First Impressions: RescueTime

I recently started using RescueTime after hearing about it countless times on Hacker News. Simply put, RescueTime is like Google Analytics for your time. It automatically tracks where you spend your time while computing and helps you become more productive by showing you where your time goes.. or you can use it to log how much you game during the week, your call.

After installing RescueTime's application and logging in with it, I went back to working for a few hours. Then, I checked back in the dashboard. I had a genuine "that's pretty neat" kind of reaction. Coming from a person that isn't exactly obsessed with boosting productivity or getting down with GTD, that's impressive. Similar to how I called Nike+ a user interface for running, RescueTime is an equally elegant information visualization tool showcasing how my time divvies up.

The best part about RescueTime compared to other time tracker/management tools is that I don't have to do anything. It's all automatic. At most I just go in and add some tags, such as tagging Gmail communication, TextMate as work and Google Docs as school.

There's not much else to say about RescueTime. I like it. Does it solve a problem for me? No, but I'd consider it a useful novelty if that makes sense. However, I am sure RescueTime solves a lot of problems for other people that are trying to carpe diem it up. People that have a personal goal of only spending one hour per day on email or 30 minutes a day reading blogs will appreciate RescueTime.

Does RescueTime solve a problem for you? What do you spend most of your computer time doing?