How Do You Spend Your Time Online?

Picture this:

You have a task to do… You post about it on Facebook.

Then you see you have new notifications. And a new message. And someone just posted a cool new article about a recent scientific discovery. You skim it.

You go back, there’s a post from BuzzFeed with cute Corgi puppies. And then you see a link to a fun quiz you want to take.

And it continues.

Suddenly you realize that you were supposed to be doing something…

Does this sound familiar?

I hear plenty of friends comment on the amazing time-suck that Facebook and other fun websites become. Have you ever wondered how much time you actually spend on there?

To become more focused you can set aside small chunks of super focused time or use a tool to save web pages for later. But in order to really improve your productivity, you’ll want to…

Keep Track Of Your Time

What gets measured gets improved. And if you’re not measuring how you’re spending your time, it’s very difficult to become more productive.

It might be scary to come up against actual measured results of time that you’re not spending effectively… but that’d be valuable too, right?

You could start off by writing down what you’re doing. I’ve heard of people setting an alarm every 15 minutes and jotting down what they’re up to.

That could help you become very conscious of your time… but it could also easily break the flow of tasks when you’re actually getting stuff done.

RescueTime to the Rescue

I use a great tool called RescueTime. Once I installed it, I wished I had started using it earlier.

It’s an app that runs in the background and tracks what websites you visit and programs you use on your computer. You can set it to record only certain times, or everything.

I set it up to track all my activity, and told it which activities are the most productive (ie. web design, writing blog posts) and the least productive (social media). And I can check any time how much time I’m spending on each.

It also emails me weekly with a score of how productive I’ve been, and other stats.

Start Measuring, Start Improving

Have systems in place have helped me immensely. Scheduling my time effectively helps, but checking my results with RescueTime help me make sure that my systems are effective.

It’s free to use and track your results. You can get more in depth and more features to help you focus with a premium version. But if you just want your stats, the free version will be plenty.

Give it a try, let me know how it works for you!

What productivity goals do you have? Let me know in the comment below!

Photo: “Time Flies” by aussiegall