5 Tools to Track How Much Time you Waste while Online
Mar. 17th, 2008 | by Shankar Ganesh |Your Firefox hasn’t been re-started in hours. It’s running continuously, you’re surfing around websites, and of course you’ve wasted lots of time. You could have instead spent that time doing something good and productive, rather than just flying around worthless sites.
Here are four neat Firefox extensions and 1 desktop app that help you track the time you spend online. They even give you reports so you can watch out and make efficient use of your time by cutting down on wandering around sites that are of no use.
LeechBlock
LeechBlock can be set to block websites from loading in Firefox.
You can create up to six ‘block sets’ - each set can contain a number of sites that should be blocked only during a specific time interval.
For example, you can create a block set and put all the social networking sites in it - and block all those sites together for a set period of time (instance, 9AM-4PM). Then you can create another block set - containing another bunch of time-consuming sites and block them all together for a specified time period. That’s how block sets work. Wildcards can be used to block specific subdomains/parts of a bigger site.
Download LeechBlock
Time Tracker
Simple yet effective tool that tracks the amount of time you’ve been browsing around. The display on the status bar indicates the amount of time you’ve been surfing around inside Firefox.
As you can see in the options above, you can set the status bar display of TimeTracker to show only the time you’ve spent today/last reset/since installing Time Tracker. In the time-out option, you can specify when the addon should pause counting the time. You can use the filter list to add websites that will not be time-tracked.
If you want to continue tracking the time even when the new windows are opened then leave the last checkbox unchecked.
Download TimeTracker
8aWeek
Same as the first extension, but it has more powerful options and provides graphs that display the various activities versus the time you’ve spent on them.
Once installed, you’ll see a toolbar that has around four options. You’ll also be taken to a registration page. You could register if you want the reports to be saved for the long term. Else, you can skip it and continue using 8aweek.
It provides interesting charts like the one below that lists the amount of time I’ve spent on each site:
You can set it to limit the time you spend on useless sites. For example, you could set it to make Facebook available to you for no more than 10 minutes per day. Additionally, you can also save the reports for later viewing. For more details check out our directory listing on 8aWeek.
Download 8aweek
MeeTimer
MeeTimer is a plain and light activity tracker. It keeps track of the visited websites in any given day, records total time, and groups them into purpose-based categories (e.g. Myspace/Facebook = procrastination, Gmail = communication, etc.). At the end of the day you get a clear picture of your daily activity.
Download MeeTimer
RescueTime
Unlike the above, RescueTime is a desktop program. Same goal here, understand how and where you spend your time while browsing web or working on PC. Find out what programs and websites take most of your time (Digg, Wikipedia, Word, Google, Dreamweaver …). Cool thing about this app is that it’s completely automated and requires almost no effort on your behalf. The only thing you have to do is assign different programs and sites to certain tags.
Get Rescuetime here
Do you know of any other good tools for managing your time on the internet? Let us know in the comments!
(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips
If you found this article useful then please help us spread the word by Stumbling It.
If you like this article then subscribe to MakeUseOf feed and get latest articles delivered to your Feedreader. If you want to recieve latest articles in your email click here. It's FREE!27 Comments » Leave One...
Sponsored Ads
MakeUseOf Authors
Latest in Blog
- Sync Yourself with Syncplicity… With a Gift For MakeUseOf Readers!
- Remove Censorship & Browse Anonymously With Xerobank
- June Roundup : Make Use Of Authors
- Thank You MakeUseOf Sponsors
- Liberate, Sync and Share Your Media With DoubleTwist
- Cool Websites and Tools (edition #154)
- Manage your iPhoto with these plugins
Latest in Directory
- 99counters: Stylish Web Counters for your Blogs and Profile Pages
- Alerts.com: Get Alerts for Stuff you Want to be Notified About
- PrimoSpot: Find a Parking Spot in New York City (NYC)
- Instinctiv: Better Music Shuffle Feature for your iPhone
- Feed Source: Add external RSS Feeds to your Blog
- Pluribo: Summarize Gadget and Electronics Reviews on Amazon
- BgPatterns: Design Tiled Backgrounds for your Website
- Google Ride Finder: Find Taxi, Limousine or Shuttle in the Area
- TinyPaste : Quickly Get Shareable URL for any Text
- Mikogo : Screen Sharing App for Skype and Windows
Latest in Geeky Fun
- Search Google For French Military Victories
- The Internet Has Crashed (Video)
- Latest Gadgets in the Mobile Phone Tech (Funny)
- Make your Own High Tech Computer Desk (Video)
- Star Wars Floppy Disk (Video)
- Typical FaceBook Romance (Pic)
- Geeky Way to End Relationship (Pic)
Recent Comments
- Gunnar Steinn: Please invite me
gunnarstei nn (at)... - Monica: Wow!! Nice Give away.. I grabbed the opportunit y...
- Harry: For the $20 you spent on that stupid shit I bought...
- Shaw: Nice review. This app is really useful. I can just...
- LaurenceJohn: I still have to try it on my uni network...
- LaurenceJohn: No I didn’ ;t use Browzar 230; I...
- dennis: Hey. I use http://www .sellmyold cellphone. com...
- kaly: Just checked Softpedia and Download.c om feedback,...
- Jackson: Hmm. Obsessed. A word that seems to taunt most...
- Aibek: I knew there was something wrong with it as soon...
Advertisement
MakeUseOf.com Tools
I NEED internet time managment.
Oh my, think about all the time it takes to set up and manage these tools. I’d rather spend that time reading your articles Shankar.
Good post!
++ For rescuetime, but it just makes me depressed when I see how much time I waste!
[...] Here are a few firefox extensions to help you track how much time you waste online. - MakeUseOf [...]
Hi– thanks for mentioning us (RescueTime)! One additional thing to note is that RescueTime is friendly to Mac/PC— and now Linux! One of our great users dove in and built a Linux version.
On, I should also note that the about RescueTime screenshot is slightly out of date– we have a lot of new/cool features (you can see ‘em at: http://rescuetime.com/product_tour ).
Thanks again!
Do you have any idea how long it took me to read this whole article..?
Nice tools btw.
Man, this is REALLY useful. Kind of stressful, though, but if you help me out finding my life back again, I will be eternally grateful.
Cheers!
[...] what you did all of this time. Here comes a handy tools to determine what you waste while online. MakeUseOf list 5 tools to determine how much time you waste while you online on the internet. These tools is essentially [...]
The best tool is when your company is using Internet Access monitoring =)
I cant think of anything worse.
I know i waste hours of time online but to quantify it in this way…
Just dont tell my boss about these…………
[...] an interesting article providing FireFox tools to let you know how you spend your time online. Personally, I don’t [...]
Nice tools, seems kinda counter productive though.
I was wanting something like this for such a long time.
Now I wish I didn’t find it… sort of
[...] March 19, 2008 by Marcel Are you ready to quantify how much time you waste/ online ? I hope that question didn’t offend you. Let me rephrase it Are you ready to quantify how productive you are online ? Then read the following article: 5 Tools to Track How Much Time you Waste while Online [...]
[...] 5 Tools to Track How Much Time you Waste while Online - Your Firefox hasn’t been re-started in hours. It’s running continuously, you’re surfing around websites, and of course you’ve wasted lots of time. You could have instead spent that time doing something good and productive, rather than just flying around worthless sites. [...]
Ah! Big Brother Internet! Stay Away!
Good for kids but I actually promote Internet use… it’s when you start blocking and stifling that your employees work harder working the angles than they do actual work… thus defeating the purpose. You end up creating a cattle in a cubicle. Which is fine if you like CSR agents that do just “canned” lines all day long.
So I guess I’ll reciprocate with another article you might enjoy.
Top 10 Awesome Websites That Sell Cool Products You Probably Have Never Visited But Need To.
http://www.comember.net/blogs/firepixel/
Thanks!
MeeTimer FTW!
I use this to track my non-work related internet activities while at work.
Hmm, these look very cool. I keep meaning to check these out, but I’m so busy surfing net.
Oh, and I like to call it “researching” on the internet, not so much “wasting time.”
You might look at “Wakoopa”(.com), which is a rather simple usage pattern tracking tool installed locally but displayed online. Also possible to integrate into your lifestream.
I use RescueTime and never looked back again. Simple, install and forget tool. Kudos to their dev team.
[...] also be one big time waster. If you feel you aren’t being efficient with your browsing then this guide covering five tools for tracking your time will be of interest to [...]
[...] to better manage the time you spend online? Here are five free tools that will help you track and more effectively manage the time you spend browsing the [...]
Looks as if I am the only commenter using 8aweek. It’s a nice extension and you waste almost no time to install it. It has some nice features and the authors are responsive to comments. As for me “it’s doing the job”
I used before Google Web History. It is inferior to 8aweek and you should be logged in to Google in order to track what / where you are surfing.
You may read the article in TechCrunch about 8aweek
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/15/8aweek-to-help-you-kick-that-internet-time-wasting-addiction/
[...] [LIFEHACKS] 5 Tools to Track How Much Time you Waste while Online, makeuseof.com, via:news.ycombinator.com [...]
[...] 5 Tools to Track How Much Time You Waste While Online (MakeUseOf) [...]
[...] on wasted time it will just mean that I waste even more time checking up on how I am wasting time.read more | digg [...]
[...] временем, расскажите об этом в комментариях. Оригинал fmates_member=”FMC001314-0174″; fmates_c=”eeeeee”; fmates_bc=”ffffff”; fmates_fc=”000000″; [...]