Well, a few weeks back I found a program called RescueTime. Cleaning out my RSS feeds today I found that JD at Get Rich Slowly had a similar post earlier this month discussing this program. I decided that I wanted to chime in myself. What this program does, is run on your computer in the background recording the programs that you are using (only the active one, not all the ones you have open.) It then updates this information to your account on the website – where you can view your statistics. I installed it on my work computer because I wanted to see how much time I spent doing what at work. I felt like I was wasting a lot of time and not working on what I was supposed to be working on. Turned out, I was spending a lot of time on my computer not doing work!
Now its not gonna be perfect because if you walk away from your computer it still records whatever is open. One way I found to increase the accuracy of the reporting was to assign a particular website as “Meeting”, “Out of Office Business”, or even “Not At Computer” (for bathroom breaks, or other things) and I just click a bookmark that points to the particular page when I am leaving the computer – then when I get my report it is more accurate.
I really like this product. It seems to do a great job at reporting the information and from the first day that I installed it I have been more careful with my time because I know that it is being recorded! (And I’ve realized how much I spend!) I think I’ll set it up on my laptop here too.
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