If you ever have the sneaky suspicion (with or without the guilt pangs) that your Inbox, web surfing and other app habits are not exactly in alignment with your objectives for the day, then you might want to mosey over to a fantastic online habit helper…

It is called RescueTime and is a free browser based time management monitor which allows productivity geeks to understand exactly how they spend their computer time. They are currently in open beta phase and I have been using it for a while now and can confidently suggest you look at it.

Personal productivity is impacted by interference, much of which is internally generated, see Performance = Potential minus Interference (P=P-I)  One of the founders of Rescue Time, Tony Wright, says that the core mission of Rescue Time is to allow information workers to understand how they spend their time in an easy way. “We feel that the knowledge of how you spend your time will make you more productive and will nudge you in the direction of spending your time more deliberately and thoughtfully”.

I say it’s great because:

  1. You don’t have to manually enter logs of how you spend your time, it does it for you automatically.
  2. You can create categories within it to support your productivity goal setting
  3. It is another Web 2.0 tool that I think has a good future, especially as the team is obviously working on its development.

Please note though that there are some issues with running RescueTime on Firefox 3.  Also I have not trailed the Teamworking option yet so can’t confidently comment on that although it looks good for the future!

Let me know what you think. contact us .