Blog Page

by Francis
(October 24, 2012)

Last time when I got blocked by RescueTime because I activated the “Get Focused” feature, I actually got blocked out of a very productive site.

Fortunately, you can immediately change the productivity level of the site that you have been blocked out from. I got a good laugh at the screenshot which followed then. See the picture at the top.

“Don’t worry we won’t rat you out.” 😀

So, the RescueTime team is very aware of the fact many people will use this feature to get a little bit of procrastination done anyway. But if you are a little bit disciplined, you won’t do that.

While I was not procrastinating in any way, of course, I do like the sense of humor that the RescueTime team brings to the table. It makes the tool much more human to use.

I just got blocked out of Facebook right now. I just wanted to spend 5 minutes on there.

Really?

Okay, maybe I would have lost more time if I’m honest with myself.

The RescueTime tool reminds me a bit of a grumpy teacher from primary school.

Every time I would reach for the box with sweets and chocolates, I would get my fingers slapped.

Let’s hope that with all those virtual slaps from this tool, I get educated to be more productive over time.

I doubted a little bit but perhaps it works.

If this doesn’t work, nothing will 🙂

Comments for Man, This Tool Is a Bitch, but It Keeps Me on Track So I’ll Keep It

The Free Functions from RescueTime Mostly Stay Available Even If You’re Not Premium Member

by Francis
(November 01, 2012)

When you first sign up for RescueTime, you get a preview of the Pro features like the Get Focused function for two weeks. It’s just enough to get a glimpse of how it works.

After that, unfortunately these functions are disabled. However, the most important features like the time tracking still stay available.

You can easily replace the Get Focused feature by using a browser plug-in to keep you away from distracting sites.

In my opinion, you don’t need to invest the money to pay for the premium features, in all honesty. You can easily replace the premium features with other free tools from other programs and get the same results.

That’s what I do.

But I have found no replacement for the excellent time tracking statistics from RescueTime elsewhere.

Comments for The Free Functions from RescueTime Mostly Stay Available Even If You’re Not Premium Member

RescueTime Stopped Me from Listening To Music

by Francis
(November 03, 2012)

I really like to use this time tracking tool called RescueTime. But from time to time you have to fine tune its settings.

I was working very nicely and was not doing anything bad. The only thing I was doing on the sites is to use Sound Cloud to listen to some chilling music.

Unfortunately for me, either I or Rescuetime, I don’t really remember have scored this time as very distracting with a score of – 2. So, right in the middle of this awesome song, the site got blocked and I got this pop up.

Fortunately, I can change the setting of the distraction score right away, in case RescueTime blocks something which was productive by mistake. So I can go back to listening to some music and being productive at the same time.

Over time the RescueTime tool will learn with your fine tunes settings – what’s really productive and what’s not. That’s when real power of this tool kicks in.

Comments for RescueTime Stopped Me from Listening To Music

by Francis
(October 24, 2012)

I’m not sure if this is for everyone. But one of the Pro features from the RescueTime tool is that even when I’m away from the computer for 5 minutes, I receive a pop-up form which looks like the picture at the top. This makes me accountable for almost every minute.

If I was at the workplace, this would be a great tool to keep me accountable. Was I discussing important matters in a meeting or did I do other work, then the fields are right there. There’s one option I miss, though.

What about an option to say ‘Sorry I did not work’?

This way the RescueTime offline tracking tool could effectively track when I’m procrastinating off the computer.

No problem – although this option is a little hidden, you can change what each button says and even add more buttons in the settings. Call them “eating”, “sleeping” or “goofing off” – now you can track all that.

Sometimes, when I’m guilty of not working AND am too lazy to track the time exactly, I usually just click ‘Don’t log this time’ instead.

If you sign up for the service for free, they give you a glimpse in to the Pro features for a week or two. After that, the Pro features are turned off. With that, this pop up is also turned off.

Perhaps, it’s not that bad of a deal. But if you can’t really handle pop-ups, simply disable them in the setting. Your choice.

Comments for Even When I’m off the Computer My Productivity Is Tracked!

by Francis
(October 24, 2012)

As an employer of a team of virtual assistants, it is my job to make sure that everyone is working and that everything is going well. Luckily for me, my team is pretty effective and my main virtual assistant needs very little supervision.

That’s not always the case for all VA’s. But if you’re lucky and if you train your VA well then this can be a great outcome.

However, now that my VA is doing things for me, I need to exercise some discipline to keep myself from doing those tasks which I outsourced to my VA in the first place.

A virtual assistant works so that the employer doesn’t have to.

If my virtual assistant does everything right and I’m wasting my time supervising him every minute and giving him needless repetitive instructions every hour. Am I being productive?

No, it’s far from it.

What I decided to do, for the time being, in order to focus on more important tasks is to use RescueTime as a tool to keep me away from the work of my virtual assistant.

In other words, in the dashboard of RescueTime, I have defined all those tasks which were previously marked as productive like working on my websites, measuring the analytics and giving instructions as unproductive time.

Note that those tasks are not really unproductive. They are just inefficient. I’m really sounding like a smart-ass, aren’t I, right?

But this is an important differentiation.

If my VA runs into trouble, he will make sure that I know this and I will make sure that he can clean up the trouble.

But if I don’t rely on my virtual assistant, then we are effectively working twice as much for the same task; in other words RescueTime’s, for me, a way to temporarily force myself out of the equation.

If I really want to replace my work by the work of my virtual assistant, I need to give him give him the freedom to do so.

Using the Pro feature of RescueTime to get focused, I blocked out every activity which is marked as inefficient for a certain amount of time. This prevents me from checking on my employees every minute.

If you have trained yourself one or several virtual assistants who are self-sustainable and work well without supervision then you are already advanced with outsourcing.

But if you are not there, do not hesitate to leave some work for your virtual assistants without supervision. If they screw up, you can still rectify the problems later or get angry if you think that helps.

In my opinion and experience, I think that leaving stuff to your assistants is more productive in a long run than to screen and measure every single step of the way.

As a side note, I have been guilty of exactly that. I’ll try to get better on that account. 😉

Comments for This Tracking Tool Has Helped Me Force Myself to Leave Some Work to My Virtual Assistant

by Francis
(October 22, 2012)

One of my favorite techniques to get productive is to disconnect myself from the internet. The problem is that RescueTime does not work and record your productivity or track your progress when you are offline.

To get the work around, one of the Pro features of RescueTime actually is the ability to record offline time. To do that you can always go in to the dashboard and click on enter offline time manually.

If you are a fresh user of RescueTime, then you’ll actually receive two weeks of PRO features for free. That’s why I know it 🙂

The ability to record offline time is also great if you are productive with any task you may want to do which does not involve the computer. This way you really can track when you are being productive and when not.

For example, my room tends to become a mess pretty often. So when I clean up my room, I think of myself being extremely productive. RescueTime is not as advanced as to record when I’m cleaning my room, of course.

But I can still easy hit the enter offline time button and enter one hour of cleaning my room. Actually now that I am writing this post, I think I should do so.

Well before I get to work, let me just wrap up real quick. You can enter offline time both for any work as for specific projects so that you can track the progress of your projects too. It’s also great if you are in a meeting or doing a phone call for business.

All of these times can be tracked if you add it manually. This of course is an additional working step. But if you are diligent in recording all your productive time, then RescueTime is extremely useful to find out where you’re productive, where you’re not and where you can make it even better.

Comments for Recording Productive Offline Time with the RescueTime Tool