Time Tracking With RescueTime

Working on the web is all about productivity, but how do you know when you’re really being productive? One of the best tools I have found for assessing productivity is RescueTime. It’s a system tray application that quietly monitors the applications you use and the sites that you visit. It integrates with the RescueTime website, where you can do all sorts of fun things with the data that you have collected.

For example, you can:

• Categorize your activity. In fact RescueTime has created some automatic categories for regularly used sites and applications, so IM and email apps, Office apps and sites such as Twitter will be put into the right categories. You can also choose from a list of suggested categories.
• Tag your activity. If categories are the headlines, tags are the sub-headings. Just as on other sites, tagging allows you to identify certain activities in a way that’s useful to you. For example, two of my tags are blog writing and writing, so I can distinguish between blogging and the writing I do for clients.
• Classify your activity. Some of the things we do online are productive, like actvities that relate to our jobs. Others may be for fun, such as interactions on social sites. With RescueTime you can classify your activities according to how productive they are, resulting in a neat little statistic on your dashboard page.

If you’re thinking about using RescueTime, then you’re probably into stats, so you will be pleased to know that there are loads of charts on your webpage, highlighting the time you spend online and the main categories, tags, apps and sites you use. If you’re anything like me, you’ll get a few surprises about how you spend your time.

You can also set goals for how much or how little time you spend on activities and receive email and SMS alerts about your progress. I’ve only scratched the surface of this useful tool, but check out the RescueTime blog for more details on recent and forthcoming features.