Ben Bleikamp's blog about technology and college

The Most Useful Web App Ever

Recently I began using the most useful web application I’ve found to date.  I have used Basecamp, Campfire, Google Calendar, Gmail, Newsvine, and others.  They all have their purposes, but I could easily find a replacement for any of them.RescueTime is by far the most impressive tool I’ve found in a long time.  You download a small application that runs in the background on your computer and you can then login to the Dashboard at the RescueTime website and see how you actually spend your time.

It’s scary

One of the best parts of the application is that it allows you to tag applications and keep track of your time spent on specific tasks or specific categories of tasks, rather than simply tracking time in applications.  For example, I tagged Gmail, Adium, iChat, and Campfire as “Communication.”  It turns out, I spent 11 hours communicating in the last 2.5 weeks.  That is a lot of time.Fortunately, I spent almost as much time doing work - but I also spent a significant amount of time reading news and playing on social networking sites (which also accounts for some of my time with work since I was designing a Facebook application).The point of RescueTime isn’t to show you that you’re a slacker.  It shows you, without remorse, how much time you spend in each application or on each task while you’re at your computer.  If you take the information and use it to figure out how to save time or maximize time, it will help you in the long run.  You’ll be able to spend more time focusing on the tasks that make you the most money or earn you the best grades.  If you set your goals and understand which tasks help achieve them, you’ll know where to spend most of your time and you’ll be able to make sure you follow through.I would suggest downloading it and giving it a try for a few weeks.  It take no effort to use once you get the application installed - it runs in the background, is very friendly to your system resources, and the information you get in return is amazing.  Go try it.