How to count your study time honestly

Three reasons study logs go wrong

First, stopped sessions disappear. Study for 20 minutes, get a phone call, hit stop — and many apps record zero. As one reviewer put it: "If I ended the session in the midway it's not gonna be counted in the overall study time which is unfair."

Second, midnight splits your evening in two. "I can't change the daily reset time, and for a night owl like me" it means half the session lands on tomorrow.

Third, logs get collected and never read. Numbers only help when you look back at them.

1. Keep partial sessions

Throwing away unfinished sessions makes your log smaller than reality, and a log that feels unfair is one you stop keeping. Rounding them up to 25 minutes is just as bad — the number stops meaning anything.

Log the minutes you actually focused as partial time. Stopped at 18 minutes? That's 18 minutes. Looking at completed sessions and total minutes side by side also shows you how often you were interrupted.

2. Set when your day starts

A session from 11 PM to 1 AM is one study session. Move the day boundary from midnight to a time after you're usually asleep and your log matches your life.

• Think of the latest you usually finish studying — say 2 AM.
• Set your day to start a bit after that — say 4 AM.
• Now a 1 AM session counts toward the previous day, and your streak doesn't break.

3. A 10-minute weekly review

Checking numbers daily breeds anxiety. Once a week, same day, look at just these:

• Total focus time this week versus last week.
• Your best and worst days, with one line on why.
• How many sessions were completed versus stopped early. Lots of interruptions? Try a shorter session length.
• Estimated versus actual sessions per task, so next week's plan is realistic.

Doing this in Brewdoro

Brewdoro saves stopped sessions as partial focus time, and the "day starts at" setting puts late-night study on the day you began. The weekly chart shows focus time, cups brewed and your streak, and you can share today's card as an image with your study group.

Estimate sessions per task, press play on the task, and finished sessions are counted against it — which makes the weekly estimate-versus-actual check easy. Everything stays on your phone, with no sign-up.