Productivity analysis
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Written by Mark
Updated over a week ago

Our new message, Productivity analysis, will help you track your workday to learn what affects your productivity and what you can do to stay on top of your game.

We’re not going to guess how much you’ve done — only you truly know that. Instead, we’ll focus on how effectively you managed to create good working conditions for yourself, taking into account whether you:

  • started working at your usual time or not;

  • managed to concentrate on tasks and avoid context-switching;

  • didn’t spend too much time engaging with distracting apps.

Please note that Productivity analysis is only available for Premium users. The message is based on your data from RescueTime.

What this message is about

Productivity analysis takes into account your computer and/or phone activity from the previous workday and scores how efficient your day was based on 3 smart productivity metrics: Productive time, Focus, and Schedule. To get your activity data, we use a screen time tracker RescueTime — read more about how it works here.

Over time, our algorithm will learn your baseline. For example, if you typically work 5 hours a day but barely clocked in 3 yesterday, your Efficiency score will decrease. But, if you start regularly working fewer hours, the algorithm will adapt and learn not to lower your Efficiency score.

It will take approximately 3 weeks to train the algorithm.

How can I get this message?

To get productivity analysis, you need to:

  1. Install RescueTime on your computer and/or phone (depending on what activity you’d like to track) and connect it to Welltory. You can find detailed instructions here.
    If the connection is successful, the app’s status will change from Not connected to Connected:

  2. Log into your RescueTime account and categorize apps you frequently use as Very productive, Productive, Neutral, Distracting, or Very Distracting. Read how to do it here.
    That’s an essential step — assigning the correct labels will improve the accuracy of the analysis. For example, by default, Facebook and Twitter are categorized as very distracting apps, but if your job requires you to spend a lot of time there, you may want to categorize them as productive.

Important note for iPhone users: due to Apple restrictions, RescueTime is not allowed to process any activity details or specific app usage on iPhone and send this data to third-party developers. Because of this, you will not receive our productivity analysis or see any activity data in the Productivity section if you use the new RescueTime app for iPhone.

We’ll send a message to your feed the morning after the workday — for example, if you connect RescueTime on Monday, you’ll get your Monday productivity analysis on Tuesday morning.

What does the message look like?

Productivity analysis consists of two parts:

  1. A main message with the overview of your workday.

  2. A detailed analysis with recommendations, productivity insights, and the breakdown of your app usage.

What the main message shows

The main message in your feed has 3 pages — swipe left or right to switch between them.

On the message cover, you’ll see:

  • A title that briefly summarizes your day;

  • A chart that shows time spent in productive and distracting apps. Little colored squares above are your HRV measurement results — that way, you’ll be able to see how your health and work influence each other. For example, maybe you’re more distracted when your stress levels are high?

  • A short analysis of your workday.

Swipe left to see your Efficiency score. It’s calculated based on 3 smart metrics: time spent in productive and distracting apps compared to your typical workday, focus, and schedule. It reflects how well you managed to create good working conditions for yourself. The higher the score, the more efficient your day was.

Here’s what different scores mean:

  • Lower than 89% — your day was less efficient than usual;

  • 89-109% — your day was the same as usual;

  • Higher than 109% — your day was more efficient than usual.

A green forward arrow below the Efficiency score indicates that you were more efficient than usual, while a red downward arrow shows that your efficiency took a hit.

This page also features a detailed breakdown of your time:

  • Total time — how much time you were active;

  • Productive — time spent in productive apps;

  • Distracting — time spent in distracting apps;

  • Focus — an assessment of your concentration.

Swipe left once more to see 3 productive and 3 distracting apps where you spent most of your time.

Productive apps are the ones you labeled as very productive and productive in RescueTime while Distracting apps are the ones labeled as very distracting and distracting.

Tap see details for a detailed analysis with recommendations, 3 smart metrics, your app usage, and time spent in each app category.

What the detailed analysis shows

The detailed analysis features:

  • An analysis of your workday with recommendations — for example, how to concentrate better.

  • Your Efficiency scores for the past 7 days and a comparison of the current Efficiency score to the previous and average score.

  • Charts for 2 smart metrics — Productive time and Focus.

  • App usage — a list of 5 apps and links you used the most. Can be filtered by category.

  • Time by categories.

Smart productivity metrics

Your Efficiency score is calculated based on 3 smart productivity metrics: Productive time, Focus, and Schedule.

Productive time

This metric takes into account how much time you spent in productive and distracting apps compared to your usual day. Our algorithm needs several weeks to gauge how long you usually work.

Please note that we estimate how much time you spent in different app categories based on which apps you labeled as very productive, productive, neutral, distracting, and very distracting in RescueTime. If something doesn’t seem right, check the app settings in RescueTime. We explain how to customize app categories here.

Productive time — and your Efficiency score — may take a hit if you spend significantly less time in productive apps than usual. But if, at the same time, you manage to concentrate better, your Efficiency score may become even higher. We’ve colored the apps you consider very productive and productive blue and green.

Yellow and red bars indicate time spent in distracting and very distracting apps — the higher the bar, the more minutes you spent in these apps. If you spend more time than usual in distracting apps, the Efficiency score will become lower.

Focus

This metric reflects how concentrated you were throughout the day and how often you switched between apps. To calculate your Focus, we analyze how many apps and services you used in an hour — the fewer, the better.

The chart below shows the number of apps you used during each hour. Hours with good focus are highlighted in blue and green, while hours with poor focus are highlighted in yellow.

Below the chart, you’ll also see the total number of apps and links you opened during the day and the maximum and minimum number of apps per hour.

Schedule

Schedule reflects how consistent your schedule was and how often you took breaks. Stick to a regular schedule to prevent this metric from negatively affecting your Efficiency score.

You may see that your Schedule is off track if you started working way later or earlier than usual or barely took any breaks. For the best results, take a 15-minute break every 90 minutes.

App usage

An overview of the 5 most used apps and links. Swipe left to see the top-5 most used apps in every category: Very productive, Productive, Neutral, Distracting, and Very distracting. If you don’t see a category, you didn’t use apps from this category that day.

Time by categories

A breakdown of time spent in different app categories during the day.

A note for iPhone users: you need to upgrade to Welltory version 4.3.2 or higher to see this breakdown.

Frequently Asked Questions

I was working yesterday, but I didn’t get a productivity analysis. Why?

This can happen for several reasons:

  1. Our algorithm didn’t recognize that you were working. As many of our users don’t have a standard workweek, we use the number of minutes spent in productive apps to identify a workday. So if, for some reason, you didn’t work for a lot of minutes, the algorithm may not register this day as the workday.

  2. Your work apps are not categorized as productive or very productive in RescueTime. Learn how to customize categories here.

  3. RescueTime doesn’t have any data for this day. Please contact RescueTime to find out what went wrong.

  4. RescueTime is not connected to Welltory. Please make sure that you completed all the steps from this article, the RescueTime icon in the My Data (for iOS users) or Data (for Android users) tab has a green checkmark next to it, and you see Connected when you tap the RescueTime icon.

  5. You’re using the free version of Welltory — the message is only available for Premium users.

If RescueTime is connected to Welltory and there’s nothing wrong with it, send us a report: go to Menu, scroll down till the end of the screen, tap Report a tech problem, describe the issue and press Upload. We’ll check into what went wrong.

I had a day off, but I still got a productivity analysis. Why?

This could have happened if you spent quite a lot of time in productive apps. As many of our users don’t have a standard workweek, our algorithm identifies workdays based on the amount of time spent in productive apps and not on the calendar.

If this is inconvenient, you may want to change what apps you consider productive. Learn how to customize app categories here.

I managed to do a lot yesterday, but my Efficiency score is still low. Why?

Productivity analysis doesn’t assess how much progress you made on tasks and projects. Instead, it estimates how well you managed to create a good working environment for yourself: for example, did you start working earlier or later than usual, how often your attention wandered off from tasks, and how much time you spent in useful apps.

All these factors — Productive time, Focus, and Schedule — affect your Efficiency score. So if you spend a lot of time doing something productive but constantly switch your attention, your Efficiency score will decrease. But if the algorithm learns this is how you typically work, we’ll adjust the scoring and stop lowering your Efficiency score.

If I just work less, will my Efficiency score become lower?

No. Your Efficiency score also takes into account how focused you were and whether you adhered to your regular schedule.

So if you simply spent less time in productive apps than usual but were laser-focused and started working at your usual time, the Efficiency score may even increase.

Take a look at these messages — they are for the same person. One day, he worked productively for almost 8 hours but spent quite a lot in distracting apps. The other day, he worked productively for 6 hours and had great focus, so his Efficiency score was higher.

My Efficiency score is high, but the circle around it is yellow. Why?

The color of the Efficiency score’s circle depends on two factors:

  1. How efficient your workday was.

  2. Whether you worked too long or not. We define overwork as a workday longer than 8 hours — studies show that working longer than that harms our health.

If your day lasted less than 8 hours, the color of the circle would only depend on your Efficiency score:

0-49% — red circle;

50-89% — yellow circle,

90% and higher — green circle.

And if you put in more than 8 hours, the color of the circle would adjust:

0-49% — red circle;

50-109% — green circle;

110-179% — yellow circle;

180% and higher — red circle.

In this case, higher Efficiency scores will be colored yellow and red to warn you that you worked more than is safe for your health.

What does the word “beta” in the title mean?

The word beta in the title means that this message is based on a new algorithm with a lot of new metrics. We’ll gradually improve the algorithm using your feedback to make it even more accurate.

You say the detailed productivity analysis features recommendations, but I don’t see them. Why?

We’ll add the recommendations soon — we’re constantly improving the message to make it even more useful.

I want to leave you feedback. How can I do that?

Open the detailed analysis, scroll to the end, tap help now, and share your thoughts. This will help us make the productivity analysis even better for you.

If you spot a mistake, send us a report: go to Menu, scroll down till the end of the screen, tap Report a tech problem, describe the issue and press Upload.

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