

Think you work hard? Think again. - mmaunder
http://markmaunder.com/2007/think-you-work-hard-think-again/

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palish
One reason RescueTime looks really cool because it's passive. It seems passive
products (Last.FM, targeted ads, RescueTime, etc) instead of active products
(Every application that only performs its functions only when you interact
with it) could become pretty big. Targeted advertisement is a huge success
story.

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danw
Lazy people can be web 2.0 users too!

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byrneseyeview
Lazy people or people who hate needless effort?

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zach
It's great that there's some movement in this market. I used to keep a work
log of all the little problems I ran into so I could remember how I fixed them
and analyze my effectiveness. From there I started doing full spreadsheet time
logs, but it's just plain difficult to keep up. Technology that makes this
unobtrusive is very much needed -- I considered making a Google widget just
for my own use but it was clearly unproductive to do so!

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byrneseyeview
It's best to use either a constant simple log or an occasional detailed log: I
occasionally note nearly everything I do during a single day, so I know how I
use my time. But most days I use a brutally simple time-log: one sheet of
paper, divided into two sides. One side gets a tick-mark every time I do
something I'd normally procrastinate on; one side gets a mark every time I
procrastinate instead.

That's as complicated as it needs to be (but I have a pretty simple job).

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vidar
This is a great way to monitor your personal work rhythm but plain nasty when
your boss is the one checking the charts and micromanaging.

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webwright
We totally agree. Rescuetime is combating Big Brother in a few ways:

1) It's hard to install without someone knowing. 2) You can pause the data
collector at any time. 3) If you're clever enough you can edit your data
before it leaves your machine.

In short, we're making it EASY TO CHEAT. Hell, I'll publish a GUIDE to
cheating at RescueTime.

We're also going to make it against ToS to use as an individual scrutiny tool.
We think this level of individual scrutiny is a crappy way to manage people--
we refuse to be a part of that.

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Jd
Wish it would run on something other than the proud platforms (mac & windoze)

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michael_nielsen
Buy a watch with a stopwatch. Turn it on when you're actually doing your work
- coding, writing, whatever, and turn it off when you're not. My experience is
that most people are utterly shocked to find how little they do in a day.

To get improvement, record the results (and a 7-day average) in a spreadsheet,
graph the results, and pay attention!

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webwright
This is kinda why we built RescueTime. We found the stopwatch solution to be
awkward and, if you fail to remember to turn it on or off, it's VERY hard to
recover that information.

I've done the time management exercise (the manual log) and found it to be
incredibly useful. Just the act of paying attention made me more productive.
But (like 99.9% of the people who try) I stopped keeping a log-- it was just
too much damn work. :-)

So I guess we're trying to take the work out of it.

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Jd
No, I don't think I work hard. Why else would I be here?

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richcollins
working hard != working a lot of hours

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palish
Yeah, there's a certain warmup time to working hard, and total time spent on
it is proportional to how many times you try to work hard. So if you're in an
environment where you're interrupted a lot, a brute-force way to be more
productive is to work a lot of hours. I'm hoping RescueTime will get me to pay
attention to how long it takes me to warm up to 100% effort and minimize it.

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daniel-cussen
I've always wanted to be able to measure how much time I spend actually
working. I wish this wasn't a closed beta.

This reminds me of that IBM philosophy, that you can only improve what you can
measure. This could seriously help me improve my productivity.

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horatio05
I don't think continuous work means continuous productivity. I can sit and
stare at my code editor for hours and write little or no code at all. I am
more like a Cheetah. I sprint, take down my prey, and feast on it for days.

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dhouston
rescuetime looks really cool guys. would love to give it a shot (i just signed
up for the beta using frenetic at gmail dot com).

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joshwa
yeah, how about giving a beta invite to everyone who signed up with a news.yc
referrer?

