Thursday, July 14, 2011

Rescue Your Time Management

Today my friend P31 teammate extraordinaire Micca Campbell is spotlighting me on her blog in her series about the team leading up to next week's She Speaks conference.  Scoot over there to find out how I came to do what I do, and random facts like my current favorite TV show.

Read below for more about me and something that might help you. Because as much a it sounds all about me today, my blogging really is more about you. I want us both to craft a happy, productive life that honors Christ.

So here goes more about me first. I am a highly extroverted, fun-loving, creative non-conformist. I'm also the sociable baby-of-the-family who got used to everyone else taking care of life's responsibilities while I played.

But alongside my fun-loving free-spirit, I have a drive to create, to teach, to inspire and to succeed. I have a strong impulse to live intentionally and to hear God say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." 

So that means I have to work at developing efficiency, punctuality, responsibility and productivity. After all, time is money they say.


Oh, I should also mention that I love to learn. I'm continually reading and studying. 

Given my personality and info-junkie nature, I can easily spend all day online conversing, socializing, and reading here, there and everywhere about this and that.  That's enjoyable - and there are way worse ways I could spend my time - but there's got to be a balance. I've also got to write, teach, work, cook and create. I need to produce, manage, maintain, parent and steward.

I recently found a tool that can help me see and achieve that balance. It's called RescueTime. It monitors how long I spend doing tasks on the computer like emailing, or writing in my word processor. It marks how long I spend on FaceBook or other social sites. It monitors how much time I spend shopping online. And it will even track for me, to a degree, how I'm spending my time off the computer.

It sends me reminders and shows me daily reports of how I've spent my time. And the best part is all of this is, it's done with little to no tacking effort on my part!


This free little tool has upped my efficiency nearly as much as learning to make daily to-do lists. But the difference between RescueTime and simply making a to-do list is it helps me see how all my hours were spent. Some days I get to everything on my to-do list but still waste a lot of time without realizing it. Other days I might not complete my to-do list, yet I worked productively all day on things that matter so I need not feel guilty about the unfinished list.

RescueTime helps me see this.

I'm loving using it. Even knowing that it's there "watching me" prompts me to be a little more productive. If you'd like to try it, follow this link to RescueTime. That's my referral link. The basic program is free to download. And the upgraded program isn't very expensive. I've been using the upgrade.

Give it a try and see what it does for your productivity.

Think about it, what have you got to lose?

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousJuly 14, 2011

    Going to check it out thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ok how did you know I was thinking about this very thing? Last night I was talking with a friend telling her how I was going create a document with a list of things I need to do- not that I waste time I just want it in one place instead of 6. I'll check this out. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete

Chime in.