Would you like to track how much time you spend working? Maybe you want to track how much time you spend commuting to work. Goalposts can keep track of time for you. Even if you do not have a specific timed goal, you can still track your time. This is especially useful when you want to see where your time goes each day.

The overview button gives you more in depth information about your goal.

There are two ways to set up goals, to track your time. The first is when you have a specific timed goal you would like to meet (at least/up to and limit/less than). One of those goals, for me, is exercise. My goal is to exercise at least 40 minutes and do this at least four times a week. Another goal I use this way is watching T.V. I want to limit myself to no more than three hours a day.

You can look at my Exercise goal, to see how to set up a specific timed  goal. If you would like to limit your time, like watching T.V., remember to tap the green arrow and choose limit/less than. You can see in the picture, I went over my goal on March 3rd by 2 hours and 9 minutes.

The second way to set up a goal to track your time is to have NO specific time (Unlimited). This type of goal is great when you are curious as to how much time you spend doing a particular task. I use unlimited timed goals to see how much time I spend working, cleaning, and cooking. I also use this to keep up with how much time my son spends doing homework each day. This also works best for tracking your time on tasks you have no control over. A good example would be commuting to work every day. It’s something you do, but you have no control over the traffic.

To set up a goal that has no specific time (Unlimited):

Tap “+” at the bottom of the home screen.

Tap the white “+” to add a new goal.

Under “IDENTITY” name your goal and choose an icon and color.

Under “DESCRIPTION” tap the green up arrow and then tap “unlimited”.

Make sure you have “Total entries for me” checked and tap “save” in the upper right.

You are now ready to go! Whenever you are ready to start a task, tap the “+” at the bottom of the home screen, tap on your icon, and tap start. Goalposts is now tracking the time of your task. When you have completed your task, tap on the flag that is running on your timeline and tap the checkered flag at the bottom left. This will stop the timer.

You will notice in the picture on the right, your time shows in blue. This is because you have no specific time set for your goal. With no timed goals, you do not have a certain time set to complete a goal.

Tracking your time in Goalposts is a great way for you to see how you spend your days. Knowing how you spend your time can help you to determine the good and bad habits you may have. It can also help you determine if certain activities help or hinder the progress of others.

Do you find yourself forgetting to do tasks that needs to be done? Do you ask yourself “how can I remember to do the tasks I forget”? I used to pride myself on my memory, but not so much anymore. When trying to keep up with work, the house, the schedules of two teenage kids, and their homework, I find it more difficult to remember to do some of the other important things. Yeah, there’s the getting older thing too, but we won’t discuss that!

The tasks I find myself most likely to forget are the ones I don’t need to do everyday.  Two things I seem to have the hardest time remembering are changing the air filter on the A/C unit and giving my dog his monthly heart worm medicine. I think we can agree, these are things I should not forget. This is where Goalposts comes in. Now that I have a goal set for each of these, with an alert to remind me when it’s time to do these tasks, I never have to remember!

Setting up goals in Goalposts to help you remember your tasks is simple. By now you are probably familiar with setting up new goals, so I won’t go into the tiny details. I will be using my “Change Filter” goal as the example.

1. Tap the “+” on your wheel to add a new goal and give your goal an identity.
2. Under Description, tap “time” and then “+” to add a new unit. Just backspace and type what you want your unit to be called. I have cleverly called mine Filter.
3. Tap “daily” and set the period to how often you want to do this goal. For my goal it would be monthly.
4. Under Tracking it’s completely up to you whether you want it to total entries.
5. Extras is a VERY important step to setting up this type of goal. This is where you are going to set Goalposts to remind you. Tap “Add new extra” tap “Alert”. Here you can tell it to alert you when there is no activity for a certain amount of time. Tap “save” at the top right and this will take you back to the New Goal screen where you can tap “save” at the top right again to save the goal.

Note: For my “Change Filter” goal, I have three alerts set. I do this because there is a very good chance that when it alerts me the first time, I will not be able to change the filter right then. I have an alert to remind me when there has been no activity for at least 31, 35, and 40 days. Surely by the third alert I will find time to change it! If you would like to add multiple alerts to your goals, just follow step 5 and after you set your first “alert” and tap save, tap “Add new extra” again. You can set as many alerts as you like.

Now whenever I change my air filter I just tap on the wheel, tap my air filter icon, tap record and forget about it! When it’s been 31 days, Goalposts will remind me it’s time to change the filter again. You will also notice, like the weight tracking goal, your entry will show as a post and not a banner. Only time tracking goals show as banners.

Final thought while writing this post: As I stare at the wall waiting for the right words to come to me, my eyes land on the smoke detector. I should really enter a goal to change those batteries twice a year!