RescueTime sends me a push notification on my desktop, accompanied with a sound (to get my attention) when it recognises that I’m in a focus zone. Now, why on earth would you deliberately send someone a distraction at the very instant that you know that person is focusing? What help is that supposed to do? Here I am focusing on a complex data model in my codebase, and as I’m holding it all together in my head, I get a loud and distracting notification, accompanied with a popup on the top right of my screen: “You’re in a focus zone!”. Here’s a relevant comic strip that emphasises the point: This Is Why You Shouldn't Interrupt a Programmer - The Slightly Disgruntled Scientist
just why? Imagine working in an office, and the instant a colleague sees you concentrating on a task at hand, they approach your desk and poke you on the shoulder saying “Hey, I can see you’re focusing!”
The choices this company makes is bizarre. Please stop. If you can detect that we’re focusing - how about you don’t contribute to the distraction economy by deliberately sending us a distraction, when we’re paying for your service to help us focus more, not less.
I agree with this 100%. Totally counterproductive to distract me by helpfully telling me I’m focusing. In fact, I just kind of hate how intrusive the new RescueTime Assistant is overall. I don’t need it to pop up everytime I restart my computer. The best thing about RescueTime has always been that it’s just there running in the background. Bringing itself to the foreground all the time is annoying and pointless. And I can’t find any settings to allow me to tell the Assistant to stop doing the annoying things.
I’ve tried very hard to give the new rescuetime an opportunity but I think the old one was much better for the goal of tracking were you spend your time (including the offline time). And to help focus there are better alternatives like centered.
Is it possible to go back to the old rescuetime? Windows app, extension, reporting.
Hi @ivan.magrans. Appreciate your feedback and thanks for trying the new version! Yes, you can revert back to RescueTime Classic. I found your ticket so I’ll provide you with the info there.