Activities Page

What is an Activity?
How to rank or score an activity as Focus Work, Other Work, or Personal Activities
What is a Category?
How to categorize an activity as General, Communication, or Meeting
How do I delete an activity?
How do I ignore an activity?

The Activities page is where you'll see a detailed view of your entire workday.

RescueTime automatically ranks or scores your computer activities into Focus Work, Other Work, and Personal Activities—based on the onboarding survey. You can simply change an activity's ranking by clicking on the left and right arrows. Additionally, RescueTime classifies activities as one of three different categories: general, communication, or meeting.

What is an Activity?

An activity is an app, website, or computer program. RescueTime automatically ranks your activities based on the job that you chose in onboarding and our years of data analysis, so you shouldn't have to change an activity's ranking too often. It's a good idea to check how your activities are scored occasionally, especially if you have a change in your job role or begin using a new website for work.

Productivity Scoring or Ranking

Activities are divided into three scoring or rankings: Focus Work, Other Work, and Personal Activities.

Focus Work

Focus Work includes high-impact, mentally demanding work that typically requires long stretches of uninterrupted focus to complete. Focus Work activities can vary from job to job, but examples of Focus Work include graphic design, writing, and coding.

Other Work

Other Work often makes up most of your day-to-day work activities, and includes communication, scheduling, administration, and other tasks. Other Work is necessary, but doesn’t require deep focus and concentration, and can usually fit into smaller blocks of time.

Personal Activities

Personal Activities are non-work activities like social media and shopping, which can distract you and prevent you from focusing.

PLEASE NOTE: Websites listed under Personal Activities are blocked during Focus Sessions.

How to rank or score an activity as Focus Work, Other Work, or Personal Activities

Use the arrows that appear when you hover over an activity to move it from one column to another.

For even more control over your reports, you can rank the activity at the sub-activities level by clicking on the "More Details" link. This brings up a list of the sub-activities (for example, individual emails or files). To move a sub-activity, hover over the sub-activity to show the dropdown menu. Use the dropdown to change the ranking of the sub-activity (Focus Work, Other Work, or Personal Activity).

What is a Category?

RescueTime sorts activities into 3 different categories: general app, communication app, and meeting app. Categories give RescueTime additional information about the activity in order to process it in reports accurately. It is less likely that you will need to change these default settings because they tend to be more universal, but you can adjust them as you see fit.

General app

Most activities (whether they are apps, websites, browsers, or other computer activities) are categorized as general apps. This is the default setting for activities unless RescueTime recognizes them as belonging to either of the two other categories below.

Communication app

Communication apps include apps and sites that involve non-meeting communication—email, chat, etc. Examples include Gmail and Outlook, and apps with chat features like Slack and Discord.

Meeting app

Meeting apps are apps/software that you use for meetings, such as Zoom, Google Meet, and Skype.

How to categorize an activity as General, Communication, or Meeting

Hover over an activity and click "More Details". Use the dropdown to choose the category for the activity.

PLEASE NOTE: You can only change a categorization at the parent activity level, and not at the sub-activities level.

How do I delete an activity?

You may delete activities or choose to ignore an activity entirely.

PLEASE NOTE: Deleting entries is permanent and this data cannot be recovered.

After clicking "More Details" under an activity, use the trash can icon to delete the entry. If you'd like to delete only a sub-activity, click the trash can icon next to the sub-activity.

How do I ignore an activity?

Find the activity you would like to ignore. You may need to change the displayed date range to see more of your activities by using the date picker in the upper-right of the Activities page. Click on "More Details". Ignoring an activity can only be done at the parent level and not the sub-activities level.
PLEASE NOTE: Ignoring an activity also deletes the activity
Click on the trash can icon under the activity title. Click the checkbox next to "Ignore this activity forever". If you choose an activity to be "ignored forever", it will be added to your ignore list in your Data & Privacy Settings. You can "un-ignore" activities from that list as well.
Close the dialog box to complete the request to ignore and delete the activity.