How ClockSetup works

What ClockSetup is

ClockSetup is a goal tracker that measures the hours you actually worked and how well you worked them — not the number of days you managed to tick.

You write your goal out by hand on paper, promise a number of minutes a day, and then put those minutes on the clock every day. Each day you mark a checklist and photograph the page you wrote. From that record the app works out three numbers: your Hours against what you committed, your Effort out of 100, and your Progress through the plan.

Nothing derived is ever stored. Every number you see is recomputed from your day-by-day record, which is why changing a rule reaches backwards through your history as well as forwards.

Why it exists

Because a streak calendar can be honest and still tell you almost nothing.

Five minutes a day for 850 days is 70 hours. An hour a day across the same 850 days is 850 hours. Both are unbroken. Both look identical on any tracker that counts days. They are 780 hours apart.

So ClockSetup refuses to let attendance stand in for work. Time is the ceiling on everything: a day's score is multiplied by the fraction of your promise you actually delivered, so no amount of ticking can lift a five-minute day. Every verdict reports Effort before it praises a streak, and the app never decides whether a step passed — you do.

How the numbers work

Effort for one day is:

Effort = 100 × Depth × Quality
Depth = minutes worked ÷ minutes promised (capped at 1)
Quality = 0.7 × checklist completion + 0.3 × receipt score

A checklist row marked Complete counts 1, Partially counts 0.5, No effort counts 0. A receipt written with your usual hand scores 0.75; with your opposite hand, 1.0; with no receipt at all, 0.

Because those two halves are multiplied rather than added, half your committed time can never score above 50, and five minutes against a sixty-minute promise can never score above 8.

1. Create your account

Name, email, password, your country and time zone, and one unusual question: which hand you write with.

The time zone is not decoration. It decides when your day starts and ends, so that “today” means your today and a day logged at 11pm does not land on tomorrow. The writing hand decides which receipts count as opposite-hand later, and it is the only answer at signup that changes how you are scored.

2. Write the goal by hand, on paper

Before you touch the app: write the goal out by hand, in your own words, on a real piece of paper. Underneath it write the checklist — the things a good day contains.

This is the part people skip, and it is the part that works. Handwriting is slow, and being made to be slow about what you want is the whole exercise.

3. Set up the clock

Press + New goal. Setup has three tabs, and nothing is scored until you finish them.

The Goal tab holds its name, a description of what done looks like, whether it is public or private, the strictness level, and your off days. The Commitment tab holds the minutes you promise per day and a photo of the goal you just wrote by hand. The Steps tab holds the plan, broken into steps, each with its dates.

Decide the minutes honestly. Below 30 a day the setup screen warns you in the app's own words: that is a streak, not an effort.

4. Start the clock

The Start button turns on when everything needed is in place. It is the point of no return, and the screen says so.

Once started, your step titles and dates are locked, and so are your daily minutes. The only way to change the plan afterwards is to declare a Failure, which is written into your history and followed by a re-plan. Failure is part of the design, not an accident in it.

5. Log the day, every day

Open the Calendar and click today. The day panel has two tabs.

Checklist: the minutes you actually worked, and each checklist row marked Complete, Partially or No effort. You can carry a row forward to tomorrow, repeat it daily, add a note, or spend a streak freeze on a day you missed.

Receipt: a photograph of the page you wrote by hand that day, and which hand wrote it. Your Effort for the day updates live at the bottom while you fill it in.

6. Read the verdict, and finish the step

Check Progress gives a plain verdict, the numbers behind it, and a forecast for the step you are in. Effort is always reported before any praise for a streak.

When a step's dates run out, its Outcome screen shows what happened beside the reference line for your strictness — and then you decide Pass or Fail. The app never decides for you. When the clock finally stops you write your Story: what the goal was, what happened, and whether the method helped.

How do I add a goal and start driving it?

Press + New goal on My Goals and work through the three setup tabs — the Goal itself, your Commitment, and the Steps with their dates. Nothing is measured while a goal still says “Setting up”.

When everything needed is in place the Start button turns on. Pressing it locks the step titles, the step dates and your daily minutes, and the clock begins. From then on, driving it is one action a day: open the Calendar, click today, put in the minutes you worked, mark the checklist, and photograph the page you wrote by hand.

How do I add a checklist, and what do the three marks mean?

The checklist lives in the day panel, on the Checklist tab. Add the rows that describe a good day for this goal — the same rows you wrote under the goal on paper.

Each row is marked Complete, Partially or No effort. They count as 1, 0.5 and 0, and their average is your completion for that day. A row you did not finish can be carried forward to tomorrow, and a row you need every day can be set to repeat.

Completion is 70% of the day's Quality. The other 30% is the receipt.

What is the goal level — Soft, Mid or Strict?

Strictness is set per goal, on the Goal tab, and it decides how harshly your record is read. It changes five things at once.

Soft: a day passes at half your promised minutes (50%), a gap costs 2 points, your streak survives 3 gaps, and a freeze costs 1 with 4 per 30 days. Mid: a day passes at 70% of your minutes, a gap costs 4, the streak breaks at 2 gaps, and a freeze costs 2 with 2 per 30 days. Strict: a day passes at 85% of its minutes, a gap costs 8, a single gap breaks the streak, a freeze costs 4 with 1 per 30 days — and you cannot log a day late at all.

You can change strictness after starting, and it recalculates your Effort from your whole history. Nothing derived is ever stored in ClockSetup: every number is recomputed from the day-by-day record, so a change to the rules reaches backwards as well as forwards.

What makes a day pass or fail?

Every day inside your plan is judged on one thing: did you put the minutes on the clock that your level asks for. Soft passes a day at 50% of your daily commitment, Mid at 70%, Strict at 85%. Under the line, the day fails. A gap — a day with nothing logged — is a fail; a frozen day is excused and not judged; off days and days that have not arrived are not judged at all.

The line is time, not the checklist or the photograph, because time is the ceiling on everything else. A day that did not deliver the minutes cannot be rescued by ticking rows, and a day that did should not fail for a missing photo — that already costs Effort.

Failure is part of success. A failed day keeps its minutes in your Hours, keeps its place in the record, and is shown as plainly as a passed one — a tick or a cross on the calendar, a Pass or Fail pill in the ledger and on every statement. Today is judged only once it passes: until then it is simply still open.

What is the calendar level — steps, labels and the day colours?

Your plan sits on the calendar as steps: named stretches of dates, locked once the clock starts. Labels are a second, looser layer — a name over a stretch of calendar, like “the base-building block”. A label is a caption and nothing more: it changes no number, labels may overlap, they may leave gaps, and a goal with none is perfectly ordinary.

Every day on the calendar is coloured by what it is: a future day, a declared off day, a day outside the plan, a day still to do, a gap where nothing was logged, a frozen day, an honest no-effort day, a logged day, a day with a receipt, and a day with an opposite-hand receipt.

A gap hurts twice, on purpose. It stays in the average as a zero, and it costs your level's gap penalty on top.

Why does ClockSetup ask which hand I write with?

Because a receipt written with your other hand is worth more.

When you upload the photo you say which hand wrote it. Your usual hand scores 0.75. Your opposite hand scores 1.0. No receipt at all scores 0.

Writing with the wrong hand is slow, awkward and impossible to do on autopilot — which is exactly the point. It is evidence that you were actually present for the goal that day, rather than copying yesterday's page out of habit. Changing your writing hand in your profile only affects receipts from then on; it never rewrites what you have already earned.

How do I upload a receipt, and what counts as one?

A receipt is a photograph of the page you wrote by hand that day — the goal, the checklist, the work. Open the day, go to the Receipt tab, take or choose the photo, and say which hand wrote it.

Photographs from a phone are large, so the limit is 12 MB per photo. Over that the app tells you plainly instead of failing in a way you have to guess at.

The receipt is 30% of the day's Quality. On a public goal your receipts stay hidden unless you deliberately chose to show them.

How is my Effort actually calculated?

Effort for a day is 100 × Depth × Quality.

Depth is the minutes you worked divided by the minutes you promised, capped at 1. Quality is 0.7 × your checklist completion, plus 0.3 × your receipt score.

They are multiplied, not added, and that is the whole design: time is the ceiling. Half your committed time can never score above 50, however perfect the checklist. Five minutes against a sixty-minute promise cannot score above 8. There is no way to tick your way past the clock.

What is the difference between a streak and effort?

A streak counts days. Effort counts hours, and how well they were spent.

In ClockSetup a day only extends your streak if it carries at least half your committed minutes — attendance alone is not enough. And every verdict reports Effort before it praises a streak, deliberately.

The arithmetic is the argument: five minutes a day for 850 days is 70 hours. An hour a day across the same 850 days is 850. On a streak calendar those two look identical. They are 780 hours apart.

What happens if I miss a day?

You have three honest options, and the app offers only the honest ones.

Mark it No effort — a truthful zero, which on Soft and Mid can still keep your streak if the goal is set that way. Spend a streak freeze, if your level has one left: a frozen day scores nothing at all, because it is excused rather than earned, and it costs your level's freeze charge. Or leave it, in which case it becomes a gap.

Off days are different and cost nothing. They are the days you declared at setup as not part of the plan.

Can I change the plan after starting?

Not quietly, and that is deliberate. Step titles, step dates and your daily minutes all lock when the clock starts.

To change the plan you declare a Failure. It ends the step today, writes it into your history, and opens the re-plan screen — where you can insert a recovery step, move the dates of future steps, carry on as planned, or stop the goal. Confirming re-locks the plan and records the revision.

Nothing is hidden and nothing is deleted. A record you can quietly edit is not a record.

Is my goal private?

Private by default. You choose per goal whether it is public, and separately whether your receipts are visible on it.

A public goal appears on Explore, where anyone can read your numbers, steps, calendar, ledger and graph, and leave a comment. They cannot change anything. You can also ask for help on a goal, which puts it in front of people who might have advice.