RescueTime is another great productivity tool that helps you track your time and gives a clear picture of how you spend your day in the digital world.
It basically “helps you understand your daily habits and become more productive”, according to their homepage.
In my test, I found that while RescueTime does an exceptional job in tracking time and sending reports, it lacks a few key features.
So, let’s find out what these features are and where RescueTime shines like a star.
RescueTime Pros:
#1 Brilliant time tracking and reporting
Time tracking is one of the most notable features of RescueTime. Though it only tracks time for individuals (no projects), it’s quite accurate.
Plus it refreshes its dashboard in every five to fifteen minutes, so you get real-time reporting on how you much time you’re spending on your phone or computer. And which websites and apps are eating most of your time.
#2 Set Goals
The thing which I liked most about RescueTime is, it lets you set certain goals according to the level of productivity you’re aiming to achieve. This is essential for avoiding procrastination, inefficiency, or workload paralysis.
For example, let’s say you want to restrict your social media usage time to just 1 hour every day.
So all you need to do is go to “Reports”, select “Your Goals” and finally click on “create new goals”.
This feature helps users know how they’re progressing towards their desired productivity goal. And this is a unique feature that ai couldn’t find in any other time tracking tool I tested.
#3 Website Blocking
RescueTime can do a big favor on you if you are someone who often gets distracted by social media or news sites while working on an important project.
You can easily block websites using RescueTime. But the only catch is, this is a premium feature. So, you’ll have to either upgrade your free plan or choose a premium plan during the sign-up process.
#4 Fast customer support
When it comes to serving their customers, RescueTime leaves no stone unturned. Their agents are always on their toes and I experienced their lightning fast speed first hand.
When I contacted the RescueTime support team to ask a couple of questions about their product, one of their agent, Bianca got back to me within 5 hours and gave a detailed explanation about their product’s feature.
RescueTime Cons
#1 Not so User-friendly interface (Android app)
While downloading the app was a breeze (because of its small size), I found the interface to be quite confusing. When you open the app for the first time, this is the screen you see.
There are lots of things going on here like a total logged time, productivity pulse, a small timer icon in the bottom right corner but there are no clear instructions.
Even, the mobile app was unable to set any goal or activity whereas it’s fairly easy to do so in the Windows app.
So, overall it was a bad experience for me.
#2 No POMODORO support
While apps like FocusMe and Toggl come with POMODORO support, you won’t find this feature in RescueTime.
#3 No scheduling
Similar to POMODORO, I couldn’t see any option to schedule a task for a certain time period.
RescueTime Plans
RescueTime is one of the few tools that offer a free forever account to the users.
The RescueTime Lite plan comes with zero cost and limited features while the premium plan starts from $9/month if you want to pay monthly or $72 if you want to buy it for a whole year.
Do I recommend RescueTime?
If you’re looking for a free app that enables you to track your time and also shows you how much time you’re spending on each website or app then definitely go with the RescueTime Lite plan.
Otherwise, I won’t recommend you to buy their premium plan. Because you can get a better deal if you spend your money on a tool like FocusMe.