RescueTime - cross-platform time and productivity tracking

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Don't have enough time for sleep and rest with your family due to work and worries? Before complaining about the injustice of life and the bitter fate of the horse, it would be nice to figure out where the working and free time goes. Time tracker RescueTime will help you take an objective look at your pastime.

What is required from a time tracker to meet the time standard? First of all, full coverage of all devices that a person spends his time with. Linux at home, Android on the go, Windows or Mac at work is a very real picture.

RescueTime is one of several great solutions for keeping track of the length and quality of time spent at the computer and mobile phone. If you think for a second that you would love to improve your productivity, trust RescueTime. The time manager will closely monitor your activity and point out the weak points of your pastime.

Have you decided to try it? Register via email link and install RescueTime on the devices you use. A time tracker can be embedded in your operating system to track running programs, in a browser to record visited sites, and also in a mobile phone to monitor applications in use. The more rights you give to the "all-seeing eye", the more objective the assessment will be.

RescueTime provides for the division of your activity into several categories: work, communication, shopping, training, news and more. All of the suggested categories are broken down into subcategories, and they are assigned a degree of productivity, from extremely distracting to the most productive. What is all this for?

For example, hanging out on Facebook automatically falls under the Social Networking category and the General subcategory. In this case, being on a social network is considered a waste of time. But you can categorize Facebook under the Social Networking category and the Professional Networking subcategory, thereby indicating the benefits of being in a social network.

The proposed scheme is correct in its essence, but, as you can see, it often requires adjustment. Therefore, for the correct interpretation of your activity, you will have to spend several full days working with the service. During this time, RescueTime accumulates your typical behavior at the computer and phone, and you will be able to highlight the productivity of a particular occupation.

Timetracker offers four types of reports based on the following metrics: apps used and websites visited, activity category, activity productivity, and goals set. All reports are in the form of easy-to-read diagrams.

If I have already mentioned the goals, I will dwell in a little more detail on this opportunity of the time manager. RescueTime helps you find incentives for more productive work and less fooling around by setting a variety of goals. For example, you can set the top bar for reading news on weekdays for no more than two hours. Of course, this is not a lack of dinner for leaving socks in the middle of the room, but also some motivation.

The mobile application for Android is, in principle, unremarkable. But you can manually capture your offline activity in it. Take a walk with your family, for example.

The paid RescueTime subscription is $ 9 per month. For this money, you will be offered significantly expanded functionality. For example, you can set blocking of "harmful" sites for a certain period of time. Or set up to receive notifications about the occurrence of various events, for example, too long work in Word or the need to make a call. Your reports will be filled with events not related to electronic gadgets, for example, business lunches and going through the throes of government agencies. But even in the basic configuration, RescueTime looks like a balanced solution to keep track of how you spend your time.

What time counters do you use? What are their strengths and weaknesses?

RescueTime