RescueTime

RescueTime provides software that you install on your PC, phone or tablet/s which automatically records the amount of time you spend on various apps and websites, allowing you to understand how you spend your time.

What can I beemind with RescueTime?

You can choose to Do More or Do Less of the Productive or Unproductive Time categories from Rescuetime. You can also choose to track a specific category, subcategory, or activity (e.g. facebook.com). These goals are available for all RescueTime users, both Lite and Premium.

FocusTime sessions are not available right now (let us know if this is something you want to see), but you can use IFTTT to send them to a non-RescueTime-connected Beeminder goal!

Why can't I change my deadline from midnight?

RescueTime's API delivers data in day-level chunks, so we can't slice it up on our end to apply it to different Beeminder days. If they ever add that ability, this is something we can consider changing.

Can I just change my Beeminder timezone instead?

No, because we get the data from Rescuetime and apply it to the date they gathered the data for. Even if we wait until 2am to call your goal derailed, RescueTime is not going to count the time you spent between midnight and 2am for the previous day. Instead of derailing at midnight, you'll just derail 2 hours later with the same datapoint.

The same applies for pushing the deadline forward. Beeminder might derail you at 5pm, but you could technically still keep working after the deadline to sync more data, ruining the point of having the 5pm deadline in the first place!

If you can change your timezone in both Beeminder and Rescuetime, that could work, but this is not a workaround we recommend because it could make things weird with your other goals and other integrations.

Can I change the sites/activities/categories included after creating my goal?

Not right now. Changing the data source will change the data imported in the 7-day default lookback, and you could derail your goal unintentionally!

Creating a new goal (and/or ending the existing one) is usually the best path to take. If you think that won't work for you, contact support to let us know why! If necessary, we can change the data used on our side.

I was working late and I derailed because my data didn't sync in time.

This might happen if you're getting the last minutes done immediately before midnight. It can take 15-30 minutes for the data to make its way from your computer to RescueTime's servers, and until it's on Rescuetime's server, Beeminder can't pick it up. Just reply to the legitimacy check to let us know what happened, and we'll help you get things sorted out.

I edited some Beeminder datapoints and they all got changed back.

When Beeminder checks for data, we'll look at the last 7 days of RescueTime data and update any datapoints that are out of sync with RescueTime. By design, you can't change your data on Beeminder's side, as a result: if the data is inaccurate, you'll need to make it right on RescueTime and then sync up Beeminder again.

Beeminder is fetching weird/wrong values for my time.

This is almost always because something is being categorized incorrectly or unexpectedly in RescueTime. For example, Facebook is counted as unproductive time by default on Rescuetime, but if your job requires you to be on Facebook, that might not be the case for you.

You'll need to change the categorization in RescueTime itself. Then, because of the 7-day lookback, Beeminder will refresh any datapoints in the last week that changed once the new categorizations were made.

If that doesn't seem to be the problem, contact us; we'd love to dig into it!

I restarted my RescueTime goal and immediately derailed.

Definitely not legit; contact support by replying to the legitimacy check, and we'll help you get things straightened out! This usually happens on Do Less goals, when the first 7-day lookback adds more data than we were anticipating, sending you over the amount allowed by the restart.

Sample RescueTime goal setup

  1. Head to create a new goal (also accessible through the New Goal link in the top menu).
  2. Click the RescueTime icon to start a new goal using RescueTime data.

    Rescuetime icon

  3. First, choose whether you want to make yourself do more time or less time. For more time, we want to pick At least, and to limit ourselves, we pick At most. For this example, I'm going to create a limiting, Do Less goal. Enter the number of hours you want to commit to in the +/- stepper; in this goal, I've chosen to limit myself to 0.25 hours per day.

    I only want to track my time on Facebook for this example, so I select facebook.com from the category dropdown. Most goals use the general buckets of Productive or Unproductive Time, but you can also pick any available categories, subcategories, or activities that appear in the dropdown (sourced from your RescueTime data!).

    If you select to start with extra leeway, you start with a bit of extra buffer, which can help if you exceed the 0.25 hour allowance per day at first, while getting used to the goal.

    Beeminder + Rescuetime logos, followed by "Commit to doing" and the choice of two radio buttons, "At least" and "At most". Below that, there's a stepper to change the amount you want to be allowed/forced to do per day. After that, you can choose from a dropdown which Rescuetime category this applies to, and select extra leeway by ticking a checkbox
  4. Give your goal a brief name. If you want, you can also write a short description with more information.

    "Give your goal a name", followed by a text entry box allowing you to set the name of the goal, which creates the goal URL. Below that, there's a second optional text entry box for a goal description.

  5. Finally, choose your initial pledge. This is the amount you will pay the first time you derail on the goal. After derailing, the pledge will increase by default — use the dropdown below to control how high it goes by selecting the cap. In the example below, I have chosen to start at a $5 pledge, which will increase each time I derail, until it reaches $270 — the pledge cap. (To read more about pledges and payments, check out some FAQs!)

    If you want to start out with a sort of trial period, you can choose to start the goal at $0. If you do that, the pledge will automatically increase to $5 after seven days. If you derail before that, it will also increase to $5.

    Screenshot of the "Starting Stakes" screen. The text says "Your pledge will increase each time you derail until you reach your pledge cap (which you can adjust below)", with a demonstration below showing the pledge progression: 5, 10, 30, 90... to the pledge cap, which currently shows $270. Below, a checkbox button allows you to choose to "Hold the pledge at $0 for 7 days while I get my feet wet"
  6. And that's it! If I spend more than an hour on Facebook in the next week, I'll be paying Beeminder $5. (If you're incredibly confused about why the graph is going up rather than down, check out our Do Less goals article!
    Example graph of a Facebook goal, with 30 minutes allowed for 3 days


Keywords: autodata integrations, time tracking, productivity, automatically beeminding time spent on apps and websites

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