Where does my time go?

Friday 11/21/2008  –  Category: Uncategorized

I've been using RescueTime for awhile to track my usage trends and see how (un)productive I am over a certain period of time.  Their web interface is pretty easy to use and it shows pretty graphs (see ma, I really do work!)

But part of me feels kinda weird having an app push updates to a server in YAML:

app_name: Firefox
window_title: 'RescueTime - finally a time tracking app that does not suck | James Robey'
extended_info: 'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jamesrobey.com%2Frescuetime-finally-a-time-tracking-app-that-does-not-suck%2F'
start_time: 2008-11-21 14:58:56
end_time: 2008-11-21 14:59:06

I just ran into another (standalone) app that looks promising--Slife.  The interface has few different visualization options -- one with the icons of the applications you're using in a timeline view, another that shows total time per application, and another categorized by activity (e.g. "checking email").  If it ends up working well I may ditch RescueTime and keep my usage data local...