Rescue Time Review: Screw Time, Rescue Me

Rescue Time has some disgustingly helpful personal productivity software which you'll no doubt be interested in if you spend a good amount of time wasting your day away on the computer, and intend to do more of just that!  Because with Rescue Time you can waste time in a brand new way. With advanced productivity tracking, you'll pretend to learn about how you waste time, though you already know the truth because you're a conscious human being.

Whether you're paid to sit and be bored, or you just do it for the hell of it, boredom is popular right now. Bored peoples lounge about in a permanent malaise, trying to stay alive not living. We stare into monitors, sharing links and weakly feigning interest at clever emails, funny pictures and outrageous videos that mean surprisingly little. We use web applications and services that mirror real life structures in a less real way. Some might call it soulless. But to the millions of us out there, rich with depravity.

The Internet has given us more than we could imagine, fueling our ambition to do more nothing than ever. Before the Internet, we got by watching grass grow, paint dry, and waiting for the mail to come. But that was too close to reality for our comfort. Our dirty magazines gave unwanted meaning to mail. Watching the paint dry meant painting first. And the mere sight of grass had the unfortunate side-effect of inspiring a park stroll, or worse, a picnic.

Quite simply, we cared too much. It was a scary, and hard time for us, and we craved a more intense separation from reality. In the late 90s, bored peoples everywhere discovered that an Internet connection was also the perfect disconnection. With Web 2.0 came a built-in layer of smug lolcattery and self-worship, that made our malaise impenetrable to all those living people around us. Our boredom had gained sustainability, if not legitimacy!

We thought we had all the nothing we could ever need. That is, until Rescue Time came and shattered our empty minds. Rescue Time is the latest and greatest tool on the Internet futility belt, perfectly complimenting Google's Drunk Email Prevention. Applications such as these are expertly designed to help you appear to do something without really doing anything. They make the perfect cover for bored, easily amused people under self scrutiny. I am the personification of this market.

I set up Rescue Time last night, and went to bed eager to waste some time digging through a morning's worth of data. And oh boy, the results are in! According to Rescue Time, I've already managed to spend 11% of my wasting time in Rescue Time. For instance, Rescue Time tells me I spent almost an hour on Slate this morning, just like yesterday morning when I learned about Rescue Time spending almost an hour reading Slate... just like I do every morning.

Brilliant.

I hate Rescue Time. I hate that I used it. I hate that I wrote this.   And I hate that I've allowed myself to become this bored.