On the first day of class, I mentioned I was using a time management program. I thought I would introduce that more formally here.
RescueTime works for your computer a lot like last.fm's scrobbler works for your media player. It keeps track of the active window, logs how long it's used, stores it, then uploads it to the RescueTime server at a given interval. It also differentiates between websites as if they were separate applications.
Once it's online, you can tag each application and website with, for example, "personal," or "social," or "work." Then, you can assign each tag with a productivity rating -2 to +2. From this, it'll give you an efficiency rating, which it will then also compare to the rest of the RescueTime user base to come up with a productivity rating. All of this is scalable, too. You can look at just one day, or years at a time.
The above is a look at my "social" computer use and my "school" computer use on April 1st. You can see pretty clearly where I slept and napped. I'm also surprised by how much (little) I use social networking websites. When I think about the time I spend on the computer, most of what I remember is Facebook/MySpace, but it typically takes up no more than a quarter of my time.
It's a little weird, because I'm oddly addicted to these stats, which doesn't make sense, because clearly, I know what websites and applications I've been using (the same works for last.fm's scrobbler; clearly I know what music I listened to).
Anyway. I highly recommend it. It's given me some insights into my productivity. (For example, in the above graph, my school usage drops to nothing during the late evening, and then picks up before I head to sleep. Clearly, that means I should plan to do homework before that time.)
4 comments:
I think I would be too afraid to ever put this program to use, I wouldn't want to know exactly how much I procrastinate. Whenever I want to distract myself from the task at hand I check Facebook, check my e mail, and use Stumble Upon. I think if I spent half the time I spent doing these things I spent doing work, I would probably be sitting on a nice GPA.
I agree with Eric. Except I feel like I already know how much time I spend procrastinating and it would only make me feel worse about myself!
I totally agree with Eric - I'd be terrified to know exactly how much time I "waste" during a regular work day... it'd be even scarier if my employer know. It's possible that I'd be out of a job or a BUNCH of other stuff would be dumped on me. :-)
I have friends who work for the state and a few other large companies - for worker productivity, they block various websites and applications like Snapfish, MySpace, Amazon.com, and Facebook - basically anything they perceive to be social networking or personal, rather than productive. It's a scary trend, IMO... especially when you see how "Net Nanny" works for parents wanting to limit their kids activities on the net... will there be an "Office Nanny" that limits what we can do on our computers? I hope not.
I think that this program is a double-edged sword! I kind of want to try it out just see for myself what my habits really not to feel guilty about procrastinating but just to get an idea of how my 24 hours gets used everyday. I think this would help me with the end-of the day questions like, "Where the hell did my time go today."
Also, to touch on Kate's post about the "office nanny." My mom's company employs a similar program to chart the productivity of her employs while at work. It may sound pretty harsh, but it keeps her from worrying about her employees wasting time on her dollar. I think that saving factor in her case is that her employees know about the program and agreed to use it because they get monthly bonuses accordingly.
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