RESCUETIME SOFTWARE

I know some people want to log their personal time as well, but I don’t think Rescuetime is good for that. errands, lunch, sports) will be so-called ‘off-line time’. As such, any time that goes into Rescuetime is work-related, whereas non-work (e.g. I’m going to assume you only want to log work time. Not a great week (too much e-mail) but a great overview of what I’m spending my time on (click on image to magnify). It parcels the data out according to time of day, day of the week, and much more. Crucially, Rescuetime knows the productivity level of most websites and applications and automatically tracks all kinds of cool stats about how productive you are. Not only that, it can see what website you’re on and will track websites individually (I recommend using it on a work computer only…).

RESCUETIME SOFTWARE

You download a piece of software to your desktop and it constantly tracks what window is active. I used to keep track of my hours using an excel sheet, but it is painfully inaccurate, a chore to maintain, and not very easy to interrogate. So in the spirit of Getting Things Done and books like the 4 Hour Work Week, start measuring your productivity so you can improve it. One way to find out how much time you waste, when you waste it, and on what, is by having software track every single thing you do on your (work) computer.

Everyone has their times of day when they are at peak productivity, and times of day where they keep drifting into procrastination. It’s easy to waste time when most of your job is done behind a computer.