I have basically this problem (I’m fairly sure it’s tied into my ADHD). As noted below, RescueTime is an excellent solution: it’ll keep track of different tabs in the same program separately, do it automatically, and do it down to the second—so you get a very accurate result at the end. I’ve found some very valuable results from this—for starters, that I work only about 50% of my “work hours” even on a good day, and that I spend much more time on random surfing than I thought I did.
As a baseline, I need a program that will give me more information than simply being slightly more aware of my actions does. I want something that will give me surprising information I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. This is necessarily non-trivial, especially given my knack for metacognition.
By definition, I can’t really guarantee that information it gives you will be surprising. I can tell you that I consider myself a fairly luminous person and that RescueTime still managed to surprise me.
At any rate: I also don’t think you’re going to get better than RescueTime. It keeps track of everything, does it down to the second, and does it without you having to notice—and it certainly helped me, so there’s one data point.
I have basically this problem (I’m fairly sure it’s tied into my ADHD). As noted below, RescueTime is an excellent solution: it’ll keep track of different tabs in the same program separately, do it automatically, and do it down to the second—so you get a very accurate result at the end. I’ve found some very valuable results from this—for starters, that I work only about 50% of my “work hours” even on a good day, and that I spend much more time on random surfing than I thought I did.
As a baseline, I need a program that will give me more information than simply being slightly more aware of my actions does. I want something that will give me surprising information I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. This is necessarily non-trivial, especially given my knack for metacognition.
By definition, I can’t really guarantee that information it gives you will be surprising. I can tell you that I consider myself a fairly luminous person and that RescueTime still managed to surprise me.
At any rate: I also don’t think you’re going to get better than RescueTime. It keeps track of everything, does it down to the second, and does it without you having to notice—and it certainly helped me, so there’s one data point.
I see. I’ll have to look into it some time.