Rescue Your Time
Sometimes I look down at the time and think to myself, "It's already 2:00 ... where did the day go?" I came across this cool application called RescueTime on makeuseof.com. It's a time tracking application that "gives you a birds eye view of how you spend your time".
Intrigued of how I actually spend my time during the eight-hour work day, I downloaded the application to see the capabilities and functionality, and really to see the productivity of my day. Since most users have many applications open at one time, RescueTime only pays attention to the "application or site currently "in focus" ... measuring only what you are paying attention to". Over the last month, I have been tagging applications I frequently use (Quickbooks, Excel, Word, Yahoo! Messenger, Outlook) and websites I frequent most often (Google, LevelTen Design, DiningIn, Paypal, EFTPS, RescueTime, Twitter). I get the "birds eye" view of how I have been spending my time, either today, this week, this month, or forever, on the RescueTime Dashboard.
I also put a widget on my iGoogle showing my "Top Activities for Today", with tabs on the widget so that I can easily switch from today, to this week, to this month, without having to move to the actual site. I feel more productive already.