Review: RescueTime helps you figure out where your week went

December 11, 2013

It’s Monday morning; you sit down in front of the computer to get some work done... and suddenly, it’s lunchtime. Where did all the time go? RescueTime is a Web-based service that answers this question. It not only tells you what you did with your time (as in, which apps or sites you used), but helps you figure out whether or not it was time well-spent. In other words, it makes it obvious just how badly you procrastinate. ”Where were you?” asks RescueTime’s desktop client. To use RescueTime, you install a small client on your computer, which sits on your system tray and basically snoops on everything you do. Every window, every website, everything gets recorded. It then uploads it all to the Web, where all the heavy lifting happens. The client is nearly unnoticeable, save for its annoying tendency to pop up on your screen and inquire where you’ve been, when all you were doing was just grabbing a cup of coffee. Thankfully, that can be disabled using the Web interface, though you may have to dig around for the right setting to change. RescueTime’s browser-based interface displays your information using numerous reports, charts, and graphs. It used to be confusing in the past, but has recently been completely redone and is now both easier to use and prettier. RescueTime’s main dashboard shows where your time went, at a glance. RescueTime tries to make it simple to see how productive you’ve been, using a metric called “productivity pulse,” which is explained on the RescueTime blog. In a nutshell, every activity you do during the day is assigned a productivity level ranging from “very distracting” to “very productive,” and the overall score reflects how your day went. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2066770/review-rescuetime-helps-you-figure-out-where-your-week-went.html#tk.rss_reviews