How productive are you? (Rescue Time)

Member Name: stuff10

Product:	Rescue Time
Date:	16/07/09 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Track exactly what you're doing, free to use

Disadvantages: Reveals how much time you waste!

RescueTime is a nifty way to track how efficient you are when working on your computer, through a handy tool that tracks exactly what you're doing.

Registration is free and easy through rescuetime.com. Once registered, you'll have to download and install their data collection tool which is only 2mb in size and won't take up much time at all.

When installed, RescueTime will immediately start collecting data on exactly what you're doing whilst at your machine. It will record which programs you're using and which websites you're visiting.

To view your data, you'll need to log-in to the RescueTime dashboard. Here, you'll see an overview of your most popular activities, which are presented as graphs and charts, making them really easy to understand. You can view data for an individual day, week or month or view an entire year. You can categorise applications and websites into sections - so for example, I define Homesite, Notepad, SQLyog and several websites as 'work', Wikipedia, php.net and many blogs sites are categorised as 'research', etc.

I find RescueTime useful for tracking how efficient I've been when trying to get work done. It shows me how easily I get distracted with emails and other non-work activities such as dooyoo, Facebook and Twitter.

A few stats for me in 2009:

My work computer has tracked 785 hours worth of data. I've spent 223 hours doing work, 120 hours emailing people, 51 hours on Facebook and 51 hours on dooyoo!! I can tell from those stats that I spend way too long replying to emails and not enough time working! Best cut this review short and get some work done then..! :)

Summary: Great tool for tracking your productivity

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