Offer HN: Tell me about your work and I'll quantify it and give you feedback.
It's a nice tool, but probably a bit too complicated for normal people.
I was thinking about ways I could simplify it when I was struck by an idea:
What if I just e-mail people and ask them what they worked on today? They could reply in plain English. Then I could handle the data entry and analysis myself. I could send them back a graph of their productivity once a week or so. I could point out undervalued projects that could use greater attention or warn them away from dangerous time-sinks. Maybe I could just commiserate with their work-related frustrations.
This idea seems exciting enough that I thought I'd experiment with it:
Post your e-mail in this thread or send it to me at JesseAldridge@gmail.com and I will begin e-mailing you once or twice a day to ask you questions about your work. I'll take your answers, quantify them, do some analysis and send you back my thoughts in graphical form.
Privacy seems like an obvious concern... For now let me just promise that anything you send me will remain confidential.
Obviously this approach won't scale very well, so I'm thinking I'll just start with the first ten people who respond. After I see what works and what doesn't I can look into scaling things up.
Update: One response so far. I should make it clear that this service is not just for programmers. Anyone who cares about improving their productivity should get in touch.