TimeMarbles: A More Holistic Approach to Self-Reflecting on Focus in the Knowledge Workplace

Digital tools promoting individual focus are increasingly popular in knowledge work. Yet their narrow framing of attention as a binary of focus versus non-focus can be unsustainable and discourage engagement in other vital activities, such as team coordination and collaboration. We introduce TimeMarbles, a web app that encourages more holistic self-reflection by tracking three modes of focus: high-focus, normal-focus, and break, as well as a team vs. individual dimension. In a two-week comparative structured observation in the field with 24 knowledge workers across six countries, we explored how users experience TimeMarbles vs. a more traditional focus-centric web app. Our thematic analysis shows that participants felt more positive about their day when tracking their time in TimeMarbles and that, despite the added logging effort, they preferred the more granular approach because it better represented the range of different attention and activities that characterize their workday. Our work points toward re-imagining digital workplace time-tracking tools to better support worker wellbeing.