1. Time Doctor reduces time spent on distracting web sites
Web browsing is reported as the number one distractor in many productivity surveys. Reducing time on distracting web sites is a productivity no-brainer.  Browse a “non work related sites” like Facebook and Time Doctor will give you a gentle ‘nudge’ and remind you what you should be doing.

It also sends Web Site Usage Reports once a week outlining all application and website usage for each week for you and your staff (a great feature for businesses and individuals who want to find out how more about how they spend their time).

2. Time Doctor reduces multitasking
For most tasks multitasking is an ineffective way to work, especially those tasks which require a high degree of concentration. Time Doctor helps its users keep focused on their current task while preventing outside distractions. The activity bar is a constant reminder of what you are working on right now (and how much time you’ve spent on it).

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Over at TED, Jason Fried puts forward his case for working at home – there’s a few interesting ideas, but I don’t agree with everything he’s said. It’s also a little one dimensional and he seems to have over looked many of the benefits of telecommuting. I have an office, and I work from home on occasion (there are arguments for and against and I think it largely depends on what you do at work).  Anyway, take a look and let me know what you think…

As Time Doctor users would know, distraction free work can happen anywhere…

Monitoring internet usage at work might seem heavy handed or even draconian -  trying to curb personal internet usage and wasted time at work is generally hard to police.  Blocking particular websites, or tracking the sites visited by employees is usually problematic and most approaches don’t prevent wasted time.  Before we tell you why, consider the following…

This problem is HUGE. Wasted time at work is one of, if not the most important challenge facing companies all over the world. The cost to business each year is in the billions.

In an their annual “Wasting Time at Work” survey, Salary.com found that sixty-four percent of respondents report wasting one hour or less each day, 22% waste approximately 2 hours daily, and 14% waste 3 or more hours each workday. Personal Internet use topped the list as the leading time-wasting activity according to 48 percent of respondents.

More recently, a UK based employment site MyJobGroup.co.uk surveyed 1,000 British workers and found that almost 6 percent of them spent over an hour a day using social media of some kind, including Facebook. This is roughly one-eighth of their workday. By extension, about 2 million of Britain’s 34-million-person workforce likely were doing the same, costing the British economy about 14 billion pounds in lost productivity.

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It has been proven by researchers that multitasking can often double the amount of time it takes to accomplish a task, decreases your and effectiveness with each task AND even decreases your IQ – in one study the effects were worse than smoking pot.

“Those distracted by incoming email and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ – more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking marijuana”.

In other words, when you multitask, you not only take longer to accomplish each task, but you are also less effective in accomplishing your tasks.

Time Doctor helps to reduce multitasking in a few different ways. Firstly there is the conscious attention of choosing exactly what you are working on. This is crucial. It’s easy to go with the flow from activity to activity, but this makes you much more prone to interruptions. Time Doctor helps you to consciously direct your activities (and focus) to a specific task.

Also the activity bar on Time Doctor helps to remind users what task they should be working on.

The activity bar appears on the desktop screen at all times displaying the current priority.

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