Where did it all start? Installing the RescueTime app and telling myself to forget I’d ever installed it. Starting My Journey To Increased Productivity With RescueTime That’s where I hoped RescueTime would come to the, well, rescue! #worthitīut that’s not the norm for me, and I wanted to see if and where I was losing potentially productive time.
And if they didn’t, what was taking their place? Last week, for example, see that 3-hour block on Tuesday that I was supposed to spend onĬYDI emails and planning? Yeah…I rescheduled that for this weekend and took a tech-free afternoon off with my wife Caroline. Just putting blocks of time on my calendar doesn’t mean those tasks get completed by magic. I could guess and assume that I was correct about getting stuff done, but was I actually right?
Let’s be honest…There’s always some fudging when there’s no real accountability. (Hehe, yeah, I schedule my haircut and beard trimming sometimes.) By looking at the blocks of time on my calendar and asking Did I do that thing?, I could get a basic idea of how productive I was. Instead, I’ve let Google Calendar dictate my daily schedule, and I regularly refer back to it as a way to track my productivity. How was I tracking my productivity and time before RescueTime? It’s simply something I wanted to test out for 30 days and learn from the data and results. Note: I am NOT being paid by RescueTime to write this article. I used the RescueTime App to do all the detailed tracking for me and wrote weekly updates which you can read below!
That’s why I decided to track every hour on my devices for 4 weeks. Like you, I know I spend the majority of my waking hours connected to technology and am always looking for ways to improve my productivity.