Among the business and academic worlds, there is a precious commodity. It cannot be reproduced and once lost, is so forever. People clamour over the prices of the dollar or oil, but the resource that is “time” is far more valuable.

My recent introduction to the world of fitness trackers has helped me recognise the power of quantifying one’s life. One can measure nearly anything: from heart rate to calories to sleep. But the most useful piece of data, in my opinion, is the ability to track time.

Tracking one’s life, popularly known as lifelogging, on the internet, is the newest of trends in the world of quantification. I began with Sony’s lifelogging application.  While the application is colourful and syncs fitness data from any of the Sony bands, it lacks a desktop application. Herein lies the problem: I waste time on my PC too!

I have recently discovered a solution. The app RescueTime was the only tracker I could find with both desktop and smartphone versions. Now running silently in the background, the app intelligently divides my activity into Entertainment, Business, Learning and so forth. For example, it correctly guessed that DOTA (a popular online strategy game I play) was a source of entertainment.

If you haven’t realised the immense power of such a tool, allow me to point it out: we all waste time with technology, but few of us know exactly how much time we waste. Everyone has had a day pass them by and wonder where all the time went. With RescueTime, one can quantify time wastage! And what can be quantified, can be modified.

I know that as a Medical Student, my procrastination levels will get in the way of productivity. I am planning to use RescueTime to set limits on Entertainment, Social Networking and Browsing. This is a truly useful system.

4/5 stars. If this integrated with fitness apps, like myfitnesspal, it would be 5 stars.