A Small Business owner in the thrilling digital age is pretty likely to spend a massive chunk of their time sat in front of a busy computer screen.
You might even be one of those people who spend nearly all of the working day frowning at a screen whilst jabbing away furiously at a keyboard.
But just how much of that time would you describe as being genuinely productive?
And how much valuable business time is being thrown away on useless sidesteps and diversions?
RescueTime is a useful free service which delivers all the answers right to your desktop whilst you work.
You may well be surprised ? or even completely horrified ? by the shocking statistical truth!
An entrepreneurial friend of mine used to have huge problems with his own business productivity.
He would always be complaining about how he seemed to spend hours and hours in front of his computer, yet was never able to achieve anything that could be considered truly worthwhile.
Fortunately, I was able to lend a helping hand in this particular case.
I?m pleased to report that his business productivity suddenly shot through the roof when I showed him how to actually switch the machine on.
But even the slightly more enlightened and tech-savvy entrepreneurs can still find themselves scratching their head in bewilderment when they look up at the clock and realise that most of the working day has already mysteriously vanished.
The panic really begins to kick in when you realise that you?ve only ticked off the first easy couple of items on your mile-long To-Do List?
But where does all the time go?
Well, some of us might like to take a healthy break every now and then from the relentless monotony of work.
It surely can?t do any harm if you just have a quick peek at your Facebook news feed for five tiny minutes. Maybe leave or comment or three.
Perhaps just a quick look at the news too. And the weather forecast.
Then you can just check if the price has come down yet on that thing that you?ve been meaning to buy for ages.
This might also be a good time to play those music tracks that you recently downloaded.
Oh, and maybe you can squeeze in a quick trip to Wikipedia to find out if you were right in that argument you were having in the pub last night.
Now you just need to go back to Facebook and answer the new responses to the comments that you wrote earlier?
These deviations and digressions can end up swallowing far more time than you would ever imagine.
But does that worry you?
Perhaps you?re fairly confident that the vast majority of your PC time is still spent on fruitful business activity?
Or could it be that you?re not quite sure?
Now there?s one way to find out for certain just how much damaging impact these electronic sidesteps could be having on your business productivity.
RescueTime is a free download which can be installed and set up in just minutes.
The application then quietly bubbles away to itself in the background, monitoring your every move ? every website you visit, every application you open, and just how long you spend on each activity.
The comprehensive ongoing reports can then be pulled up on the screen at any time, to reveal a complete overview of your business efficiency and distractive behaviour.
The productivity ratings for every website and application that you use can easily be adjusted to reflect your own outlook on their worth.
For example, it shouldn?t come as a major surprise to discover that Facebook is automatically listed as a ?very distracting? activity which will severely bring down your overall efficiency score if you loiter around there for too long.
However, if you generally only use Facebook to keep an eye on your business page, and very rarely use the site for personal purposes, then you have the flexible freedom to change the rating of this activity to ?distracting?, ?neutral?, ?productive? or even ?very productive?.
Do try not to cheat though!
It?s no good trying to convince yourself that playing Angry Birds for 8 hours is anything other than very distracting!
If you want to see a truly honest picture of your typical working day, then first you?re going to have to be completely honest about the real value of each activity.
The RescueTime service is also crammed with a host of additional features, including an opportunity to set up specific timeframes for all your crucial ?goals?, and even a handy Alert Tool which will give you a virtual slap in the face whenever you?re in danger of really heading off track?
As ever with these useful freebies, a premium version of RescueTime is also available with a stack of extra options for the advanced timewaster!
But the standard free version is an incredibly impressive and fully functional App for the everyday user, and its well worth spending just a little bit of your precious time on giving it a go to unveil the true picture behind your working day.
Just be sure to change the setting of the Martin Print Blog to ?very productive??
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