The battle of "Productivity versus leisure" has gained incredible dimensions since computers became work tools. And the Web only intensifies the conflict, with millions of videos, images, and online games. If you feel that procrastination is tipping the scales in its favor, perhaps ProcrastiTracker can help you visualize which things steal the most minutes during your PC sessions.
The movie You’ve Got Mail starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan begins with one of its characters talking about the removal of the Solitaire game from all computers in the state of Virginia because nobody had done any work in the last six weeks. But this innocent line in a romantic comedy isn't far from the truth. Countless companies have blocked entertainment applications and social media access on work terminals in one way or another, simply because their employees waste time on them. For those working from home, it's even worse, since the whole process comes down to determination and discipline. Personally, I prefer to work at night and avoid distractions, although I also try to stay away from things like YouTube... with questionable success.
The most interesting thing is that this loss of time can go unnoticed if we don't have an effective method to visualize it beyond the clock. ProcrastiTracker is a program designed to create a map of our activity, showing where we spend our time and how much. Users can assign different tags to each entry. Work, games, browsing, entertainment, communication, and organization are the defined categories, but more can be added and each one can be renamed. ProcrastiTracker offers functions to export data to HTML, merge databases, and track the minutes we spend away from the computer. Over time, users will be able to identify the most significant productivity sinks and try to avoid them next time.
ProcrastiTracker works with all versions of Windows from XP onward, but its developer notes that it hasn't been fully tested under Windows 8.x. Due to the nature of its main function, ProcrastiTracker doesn't have portable editions, but that's not something that bothers us in this case. In short, ProcrastiTracker is a "digital watchdog". We probably won't like its presence, but it can help in its own way.
Official site and download: http://strlen.com/procrastitracker/
