How do you measure your productivity? | Hacker News Reader

How do you measure your productivity?

4 pointsHexstream9 comments

Sometimes, I think I haven't really been productive in the last days, but then I later realize I found and corrected this and that bug, found some flaws in my architecture and corrected some, etc. and well, I was somewhat productive after all.

Other times, I'm pretty happy with my productivity after a day of work but when I really think hard about it, I see that I didn't accomplish so much.

And also, sometimes I don't know whether I'm going slow because I don't have much experience with the particular kind of problem I'm working on, or am I taking a wrong approach, or do I lack some critical knowledge that would make the job much easier?...

How do you measure your productivity?

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30% planning, design data model, etc 25% Back end code (only the major part of it) 15% Client-side design and code (if it matters for the app I may spend more time here) 10% Integration

At this stage if I was fooling myself I'd say I'm done. but this is just a prototype and I have only tackled the major parts of the application. There are lots of details that are laying around even though everything looks as if I'm done. At this stage it may look like your productivity is low but it is actually part of. So you have to do some tests step back and look at the whole thing and find that you have to spend another

10% modify things 30% to deal with little seemingly useless fixes or just making things look nicer or adding content etc.

If I'm spending more time in any of these stages either I am being lazy or I didn't do the previous stage correctly and it is effecting what I'm doing now. so I stop and go back. it's better to cut your losses early or you'll really loose productivity and develop something bad.

here is a tip to be more productive: When you get tired of thinking switch to graphic design and when you are stuck with a design idea switch to writing code and when you are thinking about your idea write content especially help files (even of an unfinished app). You'd be surprised how this may actually effect your own views about your ideas.

It's hard to measure the productivity of any given day. You can of course take a look at your todo list but that ignores the benefit of doing things that are not on your todo list (like hanging out here). I think you should look back at the last 6 months and see if you are satisfied with what you have accomplished.

Often it takes a while to realize the benefit of some otherwise unrelated activity (like reading the news or exploring with various libraries). But usually after a few months you'll run across something and be glad you "wasted" some time earlier on that topic.

For example I spent a decent amount of time at work (several years ago) researching and playing around with rootkits. This wasn't at all related to my job function at the time. Then one day we had a major breach of security and I wasn't the only person around that knew anything about rootkits, especially how to remove them. I was able to help out and as a result I got a "promotion" (transferred to do security work which was always my passion).

Only time will tell if something you learned (or did) was useful or a "waste of time".

1. By seeing how many tasks you have achieved out of your to-do list. 2. If task takes more than a day (of planned time) you have not subdivided it finely enough. 3. For every 5 hours it takes a task (add extra 2 hours). 4. For every 6 days it takes a task add an extra day 5. Roundup 3-3.5 weeks of work to a month

By what I get done, and how much time it takes.

For any given timeframe:

ItemsActuallyCompleted - ItemsPlannedToComplete = Productivity

Then my productivity is negative, because I seldom make realistic projections...

You just have a high "Schedule Fantasy Factor"

I think this is more a measure of your traction--your ability to set and hit targets--and might be better expressed by

   Act / Plan

instead of

   Act - Plan

assuming some normalization of item size in either case. It's the inverse of the "Schedule Fantasy Factor."

$$$ earned :-)

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