RescueTime Review, Pros & Cons – Be More Productive Throughout Your Day

RescueTime is a perfect time management software that can help you in utilizing your daily time more productively and efficiently. With the software, you can now concentrate completely on all your tasks without any distractions and complete them on time.

 
With the advent of the internet, it is becoming really challenging to concentrate on our daily routine and we can get easily distracted from our work. We might stop doing our task and start scrolling our social media feeds and watch videos on YouTube. Like this, we almost spend our entire day on things that do not add value to us and thereby lose our productivity throughout the day.

 
So RescueTime can help you in closely monitoring all your activities on the internet and other websites and applications and the time you spend there. It can, therefore, push you to be more productive by constantly alerting you to concentrate more on your work and thereby keeping you on track whenever you get distracted from your work.

 
RescueTime is ideal for both individuals and also for teams. With the software installed on all your team members' computers, you can now monitor the productivity of each and every member of your team and compare their productivity and try to improve the members who are less productive.

How simple is the installation of the software?

 
The installation of RescueTime is simple and can be completed in just a few seconds. You just need to accept the terms and conditions after opening the setup to start the installation process. Once the installation completes in a couple of seconds, you can configure the software to start using it.

What are the features offered by RescueTime to its users?

 
As said earlier, RescueTime is an effective time management software that can help you in effectively utilizing your time in increasing your productivity. The software offers various tools and features in monitoring your daily activities and optimizing you to spend your time efficiently on your task by appropriately categorizing them.

• Automatic time, app, and website tracking feature that accurately tracks how much time you spend on all your digital devices and thereby try to improve your daily productivity.
• RescueTime allows you to set your own goals and then track your progress and push you to complete them on time by repeatedly sending alerts and email notifications.
• Distraction blocking feature allows you to focus completely on your task by automatically blocking websites and other apps that might drag your attention.
• With RescueTime, you can customize your own working and now-working hours and thereby optimize your productivity by getting repeated alerts whenever you move out of your work.
• Offline time tracking feature can help you in tracking your time spent offline like attending meetings, status calls, and other non-digital activities.
• Highlights feature can help in tracking the time spent on any specific projects.
• The productivity pulse meter lets you know how productive you are throughout a particular day.

Click Here To Download RescueTime for Free For Your Windows PC

How simple is the user interface of RescueTime?

 
The user interface of RescueTime is simple and precise and does not require you to be a great technical freak to make use of it. The different features of the software are segmented properly and that makes it easy for you to browse them without any difficulty.

 
You can access the different features or settings of the software by hovering your mouse over the settings icon at the top right corner of the dashboard. You can then click on each of the features to open them in a separate window.

 
Dashboard:

 
In the dashboard, you can see a summary of the total time spent by you on a particular day. A productivity meter that shows how productive you are on that day is also displayed on the dashboard page.

 
You can also view the percentage of time spent on different activities and browsing the different categories of websites.

 
You can also find a graph that displays the time spent on browsing different websites and activities performed outside of your working hours.

 
Account settings:

 
In this section of the software, you can access your account information like username, password, and other data generation inputs, etc. You can also select the timings during which you want the software to record your activities.

 
Focus Time:

 
This feature of the software allows you to focus on your goal effectively by instantly alerting you whenever you get distracted from your work and concentrate on things that are categorized as unproductive by you.

 
You can set a timer after which the Focus Timer will start and alert you through a pop-up message and block the website that distracts you temporarily for a specified time period. You can see the list of sites that will be blocked during the Focus time session by clicking the preview your block list button.

 
You can create a new alert for your Focus Time feature by clicking the setup button at the bottom of the Focus Time page.

 
You can now specify the amount of time after which you would like the Focus Time to start and alert you whenever you are browsing some unproductive websites. You should also mention the notification method like through email or pop-up message.

 
You can also create a custom alert message for your notification. You can also mention the time period for which you would like the Focus Time to block the distracting website. The website will then be unblocked after the specified time period.

 
The below screenshot shows the alert message that I got after I was watching videos on YouTube for more than 10 minutes and how it is blocked for 15 minutes. So with this, I now would be moving on to concentrate on your routine work and be more productive.

 
Goals and Alerts:

 
In this section of the software, you can create your own goals and the software will then start tracking your activities and let you know once you successfully complete your goals.

 
You can create any goals that you like. For example, if I would like to work on learning some programming from the Udemy website, then I can create a goal by providing the time period and target website. The software then starts tracking the time that we spend on learning from that particular website and will notify us once we are done for the specified time period.

 
You can create a new goal, by clicking on the set a new goal button and mentioning the time period for which you like to work on the goal. You should also mention how important is the goal for you.

 
Categorize Activities:

 
Here, you can view the different websites categorized into different groups and rated with a productivity score. You can check if everything fits or you can edit them to match your needs.

 
You can click on the edit icon at the side of each website to change the productivity score and category of the website.



 

 
API & Integrations:

 
You can also use RescueTime with a number of different applications and platforms. Integrating RescueTime with your professional apps or platform can help in making you more productive by effectively tracking all the activities you perform there.

 
In this section, you can find in detail about the different platforms and applications with which you can integrate your ResuceTime software.

 
Advanced Filter:

 
Here you can set your work hours and thereby allowing the software to track your productively more effectively. You can change or modify your work hours whenever you wish. You can also add additional timings that you want to software to track more closely.

 
Reports:

 
And this is one important feature of the software where you can get a detailed report on how you spent your entire day and get insights about your productivity. You can generate reports for different categories that will be listed down once you click on the Report button at the top menu.

 
Application and websites report will display the complete list of websites and applications accessed by you and the time period spent on each of the applications as a complete graph.

 
Category reports will display the time spent on the different categories of websites that you have set. You get to know the amount of time spent on categories that are productive and those that are unproductive.

 
The productive report shows how productive you are on a complete day and how unproductive you were based on the time spent on each application.

 
The goal report will display the amount of time spent on all the goals set by you.

 
Help:

 
For any help on how to use the software, you can access their knowledge base by navigating to the help page. You can also contact their support team for any technical support or assistance you need with the RescueTime software.

What is the word of mouth for the software?

 
The software has got some exceptional ratings and reviews among the reviewers and users who have used the software. Only very few software usually get such accolades from both the reviewers and users alike and one such software is RescueTime.

 
So the trust factor for the software gradually increases seeing great reviews and highly satisfying user comments. So I would definitely recommend this software to anyone who wishes to efficiently manage their time and increase their productivity.

 
Please find below some of the positive testimonials about the software that you can find on the internet.

 
“Waste less time and get more done with RescueTime, an outstanding time-management tool that provides intelligent insights into how you spend your days. It's one of the best productivity apps we've ever tested.” – PC MAG

 
“I've spent significantly less time on social media since I implemented RescueTime in my system and, I now have a very detailed insight on how much time I spend on productive time. RescueTime helps me focus. I cannot recommend RescueTime enough.” – User

What are the limitations of the trial version of the software?

 
RescueTime does offer a free version and it is completely free to use without any restrictions on the time period till which you can make use of it. But it offers only a few features. If you like to experience the full capacity of the software, then it is recommended to try using the premium version.

 
And there is a trial version available for the premium version too. You can use the trial version of RescueTime premium for 14 days to experience its maximum capability. Once the trial period ends, you need to buy their full version to continue using it for managing your time effectively.

What is the price of RescueTime?

 
As said earlier in the system requirements section, RescueTime is available for all Windows and Mac PC’s and even for your iOS and Android mobile devices. The software offers three different plans for its users to choose from.

 
The three different plans are RescueTime Lite, RescueTime Premium, and RescueTime Orgs. While the Lite plan is completely free, the other two plans are charged with a monthly price.

 
The price of RescueTime Premium is $6 per month and the RescueTime for Orgs is priced at $6 per month for each individual person in your organization.

 
You can see the comparison in the features offered by the three different plans in the screenshot below.

 
The software does not offer any money-back guarantee since they offer a 14 day trial for its users to try before buying the software.

Verdict and Conclusion:

 
Thus RescueTime is a perfect time management software and it does improve your daily productivity as it promises. The different features of the software make sure that you concentrate on your work completely without getting distracted from it. The software can be the best solution for organizations that strive hard to improve their employee productivity.

 
If you are a person who gets distracted easily and wastes the whole day on useless things, then RescueTime can help you to concentrate on your work effectively and hence you can go for it without any second thought.