distractions

My rather peculiar life choices are guided by a simple philosophy: 

Sustainable happiness comes from the freedom to create what you want, not the freedom to consume what you want. 

This philosophy drives me to buy creative freedom rather than stuff. And all of this creative freedom is great for productivity 🙂 

To measure progress in this area, I rely on this great little app called RescueTime. If you spend most of your time working on your PC (or if your PC is a huge source of distraction), you should really try it! It also works great on Android devices, although the iOS app is more limited.  

RescueTime automatically tracks the way you use your devices. Do some creative writing in MS Word, and you’ll grow some lovely deep blue “very productive” bars. Get lost in YouTube, and you’ll get some nasty red “very distracting” bars going in the wrong direction.

My month of June is shown below as an example: 

If you are brave enough to face a good dose of objective reality, RescueTime is for you. It tracks the time you are actually working, not the time that you are at work (which can be two very different things). 

It also mercilessly exposes every little bit of procrastination you get up to on your PC or phone. 

I’ve managed to use this cool data to drive myself to gradually higher performance over the past couple of years. My 1-year moving average for highly productive time should soon cross that 200 hour/month line 🙂

I’ll be back with another productivity update next month. Thus far, July has been awesome, so the positive trends should continue 🙂

See you tomorrow for the third edition of Amateur Creativity!