What do I spend my time on?

March 11, 2009 Gary Benitt

I've known for quite a while that I spend far too much time glued to my laptop screen. I've also instinctively known that the majority of time that I spend in front of my computer is actually in front of email. To test that theory out, I installed a product called

RescueTime

that actually records and plots out the applications and web sites used during the course of a day/week/month.

Here's a quick look at my week for the week of March 8, 2009:

See this content in the original post

As suspected, I am currently trapped in email for almost 10 hours a day. I spend more time in email than most people spend working. How that's possible, I'm not entirely sure - but I tend to believe it! After email, my next largest chunk of time is used up by Netnewswire, coming in at just under 5 hours a day. Although I know that I subscribe to way too many blogs and spend too much time catching up on news, I also know that it can't possibly be 5 hours a day. Initially I thought that RescueTime may be recording the amount of time that an app is open - not necessarily when I'm using it. But then I took a look at my Adium and TweetDeck usage - both are open all day long but show up at under 30 minutes each, which is probably aligned with how often I actually use them. According to the

RescueTime FAQ

, the data should only be tracked for applications that are in focus, but perhaps there's an issue or two with the software as it stands. As a side note, it's interesting to see that my recent desire to

purchasese a house

is being picked up (..tempo5.sandi...) by my browsing behavior.

Below is a "live" chart that will update every week, allowing me to track my progress:

var _RescueTimeURL="http://www.rescuetime.com/widget/top_applications_widget?user_id=74477&api_key=0abf00033d4d305bfa5719fe4d831b0cf0531eb5&view_type=week&date_key=76aca9d15c263f1332e8ca1043901680b43913ee&widget_header_title=Top%2010%20Apps%20and%20Sites%20(The%20Week%20Of%20March%2008,%202009)&widget_header_color=&widget_header_text_color=&widget_footer_color=&main_bar_color=&shiny=null&width=370px&height=275px";

I'm definitely curious to see if visualizing how I spend my time helps me to manage it better. And ultimately, I'd love to figure out a way to decrease the amount of time I spend in front of a computer, but I don't think I'm there yet...