Tech Tool: Rescuetime – give me back my time
So it’s week two of using Rescue Time. Au contraire to the name, this program has been doing anything but rescuing me. In fact, it’s forcing me to abandon my projects to figure out this program.
I believe [that] I’m a fairly smart quick chick, hence working with Hatch Network (Get it? Chick? Hatch? …anyone? Small giggle? Anything?), but this program has me screaming at its time consuming uselessness. Seriously.
I was forced to download the program at another workplace to really give it a try. Result? Ten minutes after a clicking through the time report tool bar, I finally started understanding the program. What else did I find out? Apparently I’m the most unproductive person compared to other Resucetime users (-0.17 vs .037.). Ouch. However, a few clicks later I realized that my reports are a little skewed because I never fully set up a Project, therefore Rescuetime had nothing to compare.
So future Rescuetime users, here are a few suggestions:
- Create projects. Seriously. It sounds like a “well, duh” task, but can be easy to skip over. Trust me.
- Set goals. Manage your “distracting time”. It will help you become more productive and provide insightful explanations of how and when you’re most distracted.
- Think Jerry McGuire: “help Rescuetime, help you” and enter specific words that relate to your projects. Why? These keywords help the Rescuetime track websites and documents not necessarily cued by website domains.
- Log into the program as soon as you start and finish work. If you’re a home worker bee, this small step helps formulize the “start” of work and end of Kelly and Regis or naptime. Plus, it provides a consistent schedule to help you track your weekly and monthly productivity.
- Manually enter productivity measures within the productivity chart – especially if you work within social media. Facebook, Twitter, etc., are rated -2 (very distracting) on a scale from +2 to -2.
The tips can easily be expanded on and I’m looking for some thoughts from other Rescuetime users. What are your experiences with this program? Anyone have any similar stories or suggestions to share?
Overall, this program has been more time consuming than anything else, but possibly it’ll reduce after use. Since starting the program earlier today, my productivity has improved by 0.3, yet there’s still work to do (life in general, right?). However, at least I’ve started comprehending the program. Signing off for now, but cheers to not being a complete tech wreck…
Tags: efficiency, entrepreneur tools, Rescuetime.com, Tech Tools, women entrepreneurs
April 14th, 2010
I love the program. I have never set up a project and I’ve been using the tool for about two months now. I DID, however, tweak the categories so that my ratings are accurate. For example, it’s a big deal when I put out a newsletter or blog, so I set those sites to +2. It’s important for me to tweet regularly, but Twitter IS a time suck, so I’ve made the website itself a -1 and Tweetdeck neutral at 0.
For me, it’s more about knowing where my time is going (wow, I check email a lot -or- I didn’t realize that wikipedia was such a huge time suck for me).
The best thing to do when you create an account is do the general ratings at the outset. For example, I set news & opinion sites in general as a -2 and reference sites as a +2. Every now and then, I might need to tweak something to make it accurate, but usually I just turn on my computer and don’t even think about it.
For me, it’s actually been a pretty motivating way to stay on task.
April 15th, 2010
Good post, I can’t say that I agree with everything that was said, but very good information overall:)