I know we all wish that we could just leave everything aside and sit down with our wonderful devices with an internet connection and a nice martini by the pool and enjoy the glorious apps that we download. What mostly happens to us is a little something called reality. In our lives we cannot actually afford to do that (unless we are Donald Trump, although I suspect that even he does not do it) because we start feeling guilty about wasting precious time to study or work and engaging in a non-profit, time wasting activity. But these apps are so addictive that we end up losing our sleep because of it. Some of us go through serious addictions.

Thankfully, there is a solution – REHAB – if your situation is that bad, otherwise – RESCUE TIME – an app that helps you control your usage of various other apps and prevent addiction in the following ways:

– Accurate automatic time tracking of your mobile apps
– Report your voice call time
– Know where your web site time is spent
– Productivity reports, alerts, goals to manage your digital life
– Historical reporting to see your progress
– Privacy options to chose what you care about

RESCUE TIME is an automatic time and attention tracker that helps individuals and teams propagate good processes and eliminate bad habits. It works great on its own but even better when combined with their computer app. It works by noting how long you spend in your mobile apps and phone calls, reporting back to you your efficiency score, top distractions and categories right on your mobile device. There is a handy stopwatch tool for manually tracking things like meetings and exercise, and you can set the productivity as you finish it, without visiting the website. Full reports and charts, along with goals and alerts features, are available via the web app, and integrate tightly with your computer time, if you add that.

All new users also get 14 days of Pro web reporting mode, which then reverts to free mode until upgraded from their site. Be sure to try the desktop / laptop app too. One account is all you need for as many devices as you have.

Key features of Pro are:

– Details reporting, like (Android) contact’s names for phone calls and (PC) document names
– Website time reporting on computer and mobile
– (PC only) FocusTime opt-in distraction blocking
– Set alerting rules to get nudged when you spend too much time on distractions or cheer you on when you hit your goals
– Unlimited data history (Free shows recent 2 months only)

Now that we are old and do not have our parents to keep reminding us to get back to work, and our parents also being application addicts in some cases, this is the best way to keep a tab on our app time and not go overboard with it at the cost of our job, our sleep and our non-virtual social interactions.