The original article that got me started is here.

We all get caught up in all manner of activities during the day and frequently, we never get a chance to do what we planned to do because we keep "running out of time". This tool allowed me to identify activities that is not in my role and responsibilities and focus on organising my time better.

With ManicTime installed, all my computer activities are logged and recorded and it allows me to tag my activities so that i get a nice little chart at the end that tells me what I’ve been spending time on.

It takes all of 5 minutes at the end of the day to go through your activities and "tag" blocks to general categories.. as an example, here is one of my days:

 
Once you have your activities tagged, reports and statistics are very easy to generate. It has shown me where the bulk of my time goes.

Sitting quietly in my taskbar, I found ManicTime to be quite robust and non-interfering with my daily work. I know most of you will think of this as invasive etc, but frankly its a tool to help me be a better person. This information is not for anyone else as its all stored locally.

One thing it doesn’t seem to have (and perhaps i haven’t tested it enough) is profile independence. IE, if someone else logs onto your machine, can they see what you’ve been doing? I’m not too sure on that…

Anyways, if you want, give it a go for a week or so.. it may tell you a lot about your computer habits :)