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idle time vs off time
How can I tell the difference between time I was idle and time that Rescue Time wasn't running (or logging was disabled -- same thing, to me).
You might ask why I care. My work habit is such that I login in the morning, and logout at night. So if I look at the "8 AM" hour and see that I did 10 minutes of "work" I don't know if that means I didn't start work until 8:50 AM or if I started work at 8:00 AM and then got pulled away from the computer.
My point is, there's an important difference between the time that Rescue Time is running and knows I'm idle vs the time that Rescue Time is not running.
You might ask why I care. My work habit is such that I login in the morning, and logout at night. So if I look at the "8 AM" hour and see that I did 10 minutes of "work" I don't know if that means I didn't start work until 8:50 AM or if I started work at 8:00 AM and then got pulled away from the computer.
My point is, there's an important difference between the time that Rescue Time is running and knows I'm idle vs the time that Rescue Time is not running.
I’m unsure
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Inappropriate?That's a great point.
One of the things that we're considering is a client-side "ask" when you are away from your computer.
Example: You come into work and check email. You then get dragged away to an impromptu meeting. Upon returning to your computer, RescueTime gets out of idle mode. Because you were away for more than 10 minutes (a setting, maybe?) it asks, "What were you doing?" and gives you an option to select one or more options that you set up like, "lunch, coffee break, personal call, work call, or meeting". RescueTime fills in that space with an entity called "lunch".
If you didn't care for this granularity, you could go with a "working, but AFK" label.
If we did this, of course, it'd be a toggle-able option.
We're also working on manual entry (so you could manually fill in the holes) but I think this is so much more elegant. Would love to hear your thoughts!
I’m thankful
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That feature sounds great, but it's also much more than I need. What I was thinking was client could just record the time and tag it as "idle" (or maybe the tag of your choice) so that when I look at my reports on the dashboard I can see that I was logged in (and running RescueTime) vs times when RescueTime isn't running. -
That's a great idea! I was wishing for something just like that yesterday, when I ended up with a two hour "idle" gap from a meeting.
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Yeah, ditto what Matt Kane said.
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Something to think about: I work from two different computers during the day (laptop and desktop), and appreciate the fact that I can run rescue time on both, but collect the information in one central location (web). At the moment I use Rescue Idle Time to manually capture my idle time-- that is, I don't log my idle time on either computer, but, if I have been away at a meeting, I do a manual entry from whichever computer I am closest to. If you develop an "idle time" feature, I would wish for it to be triggered from the web, versus the workstation. So, suppose I was away from both computers for awhile. I sit down at one and start working. The rescue time website sees that there has been a two hour gap and pushes a prompt to my desktop that says, "what have you been doing?". Then I move to my other computer. The rescue time website sees that there was no gap, and so doesn't prompt me. Or, if I go get a cup of coffee and then go to my other computer, rescue time website pushes a prompt and says "what were you doing for the past five minutes?" (which is the correct server side record of idle time, as opposed to "what have you been doing for the past two hours and five minutes" which would be the incorrect client-side record of idle-time.) Complicated. I hope you get what I'm saying. Love this program.
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Inappropriate?Automatic idling / pause recording is a great feature! (I actually just sent a support email - it'd be great to have a "help" landing page from dashboard that shows you this forum plus FAQ and support ticket form.)
I’m appreciative
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I was going to suggest an additional link direct to the forum, opening in a new tab.
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Inappropriate?I like the prompt after returnign form idle mode. It may sound liekbig brother to say what were you doing for the past xx minutes but it is a good way to allow me to capture 99% of my 9-to-5 day.
It might be a way to remind me to take ONLY 15 minutes for a coffee break ;-)
Caution: some may need to to split up the idle time into 2-3 components e.g. meeting followed by lunch or 15 minute cofee break followed by 20 miutes work planning meeting (at the coffee table).
If idle time is currently 2 mintes, would I want to be promted every time i have a 2 minute phone call? 2 minutes of idle time LOST but 10 minutes earns a prompt sound slike a good compromise.
I also recall a time management/couting training session where we learned that interruptions got charged to what you were doing before the interruption - in the long run it averages out. In that respect I would favour setting idle time to 5 minutes and charging that 5 minutes to what I was doing 5 minutes ago. This may be inconvenient for those who may want to use RT for customer billing.
Guy
I’m looking forward to 100% tracking
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I would find Guy Cousineau's proposal very useful.
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Inappropriate?You folks could try RescueIdleTime which works in conjunction with RescueTime to record when you were away from you computer.
I’m glad I could help
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