Re: Tracking time from one state to another?

[Malcolm Matalka <mmatalka@gmail.com>]

Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Malcom,
>
> On 2019-04-17 at 14:20 +0200, Malcolm Matalka <mmatalka@gmail.com> wrote...
>> Is it possible in org-mode to track, and report, the duration of
>> certain state transitions in org-mode? In particular, I'm interested
>> in tracking how long it takes me to go from a state that means I'm
>> actively working on an item to it being in a done state?
>>
>> In my case, an item might go from working, to waiting, to working, to
>> done.  And in this case I'm only really interested in the last working
>> to done time.
>
> Org doesn't have a built-in feature to turn on/off the clock when you
> change state, as far as I know. But it has the opposite - you can
> change state when you clock in or out of a task.

I don't want to turn on/off the clock when I change state, I want to get
a report on the time between certain state transitions.  That
information is stored in the LOGBOOK (assuming one has that turned on).

>
> See section 7 here https://writequit.org/denver-emacs/presentations/2017-04-11-time-clocking-with-org.html#helpful-things
>
> And/or maybe thread here w/ some code https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode//2009-04/msg00315.html
>
> So perhaps you can achieve this by changing your workflow a bit. Instead of changing state, just clock in and have the state set to INPROGRESS. Clock otu and have it set to WAITING. When it is done, it may be a two-step process of setting to DONE and making sure the clock is stopped.
>
> Would this achieve what you're looking for?

Unfortunately no.  I need to track the total time I spend in a task for
billing reasons, but what I'm interested in here is how quickly I
complete a task when there are no blockers/dependencies.  And the way
that presents itself in my LOGBOOK is the time between the final
transition from NEXT to DONE.  Before that, a TODO can go from NEXT, to
WAITING, and back and forth.

>
>   -k.