With all the shopping and news sites available on the wonderful world of the web, I’ve always found it very helpful (and quite scary) to monitor the time I spend at the computer. How many hours are productive, and how much time do I spend keeping up with the Kardashians*? My go-to tool when I was a freelancer was WorkTime by Nestersoft, and for many years I used its simple but thorough reports to bill clients in accurate half-hour increments.
WorkTime is still around, but it’s $30 for the most basic level, and we can find several free sites that do the same types of monitoring. Today I discovered and fell in love with Limitless, a Chrome App that monitors my web surfing in real time.
Pros:
- A beautiful homepage that takes over your New Tab screen on Google Chrome browser.
- Quick ways to add tasks and thoughts, a daily goal and more personalized info.
- At-a-glance summaries of your most visited sites and real-time monitoring of everywhere you go online.
- Umm… it’s free.
Cons:
- Doesn’t monitor app use — just online surfing.
- No integrations with other task managers.
- A couple of the backgrounds made the words on the page hard to read.
You should really watch my 2-minute review of Limitless for a better idea of how this can help you be more productive online.
Your Say: What do YOU use to stay on track? Chime in below!
*Regarding the Kardashians — I’m proud to say I’ve never watched them. Now “Dance Moms” is another (embarrassing) story.
Focus@will – music to focus you for 1 hour periods (free; limitless listening at $5 a month)
I like Strict Workflow. It’s a Chrome extension that does the Pomodoro 25/5 thing and shows it online. BUT, it locks you out of social media and other nominated sites during the 25 minutes of work. Needless to say yournerdybestfriend.com isn’t on my blacklist of time wasting sites 🙂
Thanks for the tip on limitless, checking it out now.