Using Goals and Alerts to keep track of your behavior

So you've installed RescueTime. You've gotten a few weeks of data, and maybe you've learned some things that you'd like to change. In a lot of cases, just being aware of your measurements can be a pretty big motivator. Other times, however, you might need something a little more active. RescueTime has two ways to keep on top of specific measurements you're trying to make a dent. The first is setting a goal, and the second is giving yourself little nudges with our alerts feature.

Goals

You can set goals for a couple of different things in RescueTime:

• a productivity level (i.e. Less than 30m per day on Personal & Distracting)
• a specific category (i.e. More than 4h per day on All Work)
• a project (i.e. More than 4h per day on Customer Support)

Once you set up a goal, it will be tracked on your Dashboard, and your Goals Report, and shown to you in your email, desktop & mobile notifications, and Assistant. It is a great way to keep a close eye on a specific metric and track your progress. We share more details about how to set Goals here. 

RescueTime Lite accounts are limited to just one goal. 

You can see your progress for the week, in this case, or the month.

Alerts

For RescueTime Premium account, if you want to get a bit more active about making changes, you can set up a daily alert. Alerts are very similar to Goals, but when you reach the time, you've set up, you are given an alert via the Assistant, email, and desktop and mobile notifications. It's a great way to discipline yourself. For example, the team here at RescueTime all have an alert that goes off when we've reached 4 hours of productive work per day. You can find more details about Alerts here.