[HN Gopher] Launch HN: RescueTime (YC W08) - Redesigned for well...
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Launch HN: RescueTime (YC W08) - Redesigned for wellness, balance,
remote work
My name is Brian Fioca and I'm the founder of RescueTime
(https://www.rescuetime.com). We help people who work on computers
understand their time, be more focused, and feel less overwhelmed.
Although we got started back in W08, we've entirely rewritten our
product to focus on wellness and balance in this new age of working
from home, and it's this new version I want to tell you about
today. In 2008, we set out to answer the question, "where did my
time go?" Those were the years of Web 2.0, and applications like
Mint and Google Analytics were our inspiration. We spent years
perfecting the ability to help people understand where their time
goes, but people often told us to help them work smarter, not
harder. Over the years, we switched to fully remote work ourselves,
and found it's more important to build good habits and set healthy
boundaries than to measure where your time goes--we've seen how
that can be counterproductive when it leads to lack of balance. So
although we started in the productivity/quantified-self space, we
no longer think in terms of maximizing productivity. When most
people started working remotely or from home, and with the world
unlikely to revert to exactly the way it was before, we decided to
rewrite RescueTime to reflect this new thinking. Unlike our
original version, the new RescueTime is designed to be used every
day. Instead of weekly reports we give you daily forecasts,
progress meters, nudges, and report cards. Our goal is to solve the
pain that knowledge workers have about feeling overwhelmed,
distracted, and unable to set healthy boundaries while working from
their computers. There's no one-size-fits-all way to achieve
work/life balance. We have over a decade of experience analyzing
millions of (anonymous and aggregated) users' work habits and the
use patterns of applications and websites for work purposes. This
has given us a vast and unique historical knowledge engine backed
by statistics which we rely on to identify individual needs and
give useful, personalized help. You fill out a survey that asks you
questions like, "are you a manager or an individual contributor?"
and, "how many hours are in your target work day?" and we match
your answers against historical data to give you a personalized
"Focus Goal", taking into consideration meetings and your work week
schedule. We then help you navigate each day, alerting you when
you're distracted, helping you protect focused work time, and
letting you know when you can stop working for the day. Some of
this is counterintuitive. For example, our decade's worth of data
has taught us quite consistently that the average knowledge worker
spends 2-3 hours a day in focused work activities on their
computer. Most people believe that the average is a lot higher, and
therefore assume it should be a lot higher for them, leading to
stressful feelings of inadequacy. Our data even shows if you spend
too much time on focused work without sufficient recharge time, you
will burn yourself out. We also know that it's normal for knowledge
workers to spend 2 hours per work day on personal tasks or away
from their computer. It's just as important to have space to be
able to think creatively as it is to have focused time. While
building our new version, we decided that if our product really
could do what we said it could do, we as a company should be able
to switch to a 4-day (32 hour) work week. We even designed our
personalization flow to support this. Using the new RescueTime,
we've continued to be able to accomplish the same (or more) amount
of work as we had when we were working 5 days a week! Unlike
simple Pomodoro timers, website blockers, or time trackers, we
combine technologies into a holistic solution that, more like a
fitness or mindfulness app, guides you into setting good habits and
boundaries for every work day. Unlike other productivity tools, we
understand the habits of all types of knowledge workers and can
provide contextual advice about how to make the best use of your
time, instead of just letting you know that you've spent more or
less in different areas. We're less "Get Things Done" and more "Get
to do More of What You Love." RescueTime is a small application
that runs in your Menu Bar or Task Tray that keeps an eye on the
applications and websites you're using throughout the day. It knows
when you're in work mode, what you consider focused work, meetings,
and personal activities, and gives you advice on how to make the
most out of your day. When it recognizes you're in a good zone for
focused work, it lets you shield yourself from distractions (like
social media or news). When you've hit your goal of focused work,
it lets you know that you can probably stop working for the day.
It's even smart enough to know that if you have a lot of meetings
in a given day, your chances of meeting your focused work goal are
lessened, and that's ok. RescueTime is best for people who feel
overwhelmed with their workload but want to be more efficient,
value their free time and want to have more of it, struggle with
staying focused and avoiding distractions, or struggle with
separating work time from personal time. It's especially good for
knowledge workers who want to work less in their free time,
especially remote workers. If that sounds like you, we'd love for
you to give it a try -- we have a free 2 week trial. Here's a
quick walkthrough video if you want to see it in action:
https://vimeo.com/606883007 and we'd love to hear from you about
your thoughts on productivity and wellness in this new world of new
ways most of us find ourselves working.
Author : bfioca
Score : 129 points
Date : 2021-09-28 15:01 UTC (7 hours ago)
| carltheperson wrote:
| Would love to know what your tech stack looks like?
| bfioca wrote:
| We're all over the place having started building in 2007.
| Mostly rails (latest version though!) on mysql, with lots of
| good old jQuery thrown in. ;) The client stack is cross-
| platform C++ with platform specific UI on top, including some
| Swift!
| tester89 wrote:
| Is iPad supported?
| bfioca wrote:
| Not yet - iOS is really locked down. We're hoping to get
| something working at some point. Really need better access to
| Screen Time APIs though.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Hi Brian, I've been a very happy paying customer for almost a
| decade; it's one of those products that I believe is worth paying
| for, even if the free version already offers a lot. I just want
| to make sure this tool always stays in my life, and that the
| business behind it survives. :)
|
| One concern of mine is Linux support; I completely understand the
| business trade-off you're making here, and I feel like I must be
| one of the few paying Linux users. But what I've been seeing the
| past few years that Linux became less and less "supported".
| What's your position on this? And how do you see this develop in
| the next few years?
| bfioca wrote:
| Wow, thank you so much! We don't have the linux build for this
| version finished just yet but we get a lot of requests for it,
| for sure. Honestly hoping to get that build soon - but you're
| right, we're a small team (13) and so we have to balance
| priorities. The good news is we recently hired someone who is
| passionate about linux and we're hoping that'll jumpstart the
| process and make supporting it easier with this new version.
| tomlue wrote:
| Please please keep Linux support! I would pay more to not
| lose rescuetime on linux.
|
| Also, the api you have is great and I use it a lot. Good job!
|
| One thing I worry about is how my data is being stored, and
| what you are tracking.
|
| Rescuetime is useful enough to me that I haven't left for
| this reason, but I have looked at open source competing
| products that I can run myself. Could you make me more
| comfortable about the security and confidentiality of my data
| somehow?
| bfioca wrote:
| Thanks! And sure - you can see all of the data that we
| track by looking at the diagnostics window in the app:
| https://help.rescuetime.com/article/50-how-can-i-reset-my-
| re...
|
| In short we track the name of the application you're using,
| and the window title OR the URL of the website you're on
| (if you're in a recognized browser). We query the OS to
| detect what's in focus and whether or not the computer has
| gone idle to track time spent on a particular thing. We
| also use crowdsourced data collected over the years to
| understand what categories applications and websites are
| (meeting tools, communication tools, design/coding/business
| tools, etc.)
|
| All of our data is never used individually, only analyzed
| in aggregate in an anonymized way. We're compliant with
| GDPR rules.
|
| Here's our privacy policy for more information:
| https://www.rescuetime.com/privacy
| carltheperson wrote:
| Can I use it on linux? Can it track which apps I use on my phone?
| bfioca wrote:
| We don't have the linux build for this version finished just
| yet - but the good news is we just hired someone who is pretty
| passionate about linux, so there's good reason to think it'll
| be prioritized. As for app tracking, we're also rebuilding our
| mobile apps with this new version in mind. Unfortunately Apple
| prevents us from doing any app tracking on the iPhone but the
| android version allows for some of that.
| carltheperson wrote:
| Thanks for letting me know (:
|
| BTW: I would love a "How it works" section on your page. I
| would feel more safe signing up if I knew what would be
| installed and why.
| bfioca wrote:
| Ah, great point. Adding that to our design pipeline.
| burkaman wrote:
| Is there no way to see pricing? I'm interested in trying it, but
| I'm not gonna sign up for a free trial if you can't even tell me
| how much the real thing costs.
| bfioca wrote:
| We have 2 plans: $12/month or $78 if paid annually. (edited)
| burkaman wrote:
| Thanks, that seems reasonable. I'd strongly recommend adding
| this to the website, otherwise you're gonna lose a lot of
| people who assume "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".
|
| Edit: I'm actually seeing $78/year now that I've gone through
| the signup flow. And since you show the prices before the
| user finishes signing up, there's really no reason not to
| have this somewhere on your front page.
| bfioca wrote:
| Yeah I typoed it in my hurry to respond, fixed. And totally
| a good idea. It used to be front and center on the signup
| page and then we entirely reworked our signup flow to have
| the personalization survey first.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Seeing some of the understandable comments about performance
| tracking being misused (which has also put me off it), and your
| (RescueTime) responses acknowledging the issue, I wish you the
| best of luck in pivoting to/finding a healthy model; every
| positive move towards helping us find decent work-life balances
| is a good thing.
| bfioca wrote:
| Thank you for saying so. It's really the motivation for having
| done this full rewrite.
| KB wrote:
| I actively use RescueTime but my Mac app and dashboard do not
| look anything like what I see in the linked Vimeo. Are these
| features generally available yet? How do I get on the latest if
| the Mac app says I'm already up to date?
| bfioca wrote:
| We've decided to launch this version to new users since it's so
| much different than the old version. We definitely support
| upgrading, though, just know it's quite different. If you want
| to migrate, you can go here:
| http://www.rescuetime.com/new_rescuetime
| tomhoward wrote:
| So great to see RescueTime launching! It was one of the first YC
| companies that excited me and inspired us to try and get into YC
| ourselves, which we did in '09. Tony has been a good source of
| encouragement and tough love over the years. I'm also considering
| a relaunch of my YC startup over a decade on. Will be very
| interested to see how yours goes. Congrats and good luck!
| bfioca wrote:
| Thanks so much! Super great feeling to think of us as an
| inspiration. Tony had a LOT to do with this new version - he
| came back for a little over a year to product manage it
| himself.
| koolba wrote:
| A bit off topic but I can't resist as it's in the title. What's
| it like running a startup that's active since 2008? Thirteen
| years is an incredibly long time and I'd imagine most operations
| would either thrive, die, or reach some kind of lifestyle
| business steady state by then. How do you find the focus to stay
| on the same problem space over such a long period of time?
| bfioca wrote:
| That's a great question. I think it would be better answered by
| Mark, who is our current CEO - he's been around the longest!
| Myself and my cofounder left for a few years and came back. I
| could talk for hours about what that was like, and less about
| what it was like to be here the entire time. I will say that we
| achieved profitability very quickly and have had the luxury of
| sustainability to give us the ability to entirely reimagine our
| product and relaunch. That's been the motivating factor for me
| since I've been back: getting to take another stab at solving a
| problem everyone has with all of the knowledge and data we've
| accrued over the years. This team is the best I've ever worked
| with and I'm really proud of what they've been able to do over
| the years.
| wogg wrote:
| My experience is, yes you have your ups and downs and you go
| through a lot (births and deaths even), but it is a product
| engine family we have built with heart, and we found the
| wherewithal, with an extra boost from Tony (thank you!) to
| basically start from scratch and re-imagine what we would
| want-- so in some ways it was like starting a new company,
| with people you trust.
| swalsh wrote:
| I tried your product when it first came out in 2008. During that
| period of time I thought my problem was I just got too
| distracted. I'd spend so much time reading random articles on the
| internet i'd end up working more hours. It was an endless cycle,
| and I got depressed, and hated life. Inability to focus wasn't my
| problem, and no amount of an app to help me "focus" was going to
| work. The underlying issue was I was burnt out at my job. I kept
| avoiding work because I was done with that work. When I left that
| company, my focus, motivation, and wellness Started to improve.
| It wasn't instant, it took some time, but it improved. I ended up
| doing really well at the next company.
|
| almost a decade later I found myself in a similar situation
| again, I just could not motivate myself to focus on work. Again
| changing jobs helped me improve.
|
| Not really sure where I'm going with this, but I think your shift
| to a more wholistic view of a person with work being just one
| part is good.
| bfioca wrote:
| You're describing my own situation, exactly. The years when I
| wasn't at RescueTime I ran into problems like this and part of
| the reason why I wanted to help redesign the app was because it
| just wasn't helping me out with these problems. Thank you for
| sharing your story.
| AnonC wrote:
| I do not see a pricing link on the homepage (on mobile). Frankly
| speaking, I wouldn't venture to check out anything further if
| pricing is hidden behind a trial or in some support pages. I'd
| suggest fixing that so that visitors can productively use your
| site.
| bfioca wrote:
| Sorry - it wasn't our intention to obfuscate it. Pricing is
| $12/month or $78 if paid annually. Making a note to add it to
| the front page (it was on the old signup page before the
| relaunch).
| anaisbetts wrote:
| Add a content rating to the video so that people don't have to
| sign into Vimeo (and get hard-pitched with a subscription that is
| difficult to get out of) in order to watch it
| bfioca wrote:
| Oh thanks! Will do that now.
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| Is this going to affect the API?
|
| I've been using RescueTime extensively with Chronomize [0] and
| I'm getting near a public release of the integration.
|
| https://chronomize.com
| bfioca wrote:
| Oh cool! Don't worry - we don't have any plans to change the
| API right now (other than potentially adding to it in the
| future).
| xtracto wrote:
| Aaah RescueTime! I didn't know you guys were a YC company. I used
| RescueTime quite a lot in the past and I think at some point I
| paid for it. I have completely forgotten about it! Pretty awesome
| application, and I love that it also works in Linux.
| bfioca wrote:
| Thanks so much for the support! Yeah YC was a long time ago for
| us, but we're really happy to be in the family. They've been
| amazingly supportive over the years.
| ErikBjare wrote:
| The new RescueTime looks great!
|
| I used to use RescueTime many years ago, until I got
| uncomfortable with storing all my data on their servers, and
| unsatisfied with the closed source nature of it all (limiting my
| ability to fix issues and add features I wanted).
|
| I started building an open source replacement in 2016, was joined
| by a few friends, and it has gotten pretty good (people really
| like it!): https://github.com/ActivityWatch/activitywatch
| benjojo12 wrote:
| In a previous life (2013?) this software got forced on me and the
| team/company I worked on as "boss-ware".
|
| Unsure if the founders were aware of this or just "well shit
| happens", but it defo means I can't see this product without also
| seeing the uncomfortableness of working with a "all eyeing eye"
| on your system tray
|
| I have no idea if the product is still somewhat geared for
| micromanaging/boss spying but it left a really bad taste for the
| whole product segment for me.
| bfioca wrote:
| We're totally aware of this and although we've tried our best
| in the past to avoid this scenario with the privacy of
| individuals in mind, it was unfortunate that bosses made their
| employees do this. This version is much harder to abuse that
| way, the reports are designed to be less exact and more of a
| guide to help the individual achieve balance, not to generate
| reports to be used to track productivity.
| heymijo wrote:
| This feels a bit like those "FOR TOBACCO USE ONLY" signs at
| headshops who sell bongs.
| bfioca wrote:
| Fair. Apologies, that wasn't my intention. We're going to
| do better with this version to prevent that kind of abuse.
| It's a complete 180 from the analytics tool that enabled
| that in the past. I'd go as far as to say that we'd disable
| any account where we heard this was happening. We're
| committed to preventing this kind of thing from happening
| in the future. None of us want to contribute to the kind of
| world where workers are treated that way.
| heymijo wrote:
| I appreciate what you are saying and how you are saying
| it. Thank you for that.
|
| In an industry with plenty of founders who have said one
| thing and then repeatedly done another I don't think it's
| being jaded to be cautiously pessimistic. If the market
| for RescueTime ends up being primarily spy tech, then
| it's naive to think that's not the direction it will go.
|
| Tech is also an industry that has let its naivety blind
| it to some rather obvious perverse use cases.
|
| You may prove this all wrong becoming a legendary founder
| who holds the line into perpetuity against selling your
| SaaS as spy tech even if that's what the market wants.
| That would be an amazing story to watch unfold.
| bfioca wrote:
| Totally true (and unfortunate) that so many founders go
| down that path. If it helps, we've never really seen a
| strong pull revenue-wise to go down that direction. We
| strongly prefer to make beautiful premium software that
| helps people. That kind of corporate spyware would likely
| need an enterprise product/sales team, and is generally a
| kind of race-to-the-bottom of price and (honestly boring
| to build) commodity features. As founders, there are
| plenty of more interesting spaces for us to work in
| instead of that and none of us are motivated to work in
| that direction.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| It sounds to me like a genuine response regarding a useful
| tool that can be abused.
| arcticfox wrote:
| Given the larger context, to me it sounds like a genuine
| response from one of the relatively rare efforts at
| tackling this huge problem. I have used RescueTime
| personally (not mandated) in the past and found it useful.
| wogg wrote:
| I would like to also specifically respond and clarify: we
| killed the "team" version of product that allowed for such
| abuse 5 years ago. We hated that use case and were no longer
| interested in having it be possible to have an abuse case of
| the product. Since that time, we have evolved a single user
| model, and the organization tools were for consolidated billing
| purposes, not shared data. This latest version further moves
| away from being a measuring tool and more toward a coach. Thank
| you for your post.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| ive been using it since the beginning, daily. grats on the
| redesign launch! looking forward to using it for another decade
| bfioca wrote:
| That's so awesome, you rock! I love to think that we've been
| around helping people for so long.
| ajvs wrote:
| I stopped using this a number of years ago when I became more
| privacy-conscious and now use ActivityWatch which doesn't have an
| online connection.
|
| If RescueTime could be run completely offline or could be self-
| hosted I'd consider it again.
| baby wrote:
| I remember trying the tool a long time ago, I'd be willing to
| give it another shot but what exactly is being sent to the
| servers?
| bfioca wrote:
| Application name, window title, website URL (if in a
| browser), and time spent in activity. All anonymized when
| analyzed in aggregate.
| bfioca wrote:
| Totally understand. The online component makes it challenging
| for a lot of folks. Fortunately this new version requires less
| in the way of constant online support, and we're definitely
| considering developing an offline-only version of this new app
| in the future.
| biddit wrote:
| > our decade's worth of data has taught us quite consistently
| that the average knowledge worker spends 2-3 hours a day in
| focused work activities on their computer
|
| Seems like there is a massive selection bias in the sample
| though. People seeking out this tool are likely to be people who
| struggle to focus.
| bfioca wrote:
| Potentially, although not necessarily. There are many many
| years of quantified-selfers signing up to track all of their
| data.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I've used RT on and off for about a dozen years and learned a lot
| about myself. Great service. And trustworthy, in my opinion.
| Besides the quality of their data and app, the Zapier
| integrations were the biggest benefits of the cloud approach for
| me.
|
| Looking forward to seeing what the offline-stored model can do.
| bfioca wrote:
| Thanks so much! So happy to hear.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I joined a company where the owner had everyone's machine
| RescueTime'd. I improved their dev throughput 100x in 2 months
| (quite literally) and he still pulled up RescueTime dashboards to
| berate people on how they spent their time. The RescueTime
| reports counted for more than our delivery reports (which he
| wouldn't understand, not "couldn't").
|
| Never again.
| bfioca wrote:
| Wow, I'm really sorry to hear that. We absolutely don't support
| that use case, and especially with this version, it's pretty
| hard to measure with that kind of exactness in a way that could
| be used for that kind of abuse. Honestly - this kind of thing
| really motivated us to make these changes with this new
| version. It's pretty clear to us that productivity has less to
| do with time in seats and more to do with balance.
| santhoshr wrote:
| Went through the onboarding and signed up for a trial with
| payment details. But the Download buttons don't work. I'm
| surprised that small bugs haven't been worked out before
| launching a product where you pay $12 a month!
| bfioca wrote:
| Yikes, that's not good, sorry. I wonder if there's something
| specific with your setup, we haven't had any problems like that
| from other users today. If you could email help@rescuetime.com
| I'd love to help figure out what happened.
| calebm wrote:
| This is striking: "The average knowledge worker spends 2-3 hours
| a day in focused work activities on their computer"
| bfioca wrote:
| It's true and it often depends on things like company size (2
| hours or less for large companies, 3-4 hours for small
| startups) and role (managers are lucky to hit 2 and ICs can
| usually get to 3 when they're not in meetings all day).
| bastijn wrote:
| I tried to find your pricing models but it seems the entire site
| doesn't offer them to me. Do I have to create an account ("try
| for free") to see your pricing?
| bfioca wrote:
| Sorry about that - pricing is $12/month or $78 if paid
| annually. We're going to add it back to the site - it was on
| the old version of the account create page before we added the
| new survey (oops).
| theronmad wrote:
| Interesting opinion
| Inversechi wrote:
| Are signups broken?
|
| I had an account way back when and cannot login or reset my
| password. Furthermore the OAuth flows I tried result in 404.
| bfioca wrote:
| Hm - there might be something wrong with your old account.
| Checking into it, but things should be working. Can you email
| help@rescuetime.com and we'll see if we can sort out what's up?
| Sorry about that!
| mehphp wrote:
| This looks like something I might use on my own but if it was
| forced on me at work I'd find another job...
| mrieck wrote:
| I agree. I decided my chrome extension (Productivity Owl)
| should only store data locally because I didn't like the idea
| of managers abusing it. The owl is enough of an asshole to
| simulate a real boss for me.
| bfioca wrote:
| Thanks for the reply - I feel the same way. I'd go as far as to
| say that if someone forced it on you we'd want to know so we
| could disable the account. That's not something we want to
| support at all. This is designed to help individuals set
| boundaries for their work, especially in a work from home
| scenario where it would be too easy to work well past the end
| of an optimal work day.
| xtracto wrote:
| This is what I did a couple of jobs ago. I was a technology
| leader in a startup, and installed in myself to track Where TH
| did my time go. After some months I got some nice charts and
| interesting insights. I showed those to the people in my team
| and told them that if anyone wanted a license I would pay for
| it, but it would be for their own _personal_ use (nobody would
| have access to their data). A couple of people approached me to
| get licenses.
|
| This is kind of similar to the GitPrime/WayDev and similar
| software: The insight is actually quite good, but the moment
| "The Boss" uses it, it becomes a control mechanism. The best
| way to take advantage of it is if it is provided as something
| completely personal.
| MikeKusold wrote:
| I tried out RescueTime in the past (~2010-12 or so) but I was
| never comfortable sending my tracking data to a remote server. I
| since found Qbserve[0] which is a similar product, but it keeps
| all your data local. If I find myself distracted on any given
| day, then I turn on focus.app [1] to kill those distractions.
|
| It's not as elegant of a solution as what RescueTime offers, but
| all my data stays on my machine which is worth the trade off to
| me.
|
| [0]: https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/
|
| [1]: https://heyfocus.com/
| catchmeifyoucan wrote:
| Shameless plug, but maybe you can try Amna[0] which has local
| first time tracking (turn off your internet) and provides a
| focus bar that creates a cohesive deep work experience.
|
| [0] https://getamna.com
| bfioca wrote:
| I'll check it out. :)
| catchmeifyoucan wrote:
| For sure! As long as you don't eat my baby :)
| hugocbp wrote:
| Same story for me.
|
| I used RescueTime for a long time, but it felt weird.
|
| Also switched to QBserve after a while and it's been great.
|
| RescueTime has more features, for sure (at least it did
| before), but these days, it is just too much extra data to
| willingly send to others.
| bfioca wrote:
| Yeah, we've analyzed enough data over the years that I think
| for the most part we can finally move away from this. The
| trick is keeping up with new applications and websites and
| understanding how they fit into peoples' work habits but
| that's a solvable problem, I think.
| karmelapple wrote:
| Happy RescueTime paying customer here.
|
| Is there a place that clearly states everything RescueTime
| is sending up? Maybe that would at least help people trust
| it more?
|
| Of course, what an app says it's sending, and what it
| actually does, might not always gel.
| bfioca wrote:
| Cool! Thanks for being a happy customer! And sure -
| (copying from a different response below) you can see all
| of the data that we track by looking at the diagnostics
| window in the app:
| https://help.rescuetime.com/article/50-how-can-i-reset-
| my-re...
|
| In short we track the name of the application you're
| using, and the window title OR the URL of the website
| you're on (if you're in a recognized browser). We query
| the OS to detect what's in focus and whether or not the
| computer has gone idle to track time spent on a
| particular thing. We also use crowdsourced data collected
| over the years to understand what categories applications
| and websites are (meeting tools, communication tools,
| design/coding/business tools, etc.) All of our data is
| never used individually, only analyzed in aggregate in an
| anonymized way. We're compliant with GDPR rules. Here's
| our privacy policy for more information:
| https://www.rescuetime.com/privacy
| hartator wrote:
| > Yeah, we've analyzed enough data over the years that I
| think for the most part we can finally move away from this.
|
| I am curious. What were the analyses and what's your
| conclusion(s)?
| BitAstronaut wrote:
| I find that altering my hosts file manually and using the new
| focus feature on MacOS Monterey fits perfectly for my workflow.
|
| I don't have installed apps that distract me. It's simply
| websites (Reddit being the worst in my case) and notifications.
|
| I'm also using a separate user account for dev work and
| everyone at work knows I check slack and my emails twice a day
| and they can call me at any time. I've found it cuts down on
| distractions because it's easy for people to ping me with small
| things but they feel a significant reason is needed for calls.
|
| Focus on iOS has all notifications muted in my work profile but
| allows calls from my co-workers and partner.
| bfioca wrote:
| Those are great ideas. I love the new Focus features in
| Monterey, too. One thing that MacOS can't do is tell you when
| to stop working for the day once you've gotten enough focus
| work done. That feature is the one I use the most in this new
| version and I rely on it every day.
| bfioca wrote:
| Requiring sending data to a remote server is definitely
| something we want to move away from. The good news is our
| engine is pretty advanced and we're looking at being able to
| bundle it for a local install. Notes like these help motivate
| us to prioritize that, so thanks.
| dbingham wrote:
| Yeah, adding my voice. Rescue time (and apps like it) are far
| too invasive (by necessity) for me to be comfortable with
| that data being sent remotely. It amounts to the single most
| invasive spy tool you could possibly install, since it's
| literally tracking every single thing I do. It doesn't matter
| how much you pledge to not spy on me, if you have my data you
| can change your mind at the drop of a hat.
|
| There is literally nothing you can do to earn my trust with
| that much data - the rest of tech has not just scorched that
| Earth, they've glassed it. The only thing you can do that
| would make me consider becoming a customer is cut off your
| own ability to spy on me - by ensuring my data stays local
| and you have no access to it.
|
| Editing to add: I considered Rescue Time in the past, used
| Freedom for a time (until I realized they were sending off my
| data and what that meant), then used qbserve for a long time.
| Stopped while ago when I realized I'd stopped looking at it
| and had stopped feeling like I needed it.
| bfioca wrote:
| It's true that unfortunately over the years there have been
| enough bad actors where I can't describe our commitment to
| privacy in a way that easily instills trust. We've
| definitely benefitted from many users' trust over the years
| in that we've been able to build a product that's smarter
| about the best way to work for most people. Really looking
| forward to packaging it in a way that will make you feel
| comfortable.
| stonedge wrote:
| This is my #1 need. I was a paying customer, but eventually
| got uncomfortable with the remote data and cancelled my
| subscription.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Same here - I used RT early on, when I was younger and more
| naive, and stopped when it dawned on me what data is being
| sent out. I would gladly use a local-only version; I
| remember your application circa 2012 being excellent. I
| just am not comfortable with the privacy aspect.
| bfioca wrote:
| Definitely planning on working on it. Thanks for chiming
| in to help us prioritize this.
| kashura wrote:
| Are there any plans to allow blocking specific applications?
| bfioca wrote:
| Actually yes! We are working on iterating on Focus Sessions and
| blocking (especially communications apps) right now.
| kashura wrote:
| Sweet, great to hear! On a similar note, did the new RT lose
| integrations? I can't seem to find that page.
| bfioca wrote:
| They're still there, we just haven't finished redesigning
| that page for the new version. For now, you can go here:
| https://www.rescuetime.com/anapi/setup/overview
| meterplech wrote:
| Just went through sign-up flow. Heard of the product for years +
| interested in it.
|
| One note - I have a bit of an idiosyncratic schedule. I work
| 9-6:30 and then stop for the evening (dinner with family, put kid
| to bed) and resume work ~9pm typically. I'd love the ability to
| block off that time slot (6:30-9) but keep space for working
| before and after.
|
| Beyond with, excited to try it out.
| bfioca wrote:
| We definitely support that! You can set any number of flexible
| work zones during your day, and it'll even send you an alert if
| you work too long in a zone you said you wanted for recharge
| time. :)
| tashoecraft wrote:
| Is there a way to define different zones/types of work? I
| work 10-6, but study 8-10 and 8-10pm.
| bfioca wrote:
| It might be possible to work that way, none of us have
| tried it explicitly yet though. That's a great feature
| suggestion, I'm adding it to the roadmap.
| meterplech wrote:
| Oh I see. You allow this in-app.
|
| Your signup flow, though, has a start time + end time and
| doesn't make it clear you can add these windows in. It made
| me pause during sign-up and I wonder if it would cause other
| folks to drop off. Maybe could be solved with copy somewhere
| even?
|
| Similarly, as far as I can tell the signup flow does not let
| me add half hour increments (e.g 8:30am - 6:30pm). I also
| can't figure out how to add that even in-app.
| bfioca wrote:
| Great note about the signup flow not messaging that. We'll
| correct that for sure. In terms of 30 minute increments,
| that's not currently supported due to super annoying
| technical reasons around the way we've structured our
| database. Something else we're working on.
| mediaman wrote:
| The founders' response here regarding abuse seems to be heartfelt
| and genuine.
|
| However, this does make me think. There must be a lot of money in
| 'bossware.' More broadly, there's market opportunity to appeal to
| poor managers' basest instincts: measuring people in precise
| (albeit irrelevant) ways, micromanagement, aiding interruptions,
| etc.
|
| It's icky, and most here wouldn't want to work on it. But people
| somewhere are. What else fits into that category?
| kashura wrote:
| Surely, there is a ton of money in providing reports to some
| micromanager boss. If a business fills that niche, is it
| irresponsible on the business or is it just them finding a
| market fit?
| bfioca wrote:
| I'm not entirely certain that's true. Companies that are that
| restrictive are really judicious about costs and how much
| they're willing to pay.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Upwork does this.
| karmajunkie wrote:
| I think the term of art these days is "tattleware"--there have
| been a flurry of stories in the media lately about the growth
| of the market during the pandemic.
|
| While I can see how its possible to abuse RescueTime in this
| way, as a happy customer for several years now, its been a
| lifesaver for me in several ways. It helps keep me from falling
| down rabbit holes thanks to my ADHD, which is probably the
| biggest reason I started using it. It also made it much, much
| easier to bill my hours when I was working as a consultant.
|
| I know the skepticism factor is high here on HN, but having
| been a customer of theirs for years, I can say that the
| RescueTime team is one of the good actors in this space.
|
| Brian, looking forward to seeing the new work once its
| released!
| bfioca wrote:
| "tattleware" is the exact opposite direction that we want to
| go, and this new release is part of us putting our flag down
| against it. Thank you so much for saying this.
| bfioca wrote:
| Thanks for the nice note. In the old days we used to get a lot
| of requests from bosses who wanted to see screenshots of
| people's computers. We vowed we'd go out of business before
| building anything like that, and I'm sure we'd lose most of our
| talent if we asked them to build a product like that. Not to
| say that someone wouldn't build it, but I don't think it'd be
| easy to find anyone of quality to help you out.
| oidar wrote:
| Looks interesting. I just went through the onboarding as a
| current customer. It looks like we lost some features. I used
| rescue time to log offline activities as well - I can't seem to
| find that. Other features I liked were logging accomplishments
| for the day and being able to break down by app how my time was
| spent over the month/year. Are there any other features that
| we've lost in this upgrade?
| bfioca wrote:
| Great note. We're releasing a reworked version of offline time
| entry next month. Our stand on bringing classic features to
| this new version involves evaluating how they might work in
| this new balance-centered mindset. Reports on time spent by app
| are likely coming back in some form, but we're reworking
| everything so it's less about hours tracking and more about
| whether you got your work done. Hopefully that helps explain
| the reasoning for the differences a bit more.
| oidar wrote:
| So not to push back against the ethos of being balanced - but
| having access to minute by minute details of apps/websites -
| is kind of important to answering the question "Where the
| hell did my time go!??" I know a lot of people that signed up
| for rescue time use it as a Quantified Self kinda tool (For
| example Beeminder, IFTTT, Zapier, and Exist.io use it in this
| manner). I'm afraid that this change might exclude those that
| want that minute by minute accounting. (I do use this for
| Beeminder integration currently - so I hope that didn't
| break!). Anyhow, I'm willing to give the new design a shot -
| I think the design looks beautiful and the features look
| great.
| bfioca wrote:
| You're totally right - we think it might exclude some of
| those people, too. We're tracking user feedback, though,
| and keeping an eye on it. But we just want to make sure we
| don't promote unhealthy habits with too much detail.
| oidar wrote:
| I've dug a bit into the new version. It's entirely
| different product. There's no baby stepping this change
| for your legacy users. I'm very happy that legacy
| dashboard is accessible otherwise I'd have a real problem
| with the new design. To make the old version and the new
| version more "compatible" you could change the
| nomenclature on the old version from "unproductive time"
| to "personal time" - and it would make more sense if you
| are switching back and forth between the new/old
| dashboards. Also, for integrating calendars, only gmail
| and outlook are available - I'd love to have ical links
| monitored. I aggregate different calendars on iCal.
| bfioca wrote:
| Thanks for this. Yeah, it's definitely entirely
| different. The transition is going to be tricky at first
| for folks used to the old version but so far it seems to
| be making sense to new people. Thanks for those notes.
| iCal is something we can technically support but it
| doesn't post changes to webhooks so you'd have to
| manually sync every time. :/
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| Congratulations. I'm excited to dig into this.
| bfioca wrote:
| Thanks so much!
| kinnth wrote:
| I just logged back into your app (2615 days since you last saw
| me) haha!
|
| I used to love this app, I used it a lot when I was studying and
| most recently I just needed a new app to help me focus. Working
| from home has led to me working more, but procrastinating more.
| I'm much less effective in the afternoons now and especially with
| Crypto I keep getting distracted. This update has come at the
| perfect time for me! I'll get back into it again and hopefully
| get my data back.
| bfioca wrote:
| Wow that's great! Thanks for coming back and giving us another
| go! If you want to migrate your old account, you can do it from
| here: http://www.rescuetime.com/new_rescuetime
| joblazny wrote:
| Hey Brian! I've been using Rescue Time for the last 3 years,
| since I started college and I love seeing where exactly my time
| is going. I never knew you were part of one of the earliest YC
| batches so that got me really excited. Congrats on the redesign,
| I'm looking forward to checking it out!
| bfioca wrote:
| Thanks so much! I hope you like this new version. Much more
| about building good habits and less about having something
| telling you over and over how much time you're spending on
| Hacker News. :D
| helge9210 wrote:
| Is Linux supported by new version?
| bfioca wrote:
| Not just yet - but we're working on a new build that supports
| the new version.
| theronmad wrote:
| by the way
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