How Srinivas mastered his daily time and focus

No one wants to think they’re distracted, unmotivated, or wasting time. Yet few of us take the time to really understand how we spend our days. As Srinivas explains, only time-tracking will tell you the truth about how effective and focused you are.

“RescueTime exists because we’re dealing with a world of problems that didn’t exist in the past. Nothing offers more clarity than putting a number in front of your goal. All of a sudden it’s very clear whether you accomplished it or not.”

Using RescueTime, Srinivas got a clear picture of how he was spending his time over days, weeks, and months. Not only did this show him negative aspects (like when he was being distracted) but also helped him identify his peak productive hours during the day.

With an overview of his most productive hours and worst distractions, Srinivas started to experiment and optimize his daily schedule.

The first step was to remove distractions. By looking at his daily Productivity Pulse and connecting it to his Distracting Time one of the first things he discovered was that using social media first thing in the morning led to less productive days.

“If you log into Facebook first thing in the morning, every link you click on and every article you read is a decision that’s naturally eroding your willpower. If you start your day this way, you’re going to feel distracted all day long.”

Next, he started to dig into the other seemingly “productive” tasks that were getting in the way of real focus. This meant looking at Time Spent on Email as well as in meetings.

“Nobody ever changed the world by checking email, so it’s insane that we spend so much time on it.”

Srinivas is a fan of ‘batching’ emails (dealing with them only during select times). And even writes his emails in a different app to avoid getting distracted by his inbox. RescueTime’s Communication report keeps him honest about how much time he spends in emails. And he can even set Daily Goals to track email and communication time.

Finally, Srinivas realized that optimizing his focus wasn’t just about the time spent working, but also getting enough rest. But as an entrepreneur, it’s hard to say when you’ve done “enough” each day.

“When it comes to productivity, there’s a law of diminishing returns where at a certain point, the output you’re going to get from your efforts, despite the same effort, is going to decrease.”

Using RescueTime’s Work Hours, you’re able to separate your data, goals, and alerts between when you want to be working and when you should be resting so you can optimize for both.

“Downtime is often where we get the most ROI on our thinking.”

When you’re running a business, time is money. And when it comes to being more efficient with your time, the right data guides you.

“The greatest value of Rescuetime is awareness. Most people waste their time because they don’t know they’re spending it. Rescuetime is the wakeup call and reality check most people need when they’re struggling to manage their time and attention.”

How Colleen doubled her productivity without burning out

As a freelancer, you’re more than just a writer/designer/developer. You also have to be your personal admin/bookkeeper/marketer/and a whole whack of other roles. And if you’re not careful, those other tasks can take over your time.

The first thing Colleen noticed when she started looking through her RescueTime data was just how much time was spent not writing or drawing.

“Before using RescueTime, I was very bad about tracking how much of my time was going into my art. I’d sink way too much time into admin tasks and have no energy left for writing and drawing! I was puttering, doing busywork, but the real work is art, that has to come first.”

By far, the biggest offender was social media. While Colleen uses her social accounts to talk to fans and promote her work, it was taking up way too much time in her day.

But by using her Time Spent on Social Media report, she was able to get a clear picture of just how much time it was taking up. And it was bad.

“Until I began using RescueTime, I had no idea just how bad my social media overuse was. The reality of my habits was right there in my face and I was horrified.”

She quickly started to re-assess how she spent her time. First, this meant setting Goals and Alerts around her social media and writing time.

“I love the RescueTime pop-ups that remind me of my goals. It makes me feel great to see my productivity going straight up—to see I’m getting better about managing things.”

As she slowly built up her productive time, she dug into her Trends to help track her progress over time.

“The trends chart has been especially important for tracking my progress and seeing where I’m dipping and need to keep a lookout.”

By controlling the time she was spending on distractions and admin, Colleen was able to double her Productive Time in a matter of months. All without working more hours.

“This summer, my Design and Composition hours dropped to only 67. I couldn’t focus and I felt terrible. A month later my Design and Composition hours jumped to 128 and then 160. More than double!”

With RescueTime, Colleen was able to counter the worst aspects of freelance life—the competing priorities, lack of guardrails, and potential for burnout. Instead of working more and feeling like she’s not hitting her goals, she’s built new habits that put her in control of her day.

“In the time since I started using RescueTime I’ve gone from hours of social media use per day to about a half-hour. I can talk to my readers and promote projects without going overboard and using up all my creative mental energy before I even get to the drawing board!”

How Jonathan and Gary rebuilt their focus and broke bad habits

Look up “time management tips for students” and you’ll be inundated with strategies for staying focused and motivated. However, as Jonathan explains, strategies only go so far:

“I’ve definitely had trouble with being productive and avoiding procrastination in the past and ended up using lots of different tools and strategies, but it was never really clear what was having a real impact.”

To take action, experiment, and find the best time management strategies, you need to have an awareness of what works and what doesn’t. For both Gary and Jonathan, that meant using RescueTime’s automatic time tracking and productivity pulse to see where their time was actually going. As Jonathan explains:

“With RescueTime, I can quickly see which activities or apps I’m spending the most time in to get a read on how productive (or not) I’m being.”

Once they had insight into their daily schedule and where their productivity was faltering, both students started to optimize their days. For Gary, this primarily meant setting a Goal for Daily Writing Time while he worked towards finishing his thesis.

“At the moment, I’m spending an incredible amount of time writing up my Ph. D thesis and have goals for the number of hours I want to be spending on it each day so I can track my progress.”

Not only does this help keep him accountable to his thesis work, but with Monthly Goal Tracking, Gary’s now able to see how productive he’s being on a daily basis as well as larger trends for his writing time.

“It can be hard to keep yourself motivated if you’re not seeing any immediate results. But with RescueTime, I can review my data and know that I had a productive Monday, which sets me up for a good week. There’s motivation in just reviewing what you’ve done.”

For Jonathan, he was more concerned with tackling procrastination. With varying days and too many opportunities to get distracted, he needed to find ways to protect his focus.

“I know that if I can start working on a task and get invested in it that it’s easy for me to spend 3–4 good productive hours on it. But getting over that initial procrastination is a struggle.”

To get over his procrastination, Jonathan set up an Alert to automatically start a 30-minute FocusTime session at the start of his day. This means all distractions are blocked as he starts working and gets focused on specific tasks.

Not only that, but he uses a similar Alert for blocking distractions right after lunch to help protect his focus when his energy has naturally dipped. As he explains: “It’s a guardrail for me.”

For both students, RescueTime does something none of the other time management tools out there could: Give them both accurate insight into how they’re spending their time, and actionable advice and tools to help protect their focus, build better habits, and boost their productivity. As Gary says:

“I didn’t realize how much time I was throwing down the drain just from small things like watching videos on YouTube. RescueTime gives me accuracy when it comes to knowing how I spend my time. I get a much more detailed picture of what I’m doing so I can make the changes I need to my schedule and habits.”