Usage Examples

• Basic Usage - The Pace Workflow
  • Principle “Do one thing and do it good.”
  • Starting an Activity
    • Switching Activities
  • Ending an Activity
  • Pausing an Activity
  • Showing the Current Activity
  • Gain Insights with Summaries
• Advanced Functionality
  • Listing Activities
    • Listing resumable activities
  • Adjusting Activities

Basic Usage - The Pace Workflow

Principle “Do one thing and do it good.”

Pace is designed to support this principle. It will allow only one active activity at a time. This means you can only start, pause, resume, or end one activity at a time. This is to ensure that the time tracking is as accurate as possible and you can actually focus on the task at hand. That’s why Pace will automatically end the current activity when you start a new one. pace is called a mindful time tracking tool for that reason.

With pace you can easily manage your day. Here’s how to start, pause, and conclude your activities, alongside generating insightful summaries.

Starting an Activity

Kick off any task with ease. Simply begin your activity now:

pace begin "Creating new assets" --category "MyProject::MyAreaOfFocus" --tags "design,assets"

Note: If you don’t specify a category or tags, Pace will use reasonable defaults. Which is no tags and the ‘Uncategorized’ category. You can also specify a starting time with the --at flag, your time should be in the format HH:MM. If you don’t specify a time, pace will use the current time. Using a different starting time than the current time is useful if you forgot to start the activity at the right time, but you want to make sure the time is logged correctly. You cannot start an activity with a starting time in the future.

Switching Activities

Move seamlessly to a new task. Pace automatically concludes the previous one:

pace begin "Reviewing PR #43" --category "MyOtherProject::MyOtherAreaOfFocus" --tags "web,design"

Ending an Activity

Wrap up your current task:

pace end

Note: When ending an activity, you can also specify the ending time with the --at flag, your time should be in the format HH:MM. If you don’t specify a time, Pace will use the current time. Using a different ending time than the current time is useful if you forgot to end the activity at the right time, but you want to make sure the time is logged correctly. You cannot end an activity with an ending time in the future.

Pausing an Activity

Need a break or a shift in focus? Pause your current activity:

pace hold

And resume it when you’re ready:

pace resume

Note: When resuming an activity, you can also specify the resuming time with the --at flag, your time should be in the format HH:MM. If you don’t specify a time, Pace will use the current time. Using a different resuming time than the current time is useful if you forgot to resume the activity at the right time, but you want to make sure the time is logged correctly. You cannot resume an activity with a resume time in the future.

Showing the Current Activity

You can show the current activity with the pace now command. This will show you the current activity, if there is one.

Gain Insights with Summaries

You can generate summaries of your activities with the pace reflect command. It will show you a summary of your activities for the current day, week, or month. You can also specify a custom date range to reflect. If you want to see a summary of your activities for the current day, you can just run:

pace reflect

It defaults to the current day. If you want to see a summary of your activities for the current week, you can run:

pace reflect --current-week

If you want to see a summary of your activities for a specific date, you can run:

pace reflect --date "2021-12-31"

While you can also specify a date range to reflect upon:

pace reflect --from "2021-12-01" --to "2021-12-23"

If you only specify the --from flag, pace will show you a summary of your activities from the specified date to the current date. If you only specify the --to flag, pace will show you a summary of your activities from the beginning of the month to the specified date.

Advanced Functionality

Listing Activities

Listing resumable activities

You can list all activities that are resumable with the pace resume --list command. This will show you all activities that are ended but which you can resume by creating a new activity with the same contents. Resuming an activity will automatically end all the other and the currently active activities.

Note: In case pace resume cannot find any active activity, it will list the last X activities that are ended and which you can resume by creating a new activity with the same contents. You can specify the number of activities to list by setting:

[general]
most_recent_count = 12 # Default: 9

Adjusting Activities

Need to correct a mistake? You can adjust the contents of the currently active activity:

pace adjust --category "MyProject::MyAreaOfFocus" --tags "design,assets" --description "Creating new assets" --start "08:00"

Note: When adjusting an activity, you can also specify the starting time with the --start flag, your time should be in the format HH:MM. If you don’t specify a time, the time will not be changed. Using a different starting time than the current time is useful if you forgot to start the activity at the right time, but you want to make sure the time is logged correctly.

Setting the Time Zone

You can specify a custom time zone or time zone offset when logging an activity using the --time-zone or --time-zone-offset flags. This is useful when you want to track activities in a different time zone or when your system time zone differs from the time zone you want to use for tracking.

The time zone should be in the format Region/City, for example, America/New_York or Europe/Berlin. The time zone offset should be in the format ±HHMM, for example, +0530 or -0800. The default time zone is the system time zone. You can use the pace settings set time-zone command to set the default time zone. Or re-run pace setup config to set the default time zone during the initial setup.