the related entries or tasks and assign a category when that time should belong to an operational area.

Compare equivalent periods

All screenshots

Compare uses the same elapsed days in each period. Direction is communicated by an arrow, sign, and colour, while the chart remains focused on the current period.

ScreenshotMobile view

Select Compare to add the previous period. For an in-progress week, month, quarter, or year, Lotti compares the elapsed portion with the same number of days immediately before it. A Sunday month-to-date result is therefore not compared with a full prior month.

The headline cards gain their percentage change and previous value. The table switches to CURRENT, PREVIOUS, and Change. At narrow widths the lower-priority Previous column is omitted, while Current and Change remain visible. An upward or downward result uses an arrow and explicit sign as well as colour; very small changes remain neutral, and a result with no previous baseline is shown as new.

The chart continues to show only the current period. The note Comparison shown in the table below points to the exact values and prevents a second set of bars from obscuring the category mix.

What Lotti counts

Time Analysis counts timed journal entries whose end is later than their start. Audio duration is not counted separately, because a recording made during a running timer would otherwise count twice.

Category attribution follows the work:

1. If the time entry is linked to a task with a category, the task category wins.
2. Otherwise, the time entry's own category is used.
3. If neither exists, the time appears as Uncategorized.

Overlapping timers in the same category are merged before the total is calculated. Overlaps in different categories remain in both categories, because they represent separate kinds of recorded activity. Entries spanning midnight are split into the correct local calendar days. Private entries obey the global private-data visibility setting, and the dashboard refreshes when entries, links, task categories, or that visibility setting changes.

Keep the picture trustworthy

Use categories consistently on tasks that own recorded work. Review the Uncategorized row periodically, and choose focus categories that answer a real question rather than trying to include everything. For Project Waddle, watching Penguin Operations and Mission Control makes the Focus card an operational-readiness signal while Fish Diplomacy and Human Maintenance remain visible in the full breakdown.

Time Analysis does not currently export CSV, group results by project, or draw the previous period as another chart series. The exact comparison values are kept in the table, where they are easier to read and less likely to distort the current-period picture.