This topic seems to pop up quite a bit in these parts, and that's fair -- it's not all that straighforward. We need to be clear with the terms: total time as a pilot, and total flight time. Both are defined by the CFRs. Generally, when people say total time, they mean total flight time (my logbook column says so, though that's not regulatory, of course). "Total time as a pilot" includes aircraft flight time ("total flight time"), as well as sim and FTD time (not ATD time, though; although that doesn't render ATD time worthless, as it's used for the instrument rating, for example). "Flight time" is time in an aircraft (PIC, instruction received, etc.). "Total time as a pilot" has relatively limited usefulness, BUT in this context it's applicable to certain requirements for the ATP, as OP asks about. Most people don't log "total time as a pilot;" it's far more common to log total flight time, and, as others have said, to separately log sim/FTD time (or ATD time in other contexts). The place where total time as a pilot would be used would be IACRA (formerly your 8710) for the ATP, which asks for your types of time, at which point you'd simply enter flight time and other types of time as appropriate, totaled up in each category, and broken out lower on the form (a common example would be 25 hours of multi airplane FLIGHT time per the reg -- remember this is one form of pilot time, and 25 additional hours of multi pilot time attained in an FTD as part of a 141 or 142 program, or sim time in your 121 training, etc.). Hope that helps, and feel free to follow up if it's still a bit fuzzy.