Using Your Hours
How to grade hours, read the grid, and run reviews in the app.
Start with the How to grade your hours guide.
Grading work vs leisure: is relaxing a lived hour?
Yes — rest can be a green hour. What decides is intention, not whether you were working. Here's how to grade work and leisure honestly.
Hour grading for beginners: a first-week walkthrough
New to hour grading? Here's exactly what to do in your first week: one honest sentence per hour, a green, amber or red mark, and reading the pattern.
Hour grading with the Pomodoro technique
Pomodoro tells you when to focus; hour grading tells you whether it was worth it. Here's how to run both together without doubling your effort.
How do you grade a bad day fairly?
Grade a bad day one hour at a time, not as a single verdict. Honest reds are fine — the point is an accurate record, not a punishment.
How to grade an hour green, amber, or red
Grade each hour by one question: would I choose it again? Green for lived well, amber for neutral, red for wasted. Here's how to decide fast.
How to grade sleep, rest, and downtime without guilt
Sleep and real rest count as lived, not lost. Here's how to grade sleep, breaks, and downtime honestly — and how to tell rest apart from drain.
How to handle unaccounted hours you can't remember
Can't remember where an hour went? Here's how to log unaccounted time honestly, when to grade it red, and how to shrink the blur without guilt.
How to read your month grid at a glance
Your month grid turns 30 days of graded hours into color. Here's how to read the bands, streaks and gaps — and what to actually change.
How to set a focus timer that feeds your hour grade
Set a focus timer that lines up with the hour you grade. Here's the length to pick, how to start one, and how to close the block with an honest sentence.
How to start hour grading today in five minutes
Start hour grading in five minutes: pick a color, write one honest sentence per hour, and let the day fill in green, amber, and red. Here's the exact way in.
Lived vs lost: real examples of how to score an hour
Not sure if an hour was lived or lost? Here are real examples — work, rest, scrolling, chores — scored green, amber or red, with the reasoning.
How to run a weekly review in Your Hours
A weekly review in Your Hours reads a month of graded hours as one pattern. Here's a 15-minute routine, what to look for, and the one change to make.
What counts as lived time (and what doesn't)
Lived time is any hour you would choose again — deep work, rest, people, play. Lost time is only what was wasted or unaccounted for. Intention, not output.
What the green, amber, and red hour colors actually mean
Green, amber, and red hours mean lived well, neutral, and lost. Here's what each color really stands for, and how to grade an hour without overthinking it.