Why your Work Settings are important

As you go through your onboarding survey upon signing up for a RescueTime account, some of your answers help populate your Work Settings. You can access your Work Settings from your Account Settings page to make any changes. Within your Work Settings you have a work profile, work schedule, Focus Sessions and calendar integration. Each plays an integral part in how your Reports are displayed and how your Assistant interacts with you.

Work Profile

Based on your "work status" and "organization size", these factors will help RescueTime determine your Focus Work goal. We share more about how your Focus Work goal is determined here. This should have already been pre-filled from your onboarding survey, but if you need to make changes you can do it here.

Work Schedule

Your work schedule affects when the Assistant is in work mode or Recharge Time. 

  • You are in work mode during the hours you indicated here and your activities are being reported. Your Focus Work during this time will count toward your Focus Work goal.
  • You are in Recharge Time outside of your work hours. During this time your activities will not count toward your Focus Work goal and will not be recorded in your Overview and Activities pages. (If you want this time to be reported, then you can simply click on the "Back to Work" button. RescueTime will re-enter work mode. Your work time will count toward your Focus work goal again.)
    • Your Recharge Time affects your Balance Report that only reports on this treasured time.
    • You can also find your activities during this time in your Analytics Report by switching to "All time" in the date picker.

We provide more details about the different types of Assistant modes here. Below we provide details about each of the settings.

  • My target work week is your ideal number of work hours per week. This setting also affects RescueTime's recommendation for your Focus Work goal.
  • Daily focus goal is determined two ways: automatically by RescueTime or manually by you.
    • Your work status, organization size, and target work week are factors that RescueTime uses to determine your Focus Work goal. You can choose for RescueTime to determine this goal for you with the "automatic" option.
    • If you don't want RescueTime to determine this for you, then you can set it manually by clicking on the paper/pencil icon where you will have the option to choose 1-6 hours. 
    • Your Focus Work goal will be displayed in your Assistant as a progress bar informing you daily of when you have achieved this goal.

  • Recommended daily break time is 2 hours by default. RescueTime recommends 2 hours as a base number. You can edit this number if you would like. The number of hours can be 8 hours or less. This break time is displayed in your Activities Report.

  • Work week starts on Monday or Sunday. You can pick either day as the start of your work week. Our plan is to use this information to determine when to deliver your reports to your inbox. This is coming soon.
  • Preferred time format can be either a 12 hour format or 24 hour format. This will be reflected in your work schedule above.
  • Delivery time of daily report allows you to control when you want to see your end of day report alert in your Assistant.

Focus Settings*

You can control your Focus Zones and automate your Focus Sessions in this setting.

We share more details about your Focus Settings here

You can also set up your music integration from this setting since it's tied directly with Focus Sessions. You can find more details about integrating your music here

Calendar Integration*

Meetings are a pivotal part of our work life. For some of us meetings are our life. To help, you can connect your Google and/or Outlook Calendars here and RescueTime will record your scheduled and unscheduled meetings in your Meetings Report

Your Assistant will capture your meeting time and coach you on how your day will go considering all the meetings you have on your plate. You can find more details about Meetings here


* RescueTime Premium features only

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