Where Has Your Time Gone? Rachota Can Help

Have you ever wonder about where your time has gone? Well, wonder no more: Rachota can help you.

Rachota is a time tracking software which I use only recently. Though I have used is for less than a week, I already feel the difference. Previously I often wonder at the end of the day: how can I do so few today? Where has all the time gone? Since there was no easy way to answer this I often ended up feeling unproductive without understanding what was really going on.

Enter Rachota. Rachota can track the time you spend on each task and give you good summary of how you use your days. It is light and easy to use. Using more than one computer? No problem. Rachota can run from USB drive. Oh, and it’s cross-platform too which means that you can run it on either Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Here are some simple steps to use Rachota:

  1. Make sure you have Java installed
    Rachota is a Java application so you need to install Java Runtime Environment (JRE) first. If you haven’t had JRE, get one and install.
  2. Download Rachota
    You can download Rachota from its website. Its size is only about 290 KB and it’s in the form of a Jar file (Java executable file). You don’t need to install it. You don’t even need to extract it. That one file is ready to use.
  3. Make shortcut
    You may want to create a shortcut to it on the desktop to make it easy to access. This way you can quickly launch Rachota whenever you need it.
  4. Run Rachota
    You can run Rachota by double-clicking it. This is what you see when you first run Rachota:
    As you can see, there is a default task named Idle Time which automatically runs. As its name says, it tracks your idle time, which is the time you do not use to work on any other tasks.
  5. Create new tasks

    To add new tasks, you can press the Add button. Enter the description of the task and press OK. You can also fill other details (such as priority), but I think the description alone is enough in most cases.
  6. Switch to task you are going to work on
    If you decide to start working on a task, just double click it. Rachota will start tracking your time for that task.
  7. Relax

    When you want to take a break from the task you’re working on, press Relax. Rachota will stop tracking the duration of the task and automatically start tracking your idle time! I love it. This way I can easily figure out how much time I’ve spent on not doing.
  8. Move to another task
    If you haven’t finish you current task but want to work on another task, simply double click that second task. Rachota will start tracking the time of the second task while pausing the first one.
  9. Done!

    If you have done a task, press Done. Be careful though. Once you press Done you cannot reactivate the timer for that task. So do it only if you are sure you will not go back to it later. Otherwise just press Relax (step 7) or double click another task (step 8).
  10. See where your time has gone
    Now you can see where your time has gone. To do so, check Show finished task to display all tasks. In the table you can see all tasks with their corresponding duration. By clicking the Duration title bar you can sort the tasks by duration. This way you can easily see what tasks have consume your time the most.
  11. See historical data
    You can also see data from other days by pressing the Previous and Next button. You can see how you did last week and compare it with today.
    Even better, you can also see how you have done in one whole week through the History tab. There you can see the graph and the total duration of your tasks for that one week. You can navigate from week to week using the Previous and Next button. Cool!

It’s very easy to use Rachota. Of course, there are still other options you can tweak which are not covered here; you can experiment with them. But even the basic usage has been very useful for me.

Do you have anything to share about time tracking? I’ll be glad to hear from you.

3 Comments

  1. I can’t wait to use this software. I’m almost scared to see where my time does go. After using it I’m sure I am going need to do a little housekeeping with regards to the daily routine.

  2. Doing housekeeping was also the one thing I did after seeing where my time went. Time tracking clearly showed me the target for improvement.

  3. […] I’ve been using time tracking for some time now. Besides the benefits I wrote before, I can also see the patterns of my time usage. From these patterns there are some insights I get on how to better use my time. I hope they can also be useful for you. Here they are: […]

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