What is Reddit's opinion of
DeskTime?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
28 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
https://desktime.com/blog/the-most-productive-and-unproductive-countries-of-the-world-in-2017/
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00619/japan%E2%80%99s-labor-productivity-lowest-in-g7.html
They're not productive on a per hour basis, but they still get a lot done. The problem is that instead of getting more done with more time, people just slack off for the extra time, stretching 8 hour projects over 12 hours.
The only way was up? No matter what changes they made, they'd improve?
"Worker efficiency in 2020: 5 least efficient countries
These are the countries that showed the lowest average efficiency rates in 2020:
Mauritius – 9.74 %
Iceland – 20.70 %
Suriname – 21.00 %
Kazakhstan – 23.73 %
Fiji – 24.04 %"
If distracting you and your players is a common problem you have with background music, consider some videogame soundtracks. As this article puts it, "The music in video games is specifically designed to motivate players while staying in the background". The article has a few recommendations, but my first choice would be the Professor Layton series. My second choice would be the Ace Attorney series. Both of these games have lots of reading and lots of puzzle-solving, and much of the music is meant to avoid distracting from such things. The article I linked to earlier also has a few tips for selecting non-videogame music at the end.
Even if you don't want to use background music, there are a couple of pieces that can be used to accent something. As I had said in another comment on here, there is a particular 8 second music clip that I would love to use if I ever DM a Q'barra adventure/campaign. I wouldn't use it as background music, but as something more foreground. I'd play it at the beginning and end of a session. I'd play it whenever at the end of a tough encounter. I'd play it at any point when I want the players to feel some sense of accomplishment, as a way of saying "It's decided", "It's over", "It's complete". In this way, I suppose that I would basically be using it more like a sound effect or reward than music.
Focus on setting one hour a day. The secret to success is either quitting cold turkey (forever) or to limit it drastically (I recommend this one).
Playing video games is not a problem, it is playing too many hours in one day that it affects everything else that is the problem (which could easily just move to something else). You can always play after work, on weekends, etc.
In the meantime, you could always just have some video game music (just download or rip the OST) with some headphones while you work so you can focus. There are a few studies on that and considering what you are doing, it would be helpful: https://desktime.com/blog/why-you-should-listen-to-video-game-soundtracks-at-work
Many people go through a stage like this so you are not alone and don't freak out too much over it.
Bruh it's a way of talking.
You don't need to believe me, you can search for articles and read about the work culture there. It's not like you are unable to google and you're forced to believe me for no reason.
They literally can't leave their job until the boss leaves if they don't want to get fired, even if that implies staying at your chair doing literally nothing for five or six extra hours. Unpaid hours, of course.
They also have to hang out with their coworkers and boss to drink alcohol with them if they don't want to look like assholes (and potentially get fired too). The frequency of these drinking meetings varies from business to business, sometimes it's only once a year, but often it's once a week or even more.
As I said earlier, they tend to not work unless they're explicitly told to work.
Quoting from this article, that puts Japan as the worst country when it comes to productivity:
>In Japan, the expectation #1 is you’re at work for many hours. You show up before your boss arrives and you go home after he leaves.
But when you’re at work you’re not expected to look for things to do. Your boss will tell you when he needs you to do something. If he doesn’t come by and give you a task it’s perfectly reasonable to sit at your desk and do nothing.
play mario kart music😳😳😳
it’s designed to keep to focused on the game you’re playing so it actually helps with getting work done lmao
https://desktime.com/blog/why-you-should-listen-to-video-game-soundtracks-at-work/
The small content marketing company I work for (a team of 4 people) use DeskTime - it automatically tracks everything you do, identifies different projects, productive/vs unproductive apps. Easy to use, yet efficient.
maybe a time tracking app would make it easier for you. just have to find a way to get into the habit. once you find a system that works for you, it will make your life so much easier that you'll be glad for it.
desktime - they have stealth mode for in house employees. For remote workers, they can turn it on and off, but obviously time is tracked when it's on. Cheapest option as well.
No, the Netherlands are doing okay but not the best. Mexico is the second least productive country in the world through. Work smarter not longer.
Your work pc can easily monitor network connections, so when they see a connection to a local network and on port 3389 they'l know that you are using rdp in your local network.
Another network wise issue is, if you have an old hub (and both pc's connected through it) they might see non encrypted http traffic from the other machine(but this case is really improbable).
Locally, from your work pc, they can easily monitor your http(and in some cases https) traffic(RDP traffic itself wouldn't be monitored as it's encrypted) but they can use screen monitoring software(in theory with GDPR and friends this might be a problem for the company, but in reality...things differ).
A few examples of software that do screen monitoring: https://www.timedoctor.com/ https://desktime.com/ https://www.berqun.com/en/home
OP’s friend should have been more careful. The software’s website states that it can track apps and URLs. I am sure that when you are installing, it will be mentioned somewhere in the terms and conditions which we always ‘agree’ to. Sad but true.
You could block by running local DNS and blocking all other DNS at the firewall. It is probably a good idea for security purposes anyway. You should use a blacklist service to block known bad websites.
That's not going to address the root issue however.
If productivity is a concern then management needs to engage with the employees and lay down some guidelines.
That may be enough to correct the behavior from individuals without naming names.
If it is still an big issue I would track time on the PC and forward that data to management for them to deal with.
https://desktime.com/
That is factually incorrect. Be careful when you make such statements. Even if you didn't mean it literally, try better wording.
https://desktime.com/blog/the-most-productive-and-unproductive-countries-of-the-world-in-2017
If this study is related to music while working/studying, there's a good article on video game music in particular. Music in video games is specifically designed to motivate players while staying in the background without distracting the player from the games objectives
https://desktime.com/blog/why-you-should-listen-to-video-game-soundtracks-at-work
Turns out it's one of those things I read about a while ago and didn't do deep research on. Here's what I found from an article, which took the data from a desktime analysis.
"Specifically, the most productive people work for 52 minutes at a time, then break for 17 minutes before getting back to it (similar to the Pomodoro Method [...])."
Quoted Source: https://www.themuse.com/advice/the-rule-of-52-and-17-its-random-but-it-ups-your-productivity Original desktime source: https://desktime.com/blog/17-52-ratio-most-productive-people
Have you tried DeskTime? It's really easy to use - I don't even have to think about it during the day, because it runs in the background of whatever I'm doing that day. Tracks productive/unproductive tasks, tracks projects. And it even has this little Pomodoro timer that reminds you to take breaks. :)
There are tools like Desktime (https://desktime.com/) for this, but I really don't support this kind of approach.
I know you are not the one to make decisions here, but in your position if I couldn't fight it, then I would go for a competitor to work for.
I am saying this because I used to work in a corporate company that did this, those were the most stressful days of my life.
I use Desktime just a small app that checks how much time you spend in different apps, you can create projects at anytime and you can go in to your data and add specific apps (or even files in apps) to a project.
I usually have it on my own project (eg my company name) and when a client asks "how much time did it cost" create a custom project and connect all the apps, browser tabs and other information to that app, in the end I get an Excel file with a total and time spend on each app.
I mean, it's just sort of a common truism or argument made in economics that longer working hours leads to less productivity per hour worked. People get tired, find fewer productive things to do. The source is in the data itself which you provided that the US works 1/4 longer hours at the same productivity per hour worked.
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https://desktime.com/blog/long-working-hours-not-a-road-to-productivity
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This is also a common argument made against France's economy. Yeah, France has high productivity, but that's mostly because France also has a high unemployment rate, which means way fewer hours worked per person so people say that the high French productivity is more a symptom of high unemployment than anything else.
That's an interesting idea! I read something recently about this thing called flow.
It’s like the optimum state of consciousness where you perform your best and you're the most productive. Might be helpful to your app idea. :)
Try DeskTime. It's a neat and easy-to-use option not only for helping the team see where and how they've been productive and unproductive. It also tracks individual projects and tasks, so you can estimate how much time is required for similar projects in the future -> you'll be able to bill clients more accurately.
How about Desktime? My team has been using it for a while now. It's fully automatic, and it analyzes productivity and unproductive apps, URLs. You can log different projects, creates custom reports if you need that, etc. It's pretty nifty. :)
I've been using DeskTime for a while now, and it helps me tremendously. It automatically tracks all your URLs and apps, and indicates - which ones were productive and which ones weren't. I've added social media like Facebook as the "unproductive" URL, and seeing how much I use it throughout the day actually helps me to cut down on using it so much.
Asana - makes it easy to plan and schedule tasks, gives a great overlook on my workload and that helps me plan my time.
DeskTime - time tracking. Not only helps me realize which websites I should avoid, but also helps when it comes to issuing invoices for customers - I can see how much time I've spent on certain projects and tasks.
Kill news feed - blocks Facebook news feed on the desktop. Nothing else to add here :D
I'd suggest giving DeskTime a go. It's got free trial for the first 2 weeks. Then you can switch to $7 a month for 1 account or $18 a month for 3, which is still quite a reasonable price, IMHO.
You can track individual projects, log offline time, it's got individual reports. And you can use it on your phone if you want to.
Really handy and easy to use!
There's one time tracking / project management tool - DeskTime with very similar features (except invoicing). Tried using that, but honestly, as a freelancer myself and a hardcore mulitasker, time tracking never works for me, since I usually do various tasks simultaneously. Can't rely on the tracked data anyway.
I would recommend using Desktime (https://desktime.com/) here is a video describing the software https://vimeo.com/128781312
My previous employment used it to monitor employees time and productivity. Even though it gives a vibe of micromanagement, it's a great tool to keep track of your employees though.