In my last post in this series, I pointed out that Slim Timer works only when one is online. It cannot monitor time spent offline. In my own case, that makes that facility, as well-designed as it is, irrelevant.
This is an issue much under discussion regarding many of the new online applications. There must be some seamless, more-or-less invisible bridge between online and offline use.
As it happens, in the time tracking arena, there’s a brand new entry that is working to solve that problem.
RescueTime is still in its early days of development. It aims to bridge the online-offline gap. The application is now in open beta, meaning anyone can sign up for service — currently free, by the way — even though the application is still under development. Many important features are not yet implemented. The facility is still virtually unknown, though PC World has just mentioned it in its current issue.
I’ve been testing out RescueTime for over a month now. Frankly, I’ve been excited about its prospects. The user initially downloads a program kernel that resides inside one’s computer. It invisibly monitors computer activity — both programs used and internet sites visited. Time spent is reported back to Rescue Time, which accumulates all of the data and provides a variety of graphic-intensive reports at one’s personal online “dashboard.” Essential to the final report is the process of ‘tagging each software program and each website visited, indicating the project or task with which each is associated. The report gives two charts, the one on the left presenting time associated with project/task tags, the other indicating time spent with each software program and website.
To cap it off, every Sunday one receives a summary report in one’s email inbox. The application allows the user to set daily goals, and it tells one just how well one did in reaching the goals. The overview of one’s week, of course, encourages the user to log-on to one’s online dashboard for more detail.
Now that I’ve been testing this application for six weeks, my enthusiasm has been dampened. On the surface, the application appears so simple to use: just download the kernel and tag the various logged activities, and RescueTime takes care of everything else, pulling together both online and offline activity into well-designed graphical reports. “Ridiculously easy time management,” the RescueTime website declares.
What I have discovered is that RescueTime counts time only when one is actually working on the computer, pushing keys at least once every two minutes. Thinking time or very close reading doesn’t count. Often I felt that the charts short-changed me, under-reporting my activity. Time spend reading resource books off my well-stocked bookshelf, for example, wasn’t counted at all, nor was the time spent writing blog posts where I going through stacks of print-outs to gather just the right data to include.
Also, I soon became disenchanted with the tagging procedure. There is yet no way for RescueTime to distinguish which project should be credited when one uses Microsoft Word, for example. I use it for several very different writing projects, as well as for general office chores. And I was amazed at how the list of websites visited multiplied when doing online research — and each should be tagged to a project. At first, I developed too many tags, for example breaking my blog work into blog research, blog writing and blog maintenance. I’ve learned to keep the tags to a minimum: now I simply tag these various activities simply as “blog.”
Still, I will follow this application as it develops. A couple weeks ago I received a survey from the developers that listed 10 areas for future development. All of them will contribute to the effectiveness of RescueTime. It may yet mature into an effective tool.
SUMMARY: This exercise of testing various task-tracking tools is turning out to be much more interesting than I had at first imagined. I’m becoming much more conscious of how my minutes are spent and how they should be counted. I’m also identifying with disturbing clarity just how much time is devoted to non-productive activity.
In my next post in this series. I’ll report on the time-tracker that is emerging as the one that I’m finding most helpful. I’ll write about that toward the end of the month. In the meantime, I’ll turn to topics of more direct interest to writers.
Sorry, comments are closed.
Comment by
Tony Wright
12 Feb 2008
Hey there– Thanks for writing about us!
I think your points are strong– especially regarding getting a better understanding of documents and directories, for example. MS Word time isn’t as interesting as understanding WHICH Word docs you are working on (or which Folder you’re working in).
Regarding the idle-timeout… It’s currently set to 2 minutes. If you are prone to lots of reading time in front of your computer, it will certainly under-report. As people read on-screen, however, it’s rare that they will not move their mouse or scroll for 2 minutes.
We could increase the timeout, but that (of course) would result in over-reporting as it kept logging every time you left your computer. Do you think that’d do it for you?
Regarding tagging, I think your experience is pretty common– and we need to improve it. We are going to release a bulk-tagging option VERY soon (next week or two) to reduce the pain a bit there. Tagging filters (little rules to automagically tag things) are on the horizon too.
Anyhoo– stay tuned or check back in a few months. We’re releasing improvements every week (in fact, your screenshots are already pretty out of date)!
Thanks for the great insight. Cheers, -t
Comment by
Tom Colvin
12 Feb 2008
Tony, thanks for your reply. I will, for sure, stay tuned. The list of ten improvements I received by email a couple weeks ago will certainly address some of my own concerns. And just in the past couple of days, I’ve received notice about improvements in the tagging routine that will come along in a matter of days.
Rescue Time is, as far as I can tell, the leader in trying to bridge the gap between work done online and off. I will keep an eye on your progress. Meanwhile, I’ll count on my weekly email overview, which will draw me back to your website to look into the details.
Comment by
ethomaz
12 Nov 2008
Hi Tom – We've recently introduced a new version of our time and activity analytics solution, Slife v2.0. It's now available for Mac/Windows and you can extend it to multiple users with Slife Teams.
http://www.slifelabs.com
http://www.slifeteams.com
It's similar to RescueTime in some ways. Give it a try – the Slife client is free. We would love to know what you think.