Ask HN: How do you measure if you are productive or not? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you measure if you are productive or not?

2 pointsrobertohanas5 comments

These are a couple that came to mind. Do share your own measurements.

1. Tasks being done ( Checklists basically ) 2. Activity level ( How engaged you were - what was the APM etc ) 3. Amount of Breaks ( How many breaks you took, how often etc) 4. Time Tracking ( Amount of time spent doing something. Deadlines ) 5. Retrospectives ( Once you finish a task you take some time to analyze and rate it) 6. Efficiency ( Your performance compared to the average of previous similar/ same task/s ) 7. Focus Time ( Pomodoro - how much time you can work on only one thing ) 8. Amount of Distractions ( How many times have you shifted your focus to something else - interruptions ) 9. Number of ContextSwitches? ( Number of shifts between projects- tasks or distraction - work ) 10. Energy spent ( Subjective. Rating the energy levels after each task ) Full disclosure: I'm building a dashboard for productivity. Would love to base it on real needs instead of just adding tasks and a timeline. Like everyone else. :)

I don't. I roughly measure the time I use on a problem, but that is mainly to not loose myself in details. But otherwise I deliver when its done

> How engaged you were - what was the APM etc

Hell no. Sometimes I reflect without typing anything for minutes. This time is essential to focus on the important parts. I also make pauses and get a coffee whenever I like.

Life isn't just work, I don't need to tune my productivity. I think my boss is happy I deliver reliably... more or less.

Context switches are deadly for productivity though, on that I agree. This is why I vastly prefer asynchronous communication. Yes, you can probably answer that mail tomorrow...

From a dashboard I expect that I can share its info with others working on a problem to sync our work. Don't know if that helps.

Thanks for commenting.

That's exactly why I'm asking. --- most dashboards seem to show a part of the story but that's often incomplete. Ex. Time spent Thinking is 100% productive but if you measure APM -It isn't labeled as such.

Delivering reliably is important for managers - but how do you do that if the task constantly change.. I'm assuming you you estimate and as long as you're on target more or less - it's ok with your manager? -- Could you expand on the sharing with others part? - what you want to share ?

Lawyers bill from they enter the door to the office I hear.

I think Carmack used to take a CD from a stack and start it when he sat down to program and stop it whenever he left the keybord abd then measure his productivity by the stack of listened to CDs at the end of the session.

I guess you can do that now with Spotify playlists as well :D.

I get your point - people measure/bill things differently. How do you measure/bill things?

Somewhere in the middle.

I include a bit chit chat but don't necessarily count from stepping through the door.

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