Six hours in the library often contains two hours of actual study. Tracking is how you find your real number — and knowing it is worth more than any study hack.
One category per subject. Maths, Chemistry, Essay Prep, Reading — whatever your load looks like. When exams approach, the weekly view answers the only planning question that matters: which subject is getting starved?
Track focused time, not desk time. Only run the clock while you're genuinely working. The moment you're on your phone, the session is over. This one rule is what makes your numbers honest — and honest numbers are the entire value of tracking.
Use the focus timer for sessions. The built-in countdown supports Pomodoro-style sprints: 25 minutes for hard-to-start subjects, 45–60 for deep work like maths problems or essay drafting. Starting a timer is a smaller commitment than "revising chemistry", which is exactly why it works.
Plenty of students track hours in Notion or a spreadsheet and abandon it in a fortnight — logging is friction, and friction loses to exam stress. A tracker that opens instantly with no login, has the timer built in, and draws the weekly chart automatically removes most of that friction. One Day Tracker is free with no account, which also means no subscription quietly billing your student account — and your data stays on your own device.
The same setup covers the rest of student life: part-time work shifts (export the CSV as a timesheet if your employer needs hours), gym sessions, society commitments. If you want to go deeper on finding out where a whole week disappears to, run a full time audit — one honest week of data usually reorganises the rest of term.
Free, no account, timer built in. Works on your phone and laptop.
Start tracking — it's free