The RescueTime Assistant

The RescueTime Assistant acts as your coach helping you stay informed and get more work done through your workday. It gives you a rundown of your work schedule, reminds you of what's to come and summaries to review, and there's a convenient Focus button to help you avoid distractions and stay productive. 

Let's go through the anatomy of the RescueTime Assistant.

Assistant Header

The top includes a progress bar for the current day's Focus Work goal. The progress bar fills throughout your workday as you work on activities you scored or ranked as Focus Work or your most important work. The time on the progress bar tells you how much time you have left to meet your goal. 

The time on the left dropdown in blue provides how much Focus Work you've done so far. The dropdown on the right displays how many scheduled meetings you have today.

At the end of your work day you'll see Recharge Time. This is the time outside of your work hours you have set on your work schedule. During this time your activities will not impact your Focus Work goal. If you want your time to count toward your Focus Work goal then you can just click the Back to work button. This will take you back into work mode. Clicking the Overview button will take you to your dashboard. 

Assistant Body

Your Assistant will display your daily alert feeds including your morning briefing, Join Meeting, Focus Zones, Goals and Alerts, and so much more. You can find details about the Assistant alerts here. 

Assistant Footer

The footer includes two options: ON/Paused and Focus Session.

ON/Paused

You can pause the tracking of your activities (websites and apps) by toggling the On option. You can choose the length of time you want to pause the tracking. During this time your data will not be recorded and reported. This time cannot be recovered. 

Focus*

Hover over the bullseye icon to reveal the  Start a focus session button. You can start a Focus Session immediately by clicking Focus Now or go through the Focus Session prep with or without the warmups. If you want to stop a Focus Session then click the Cancel session link and you'll return to the Assistant's main menu. You can learn more about Focus Sessions here. 

Offline Work

If you're idle on your computer for 5 minutes or more then an offline work pop-up will appear on your Assistant prompting you to add your time during this computer inactivity. Offline work is work done away from your computer or mobile device. 

After you Add offline work this activity will display in your Apps & Websites Report and Timesheets Timeline. 

Assistant Settings

The Assistant settings can be accessed via the gear icon showing the following: UI Sounds on, Dashboard, Settings, Community, and Help.

UI Sounds on: click to enable this feature. This enables the following unique sounds: toggle pause, end of Focus Session summary report, and voice-overs for the Focus Session warmups + prep

Dashboard: You can access your Dashboard on your account at rescuetime.com directly

Settings: This displays the settings in your Assistant that include General, Account Settings, and Network/Proxy

• General gives you details about the RescueTime version you're currently using, you can check for updates, and also bring up your troubleshooting diagnostics if you run into issues with the RescueTime app.
• Account Settings directs you to your Account Settings page on your account
• Network/Proxy is used for troubleshooting purposes and you should contact our support team before making any changes here.

Community: Join us on our community page and give us your feedback

Help: You will be directed to the RescueTime knowledge-based articles 

* RescueTime Premium feature only