RescueTime: One month later

It’s been about a month since I started using Rescuetime, it’s been a pleasant and eye opening experience. A few of my initial assumptions have proven to be on the mark and some of the others not so much

I don’t spend nearly as much time on my computer as I thought
I thought I was spending insane amounts of time at my computer when I first started using RescueTime, that’s what I subconsciously thought and I figured RescueTime would just reinforce this assumption, boy was I wrong. Over the month or so I’ve been using RescueTime it tells me that I am spending an average of 6 hours a day on my computer. Mind you there have definitely been some days that have been 12+ hours and some that have been much less (weekends get included in the totals and I have been spending next to no time on my computer during weekends lately). This has to be my one real big gripe with the app, I can’t specify times when it should record and when it shouldn’t, that would be a nice feature to see in the future.

I do a lot of work @ work, but not always at my computer
The metrics generally show that I am highly efficient and very productive when I am at work, but I spend around 5 hours a day out of a 8 hour work day doing stuff at my computer. This is an obvious indicator that I have a fair number of meetings as part of my work life, and I also know that I have been buying my lunch a lot over the last month so that makes for a longer period away during the lunch break. None of this particularly bothers me that much it’s just interesting to know this.

I know what you did last month!
Some of the really cool numbers I get out of RescueTime relate to what stuff I’m actually doing at work. I like to think that I am a developer but RescueTime let’s me know differently. This past month we decided to move all of our development servers in house. I was tasked with making this happen so an inordinate amount of time last month was spent in MS Remote desktop and working on infrastructure. One of the other great reporting features is slicing the time charts by tags. When I tag a program or url I usually do it in this format “work, development”, “work, client”, “work, support” that way I can look at a day and see how much each sub type I do relative to work related stuff. Again a really interesting way to examine your day.

Gooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllls
One of the greatest features of RescueTime is the ability to set goals for yourself. I set a few so that I could monitor how much time I spent in Google reader (I spend a lot of time reading feeds), how much time I spent working and how much time I spent in IM programs. These goals are prominently displayed on the dashboard so I can instantly see when I’m reaching numbers I’m not comfortable with. It’s helped me quantify what I thought were time wasters with real numbers (the data will set you free!)

Tagging just got easier
About 2 weeks ago a great new feature was introduced which has helped with the ongoing upkeep you have to do to keep the numbers in RescueTime accurate. Auto tagging looks at the sites and programs you use and does it’s best to tag them based on your historical usage patterns. In my first post, I was worried about how much time I would have to spend tagging new applications and sites, what happened is that after a couple of weeks the number of new sites and programs I used dropped significantly and I went from tagging every day to tagging every 2-3 days, auto tagging has made this even easier as I can just auto tag the whole list of untagged items and only manually tag the remaining few, a big time saver!

And the verdict is?
I love RescueTime! It’s really opened my eyes and made me aware of how much hard data can help you make better decisions about how and when to use your time to it’s fullest extent. I am really looking forward to the next few months as the data builds up and I get even more insight into how I spend my time on computers. If you are curious about what you do when your parked in front of the keyboard, you should install RescueTime and bask in the glory of your new found self awareness, the data will set you free!