I’m trying out a new program called RescueTime. It’s a site/program designed to track what you do. And despite the potentially scary Big Brother implications, I think this will be a very interesting research/reflection opportunity.
First, some semi-technical background. RescueTime installs a program on your computer that sits in your tray and monitors what applications you are currently using and what websites you browse. It then uploads all the data to their server where it’s processed. You can tag applications and sites with the appropriate tags and then see how much time you spend using what programs/sites.
Thus, the interesting research/reflection opportunity. Exactly how much time do I spend on things: School? Email? Chatting? Blogging? Screwing around?
Better yet, how much time do I spend on the friggin’ computer?
So, place your bets in the comments.
You can place your bets as total time per an application/tag per a week (e.g. 10 hours of “communication” per a week which includes email and chatting) or as relative percent (e.g. twice as much time blogger as doing school related work).
Also feel free to ask clarifying questions (e.g. what programs count towards “school related work”?)
I bet you spend WAY more time in email and IM than you thought. I’d also wager that you’re floored by the “long tail” — the myriad of sites you visit for 5 minutes or less.
(those were my two revelations the first time I was able to look at my own data in RescueTime).
I hope you find experience interesting– thanks for checking us out!
-Tony Wright
RescueTime.com
Hi Andrew – 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.