Uncertain, I test out RescueTime

by Bill Wren on August 6, 2008

I finally came across RescueTime and decided, with some trepidation, to test it out. It’s a time management, productivity kind of thing. Basically, it tracks what you do on your computer. Spending lots of time on games? Porn sites? It will tell you! Working in spreadsheets? Doing online research? Writing docs? It will tell you!

It tracks the activity on your computer then gives you the data back in a variety of ways. Essentially, it tells you that 47% of your time was spent on this or these things, 21% shopping, and so on. How it breaks down is dependent, largely, on how you set it up.

Much as I like the idea of being better organized and I suppose it would be nice to be productive (depending on what I’m producing, of course), I have a few reservations:

  • I’m not sure I like the idea that someone is collecting data on me and everything I do on my computer (for the usual privacy reasons)
  • Do I really want to be this anal? Do I want to be constantly thinking my time might be better spent?

We’ll see, we’ll see.

  • http://www.rescuetime.com/ Tony Wright

    Thanks for checking us out!

    Regarding your privacy concerns, we do have a mess of privacy features that limit the data that’s sent from your machine. The biggie is Whitelists– basically you can elect to record usage of any web site you DO want to know about (say you want to know how much time you spend on Gmail) but any time spent on a non-whitelisted site gets sent to us as “non-whitelisted web surfing” or somesuch.

    Details at http://rescuetime.com/whitelists

    Regarding the anal part, that’s up to you! :-) But we think that more and more people actually have a vested interest in their own productivity… Either they are self-employed or they have a forward thinking employer who tasks them with stuff to do without tying them to a 40 hour week. Either way, mindful spending of time means more money and/or more free time to do what you love.

    Cheers, Tony (from RescueTime)

  • http://www.rescuetime.com Tony Wright

    Thanks for checking us out!

    Regarding your privacy concerns, we do have a mess of privacy features that limit the data that’s sent from your machine. The biggie is Whitelists– basically you can elect to record usage of any web site you DO want to know about (say you want to know how much time you spend on Gmail) but any time spent on a non-whitelisted site gets sent to us as “non-whitelisted web surfing” or somesuch.

    Details at http://rescuetime.com/whitelists

    Regarding the anal part, that’s up to you! :-) But we think that more and more people actually have a vested interest in their own productivity… Either they are self-employed or they have a forward thinking employer who tasks them with stuff to do without tying them to a 40 hour week. Either way, mindful spending of time means more money and/or more free time to do what you love.

    Cheers, Tony (from RescueTime)

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