Comments on: Tools for an informational self-audit

By: Public Strategy

Public Strategy — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:28:24 +0000

Pay attention to what you’re paying attention to…

How much time am I prepared to spend working. Within that, what’s the most important thing I need to do, and how much time should I commit to doing it. Iterate until time is accounted for. Of course in the real world that needs to take account of o…

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:07:14 +0000

I was going to mention Google Reader’s “Trends” section, but Kevin already has…

By: Tim Lahey

Tim Lahey — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:03:15 +0000

For Macintosh users, there is the free program Slife which watches what you do and records it all. They are working on a Windows version. To go beyond the computer, you'd need a more general (but somewhat manual) system. Tempo would probably work. You could use a mobile web browser to enter the time spent on each media.

By: Michael McCracken

Michael McCracken — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:09:29 +0000

Hmm, after re-reading your last comment, rescuetime would probably only help if you used your computer to read newspapers and watch TV too.
Although, if you visualize time spent on the computer, you can more easily fill in the gaps when your attention was elsewhere…

By: Michael McCracken

Michael McCracken — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:07:02 +0000

Scott, you might want to take a look at http://www.rescuetime.com/ – it snoops on what programs you’re using and what web sites you’re reading, and phones home to their site which shows you some nice summary graphs (and tries to rate your productivity).

The time spent on individual sites can sometimes be surprising, and it’s interesting to look back on an afternoon of web surfing and see exactly how the time flew…

In fact, the data generated by the probe is cached locally in a readable form, and I’ve even written a script to convert tracked activities into iCal events, so you can picture what you were doing all day. I’d be glad to share that script if anyone’s interested.

By: Scott Rosenberg

Scott Rosenberg — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:36:45 +0000

Thanks, Kevin and Ducky! GReader I know all about, but I really want to put the time spent in RSS in context against, for example, time spent with newspaper/time spent with broadcast/etc.

I’ll check out Tasktop — looks like a cool thing to know about whether it ends up fitting this bill or not…

By: Ducky Sherwood

Ducky Sherwood — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:07:26 +0000

Scott, check out Tasktop:
http://tasktop.com/
and they just, JUST put in time-tracking. I *think* it will do what you want.

When you start working on a new task (e.g. “Write blog posting on how Wright was taken out of context”), you tell Tasktop that you’re working on that task. It watches and remembers what you are working on. It only shows you the artifacts (docs, files, web pages, email messages) related to that task. (You can switch the hiding off for a moment in order to find another artifact.)

When you start to a new task (e.g. “Research/buy new bookshelf”), you tell Tasktop that you’re on a new task and all of the blog posting artifacts disappear. Repeat.

When you switch back to the Wright blog posting, then all the bookshelf artifacts disappear *and all the artifacts that you were working with for the Wright blog posting reappear*.

Disclaimer #1: I haven’t used Tasktop myself, as I use Linux. I have used Mylyn, the precursor.
Disclaimer #2: The CEO of Tasktop is my advisor.

By: Kevin Albrecht

Kevin Albrecht — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:41:27 +0000

If you use Google Reader to read RSS anf Atom feeds, they have good tools which show which blogs you read the most in the “Trends” section. Of course, this won’t help you audit other sites that you don’t read through a newsreader.