RescueTime Blog
blog.rescuetime.com · Company blog · on HN since 2007
RescueTime's company blog, with time-tracking data and posts on productivity, context switching, and work habits.
What HN saysCommenters cite it for productivity score methodology and a personal story of boosting productivity with the tool, and the Google Pac-Man cost post draws discussion.
36HN people shared it
9linked it in comments
121stories submitted
2.5Kstory points
3 years agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1RescueTime on Android is losing call time tracking as Google support fails3 people · 3 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 2The Tragic Cost of Google Pac-Man – 4.82 million hours2 people · 169 points · first shared 2010 · 59 comments on HN
- 3Google is eating Microsoft’s lunch, one tasty bite at a time2 people · 119 points · first shared 2010 · 46 comments on HN
- 4RescueTime (YC W08) (finally) Releases Project Time Tracking2 people · 32 points · first shared 2009 · 31 comments on HN
- 5Turning off the distracting parts of the Internet2 people · 26 points · first shared 2009 · 13 comments on HN
- 6Work from Home Productivity Data2 people · 7 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 7Work-Life Balance in 2019: Analyzing 185M hours of working time2 people · 6 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 8Context switching can kill up to 80% of your productive time2 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 9Coronavirus productivity data: the pandemic is changing device and app usage2 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 10“No Pie Charts… Not Ever!” (says I)2 people · 1 points · first shared 2008 · discussion on HN
- 11Joe Hruska, founder and CEO of RescueTime (YC W08), has died1 people · 468 points · first shared 2017 · 47 comments on HN
- 12Productivity in 2017: analyzing 225 million hours of work time1 people · 271 points · first shared 2018 · 150 comments on HN
- 13Apple has removed us from the App Store1 people · 232 points · first shared 2018 · 174 comments on HN
- 14True cost of email: We only get 1h 12min/day of uninterrupted productive time1 people · 192 points · first shared 2018 · 101 comments on HN
- 15The worst distractions are the ones we love1 people · 192 points · first shared 2018 · 52 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
dreeves · 2013-09-30
I see someone suggested Beeminder in the comments of your post (thank you, whoever that was!). Also by the creators of Beeminder (me and Bethany Soule) is TagTime, which is related to your idea of periodic prompts. We call TagTime "stochastic self-sampling" or "time-tracking for space cadets". It's not super friendly (a huge pain to get working on Windows, for example) but it's on github here: http://tagti.me
If you don't want to deal with TagTime (and I don't blame you) then just hooking up RescueTime to Beeminder is a great way to go. Here's what RescueTime says about Beeminder:
http://blog.rescuetime.com/2012/11/27/give-your-productivity-goals-som…
coscreen · 2020-12-03
OP here - CoScreen offers multi-user screen sharing and simultaneous remote control for engineering teams like no other solution out there.
After the awesome reception on HN a year ago, we're super excited to announce our completely newly designed & developed v1.0 release of CoScreen for macOS and our private alpha for Windows.
Check it out here: https://coscreen.co [1]
Problem:
Today's video chat solutions are great if you enjoy awkward full-screen conversations, but are a productivity killer for development teams. The pandemic has turned endless, boring in-office meetings into endless, boring video calls. It’s also just too painful for engineering teams to wrangle with complex pull requests using a brittle string of tools like Zoom, Skype, Tmux, GNU screen, and a variety of IDEs.
Solution:
CoScreen enables pair/mob/team programming like no other solution and we believe it can reduce the cost of context switching by up to 80% [2] so you can focus on what actually matters - reviewing code, troubleshooting bugs, or building major new features.
CoScreen is a desktop app that enables multiple users to share application windows with each other at the same time. You can think of it like a shared desktop where any user can interact with any shared window as if it were their own via remote mouse and keyboard to allow them to collaborate like never before (they can even copy and paste code across windows of different users). In addition to built-in video chat, and remote…
maneesh · 2021-09-29
Rescuetime changed my life -- I once hired someone to slap me in the face whenever I was unproductive on rescuetime -- and I ended up being all over the news because of it! https://blog.rescuetime.com/how-i-saved-4-hours-per-day-using-rescueti…
Because of the experience, I built a wearable device company to make sure I stay productive -- we even integrate with rescuetime! (i'm getting vibrations right now whenever I'm in flow/90%+ productive).
Thanks for building such awesome tech, and let me know if you'd like to work on an integration together!
-Maneesh Sethi from pavlok
legostormtroopr · 2021-07-26
While this doodle is cute - I really have to wonder about the externalities of this that Google doesn't consider.
They have effectively put a game in front of every search result, and are actively encouraging people to play. This has a real cost to productivity and attention.
https://blog.rescuetime.com/the-tragic-cost-of-google-pac-man-4-82-mil…
work_hn · 2018-01-04
From how they measure the productivity score: http://blog.rescuetime.com/breaking-down-the-rescuetime-productivity-s…
"But the bottom line is that the productivity score doesn’t tell you anything about what you actually produce. It’s simply a number that can give you an interesting baseline of where your attention is, but doesn’t tell 100% of the story. It’s a way to understand your patterns, and not a prescription for how you should be spending your time."
So, this is basically an indicator of how much time you spend on an activity and not how "productive" you are. Like they say, productivity is a charged word. I wish there was a way to tag productivity and efficiency together.
Samuel_Michon · 2013-05-14
5 million hours of productivity lost in 1 day. The total is many times higher.
http://blog.rescuetime.com/2010/05/24/the-tragic-cost-of-google-pac-ma…
ratsbane · 2010-10-19
That clearly wasn't my point.
http://blog.rescuetime.com/2010/06/17/google-is-eating-microsofts-lunc…
jmonegro · 2009-11-14
I had used rescuetime in the past, but not for project tracking. I logged back in right now after 8 months of inactivity, and, behold, they implemented project tracking yesterday.
Edit: Actually, it's a new, stand alone, product or something.
http://blog.rescuetime.com/2009/11/13/rescuetime-for-project-time-trac…
webwright · 2009-09-15
http://blog.rescuetime.com/2009/08/19/turning-off-the-distracting-part…
We're actually pretty close to this (just soft-launched our windows version-- mac version hot on its heels). Starting with focus "toggling" ("Shut of the bad parts of the internet for 30 minutes") and moving on to nudges ("let me know when I exceed 30m of news time") and blocking ("block social networking if I exceed X hours or X %").
Disabling the internet is a baby/bathwater thing for a lot of people, I think. There's too much value there to turn it off completely (research, etc).