RescueTime Out Of Private Beta, Tracking How (Un)Productive You Are
Nick Gonzalez
21 comments »
Tony Wright has been up to a new project since selling two-month-old Jobby to Jobster last May. It’s called RescueTime and it’s meant to help manage your time and stop you from ending up like this guy. We looked at the product previously, but they’ve now come out of private beta. Wright and his team have also taken funding from Y Combinator, and stand in stark contrast to the usual twenty-something ramen-eating stereotype of YC founders.
Wright and his team wanted to make their time management tool as seamless as possible. So unlike other more manual tools or logs, ResucueTime is a desktop/web-based productivity tool that automatically tracks how long and where you spend time on your computer, be it Mac or PC. All the data the program collects is sent to your online account every half hour where it can be analyzed or shared with team members through their analytics package. Their souped up stopwatch tracks what program you have in focus and for how long. It also allows for advanced features, like program tagging and grouping, and can easily be turned on and off.
Currently, it doesn’t get all too specific about what you’re doing other than the program’s name or tag. But for web browsers, it will track what domain name you’re on as well (IE, FF, Safari). In part this limitation is because of RescueTime’s privacy concerns and in part because RescueTime can’t yet recognize what file is open. They don’t want to play Big Brother, so users can always delete time entries or shut off the program for some alone time. However, since they only list the domain you’re surfing, your stats will probably see a lot of time on Google and Yahoo since they don’t recognize these sub domains.
Although my own particular experience of using the application wasn’t all too enlightening, project teams could find it as a useful way of collectively managing time as the product gets more nuanced in the data they collect. After a day of trying it out, I found (surprise) I spent of a lot of time on Firefox surfing TechCrunch and Techmeme, while sifting through email.
This app is developed by a fellow YCer. Wish him the best of luck.
we can not predict, who is thinking what, we can only wonder how he think. every one want to reach before time,
“RescueTime Tracks” this sounds good, let see how much this will succeed?
The idea is nothing new. JetTask has been doing this for months.
@Toby: I don’t see any software usage history in JetTask?
Looks a bit like Wakoopa apart from the reporting functions!
I think that this would be useful oversight for industries that rely on the billable hour as a measurement. One potential problem however is how it handles passive time. Just because I have my word processor open for four hours, doesn’t mean that I’ve been actually doing work with it that whole time. I’m sure that the program has some way of handling this(probably related to mouse idle time), but I haven’t checked it out yet, since I really don’t have any need for something like this(until it either, a) becomes mandatory, b) I’d like a good way to verify billable hours.)
@Paul: Check out the help files. JetTask tracks your program usage and privides you with two reports. The first shows you what programs you have been using (over a configurable amount of time). The second breaks down the detail (the programs you use less often). You can also see this in the program demos.
@Shawn: Your are right. The information by itself is not particularly useful. It is a nifty thing to see every once in awhile, but not something that is going to be a part of your daily routine. The passive tracking is not accurate enough for billing. …that is why JetTask made the functionality a feature of a larger program.
Best of luck to the RescueTime guys.
There are a few activity tracking tools out there - TaskCapture is one of them. We are working on Slife, which lets you do the tracking without uploading it to a site (although you can share your activities with Slifeshare for lifestreaming purposes).
@Shawn: I am pretty sure they use an idle timer. Key components for these apps to be actually useful.
This is fine if you want to look at how much time you waste on Facebook. Whoopee. For real metrics on time use, specifically for software developers, 6th Sense Analytics offers a hosted solution that provides artifact level visibility (”What file chewed up a whole day of dev time?”), integrates with project management tools and processes (”I totally underestimated this project. I need to adjust now!”), and present an accurate view of how individual developers and teams spend their time in the development process (”Wow, my team didn’t do a damn thing on Friday!”).
http://www.6thsenseanalytics.com
This one looks very similar to the app I made (Wasteometer).
http://coolsw.intel.com/story......teometer-1
Congrats Tony! On the great software and the YCombinator connection.
I have been running RescueTime for the last few weeks, and it is mind numbing to actually see how much time I spend using email… Reality sucks.
yeah, i’m also a huge rescuetime fan - been using it in beta for a few months.
the key to improving anything is to measure it first. so, for improving productivity, you need to at least start with something like rescuetime!
No good to Linux users:
http://rescuetime.com/faq/
Will RescueTime be available for the Mac? How about Linux?
The RescueTime data collector will be available for the Mac and PC. We have no plans to release a Linux version. That being said, we do plan to open-source the data collector apps and will publish the specs. If anyone feels inspired to build a Linux data collector, we’ll be delighted to help.
I’m a huge fan of the product and the team. Good luck guys!!!
Very interesting idea..
I’ve been using it for the past week and now I know how much time I spend on facebook, google reader and other distractions. Turns out I spend much less time coding than I thought, which provides a strong incentive to change my ways for the better…
In short, I’m a happy user
I love competition in the software industry.
In addition to some of the similar products mentioned in these comments, I would like to throw another in the ring.
TimeSnapper (http://www.timesnapper.com) written by a Micro-ISV headed by Leon Bambrick (http://secretgeek.net).
I only mention this because (1) it has been out for at least 2 years (2) I am an aspiring Micro-ISV myself, so I like to tip my hat to the “little” guy
Anyway, good work. Competition breeds more innovation, and that is always good.
Using a more “active” time tracking tool like slimtimer works better for me. I can fine grain both my active and passive times: “surfing the web” won’t be mixed with “studying”, “lunch” won’t be mixed with “resting” and “working on feature x” won’t be mixed with “working on feature y”.
Might be a good way to make the leap forward for people without time tracking habits tho.
http://www.verticity.com does just that for software project management. The thing to remember is that the software development projects are _not_ managed by snooping on developers. True my computer has been idle for some two hours but may be I have been thinking about the problem - just trying to come up with a better solution to the problem. A program snooping on me, like this RescueTime or verticity.com will only note that I haven’t been using my computer for two hours. Projects are not managed like this - you need a knowledgeable project manager to take care of things and break down your activities to track your work. It CAN be a good tool for yourself however. Give it to a manager and it’ll become counter-productive in most cases.
I’ve been looking for this tool. I currently use Wakoopa, which is a great software tracking tool, but RescueTime sounds like it will be even better with its ability to spend what domain you are spending time on.
RescueTime is a great tool and if they continue to develop it, could be a boon to many time-starved people. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks and it’s been interesting to see where my time goes, and how much time I spend in various apps and websites to get my job done. If you’re interested, I wrote a longer review with a couple of screenshots here:
http://autumn-evening.blogspot.com/