Interstitial journaling is a way to log a day at the seams between tasks, not as a running timer and not as a long diary at night. Tony Stubblebine’s version is a short loop: write a timestamp, close what you just did, then name the first action of what comes next. The log becomes both a time record and a reset for attention.
This guide is the informational owner for the method. FluxTime’s product implementation lives on Features. The scoring and energy-vector theory lives in TimeGPT.
The Stubblebine loop
A useful interstitial entry is small enough that you will actually write it:
- Timestamp the moment you notice a switch (or a pause).
- Close the last block in a phrase: what it was, whether it finished, what you are leaving unfinished.
- Name the first action of the next block, not the whole project.
You do not start a stopwatch. You do not reconstruct the day from memory at 11 p.m. Duration appears later as the difference between two timestamps.
That is the contrast with common Apple time-tracking habits:
- Start/stop timers (the Toggl-style model) ask for an action at the beginning and the end of every task. Miss one tap and the log is wrong.
- Auto-track (the Timing / Rize model) watches the computer and then asks you to clean up noisy app titles. It cannot see a walk, a conversation, or a Watch-only hour.
- End-of-day journals capture feeling, not when the work actually happened.
Interstitial journaling sits in the middle: you author the record, but only at natural intervals.
How FluxTime implements it
FluxTime is built around that timestamp-and-text loop, then adds the pieces a paper note cannot:
- One timeline for tasks, events, and reminders. A check-in can close a todo, sit next to a calendar event, or capture a short reminder without opening three apps.
- Diary view turns timestamp diffs into how the minutes were spent, using categories such as Core Work, Daily Life, Self-Improvement, Health, Relationships, and Rest (the same set described in the TimeGPT essay).
- Energy rides along. A block is not only “90 minutes of writing”; it can also feed the energy vector that TimeGPT uses to schedule high-focus work.
- Apple Watch templates let you drop a check-in from the wrist. That is still a journal entry, not a running timer.
The four views keep the method from becoming a pile of notes: Vision holds goals and projects, Today holds the plan, Diary holds the real flow, and Review shows patterns. Read the product map on Features or the Chinese handbook FluxTime 核心概念手册.
A 10-minute practice
- Open FluxTime Diary (or a notes app if you are only testing the habit).
- Write the time and one line for what you are leaving.
- Write the first action of the next block.
- Repeat at the next natural seam—meeting end, commute start, lunch, context switch.
- At the end of the day, scan the diffs. If two hours vanished into “misc,” that is the point of the method.
Do this for a week before you worry about perfect categories. Classification rules (primary purpose, split overlapping blocks, or allow a day to exceed 24 hours when two values ran in parallel) are documented in TimeGPT.
When to use FluxTime instead of a timer
Use a start/stop timer if you bill clients in increments and need a running clock. Use interstitial journaling if you want a sustainable personal log that also holds tasks and energy. FluxTime is the second kind of tool: Free to download on the App Store, with optional Flux Pro for smart day planning, unlimited Flux AI, advanced Review, widgets, cloud sync, and Apple Calendar.
Related: Track energy, not just time.