How do you measure your productivity?
Vinoth Vinaya
34 replies
I was wondering if people have a concrete way of tracking their productivity? Are you using a specific metric - like a number of working hours/task completed? or a tool to show you how productive you are? or is it just your own feeling of accomplishment?
Productivity, for me, is very intangible and I would love to know how you know / monitor if you had a productive day or not. Let me know under π
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Dmitrii Pashutskii@guar47
Taco Digest
I am using Toggl and Timery for iOS (which is also using Toggle platform) for tracking almost everything in my life.
I separate activity by categories: social media/communities, different types of learning (e.g. programming, photography), work. Usually work is also separated by projects I am working on.
Weekly or even monthly I analyze how much time I spend on everything and tweak my next month's plan accordingly.
My planning is similar to the one described in "Shape Up" by Basecamp. I am planning for sprints (which is calendar month) and I decide how much time (usually days) I am goinna work on each task.
I also have bunch of recurring tasks I do every day with dedicated time (e.g. 2 hours of learning, 30 minute of reading, 30 minute of excersice etc.)
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@vinoth_vinaya
I move to "Done" my sprint tasks in Kanban style in Trello after they complete. But I track the activity time, not each task.
I am ticking off the recurring tasks every day though.
I use ProProfs Help Desk (https://www.proprofsdesk.com/) to track the productivity of my customer support team. Earlier it was quite difficult to understand who worked for how many hours and how many tickets. We had to do everything manually, and the process was cumbersome.
Thanks to this tool, monitoring agent productivity has become a breeze now.
The toolβs powerful reporting system helps me track the productivity level of each of the agents. It gives a sneak-peek into the number of tickets opened and resolved by agents, customer ratings on the experience received, number of tickets pending, and much more.
The best part is I can see agent performance on a daily, weekly as well as monthly basis. That is even more helpful at times when I want to see how an agent performs every day or every week.
I use the ismartlife ( https://www.producthunt.com/post... ) application. It has a section with reports and I study them periodically. The reports are quite simple and allow you to understand how many tasks were completed during the period and the difference from the previous one. There is also an activity indicator. The more tasks I do, the higher the indicator.
Trackabi
I prepare a list of things to do during a day/week/month. Then not completed vs. completed tasks is my productivity. I also use gut feeling a lot. Even when I run out of time to do something I planned, I may feel good if I see that I worked well, and there are some real results.
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@andrey_mi Thanks for sharing! Got it, so when you feel good about your productivity even if you haven't completed everything you planned - is that because you knew what your top priorities was and you completed them?
Trackabi
@vinoth_vinaya Kind of yes. Let's say if 8 tasks of 10 planned are done and I see that I didn't have too long water cooler discussions and wasn't checking Facebook all the time, then I'm happy. It's anyway possible that I planned too much.
You can also use some software for activity monitoring if you work at computer. It will show you how much you actually spend working. And you may be surprised :)
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@andrey_mi Got it, this is super helpfulπ So ideally, you would have a overview of task completion rate, whether you completed your most important priority or not and insights on distraction free focus time?
Completely agree, most of us get very suprised when we get that information. Also, it doesn't paint the full picture as a small distraction (1 min twitter scroll) quickly results in 20-25 minutes time to get back to the flow state on the task at hand..
We use TMetric time tracker on daily basis in our team. https://tmetric.com/
The app is extremely easy-to-use and featured. At any time you can check activity level which provided via diagram, get different productivity and detailed reports (project, tasks, team summary etc).
I think this way of productivity control is really convenient and doesn't require any special skills or preparings. To be the most productive person, you can use TMetric integrations (e.g. JIRA, Asana, Todoist, Github etc).
I use daily and weekly tasks, then I measure productivity by the number of tasks that I completed. I also make a point of no more than 3 tasks make each list(daily/weekly). This way I'm not putting unrealistic pressure on myself
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@brandon_kindred1 Thanks for sharing! Makes a lot of sense to limit the priorities/tasks to ensure balance but also quality. I guess once you have very clear and measurable goals, it's easier to measure productivity π
ClearMix
We recently started using the Shape Up method by Basecamp (https://basecamp.com/shapeup) - not a direct measure of productivity but there are some features that keeps me and my team feeling like we're moving forward
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This is actually one of my issues too. I really do not know how should I measure it and I'm completely sure that it should not be based on hours you're working or even the tasks you complete during the day because both of them do not show the quality of tasks you complete
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@parisa_mosadegh Thanks for sharing! Yeah, it's very difficult to find a meaningful metrics that aligns with peoples own feeling of productivity!
I use an online to-do list and the seven habits time management matrix. At the end of each week, I can see how productive based on what's been done/hasn't been done in each category.
Similar to Andrey though, there sometimes is just gut feel, you know if something super important's completed, but something else on your to-do got missed.
The seven habits time management matrix really helps me with organising tasks and cutting out distractions and unimportant tasks.
I also use Pine for my to-dos.
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@bentheredonethat Thanks for sharing, this is very helpful! Seems like both you and @andrey_mi are tracking task completion rate, in addition to taking priority level into account. Makes a lot of sense to apply the time management matrix for the weekly review!
We're currently working on how we could replay productivity for our users in order to show progress, motivate and give actionable insights.
Would be great to get your feedback on our product: https://www.producthunt.com/post...
I want to ask someone who makes daily / weekly / monthly plans. When I sit down to plan for the week, sometimes I realize that I miss out on a lot of things or sometimes I realize that I put myself overwork that week. What do you pay attention to while making your plans? How do you maintain workload balance? @andrey_mi @bentheredonethat @alexandragc and other peope
@kagantaskin I usually have a lot on and sometimes it can feel overwhelming. Different things work for different people.
For me, the 7 Habits time management matrix is what helps me! I pay attention to the things that need doing urgently and are important. When you sit down with your tasks for the week/day and categorise them into the four departments you soon realise that a lot of the tasks you have don't "need" to be done right now.
I think this is crucial to help stop overworking. Helps me anyways π
I'm using forest app to help me focus, but not for professional use.
For me is more about the goals I set up each week. I consider how productive I am based on achieving my weekly goals. I tried with daily tasks and lists but sometimes the day doesn't go as planned and I was getting frustrated I didn't do all the things for the day. Not sure if it is a good way to do it but it works for me.
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@alexandragc Thanks for sharing! Yeah, I do see your point. On the days you feel you've been productive, do you remember any traits of those days (other than task completions)?
@alexandragc @vinoth_vinaya I know it sounds lame but it is about a feeling based on experience. I just know it. One thing that I do though its try to find out the possible reasons why I wasn't as productive. At the end of the day, I just think about all the things that I did that were not planned. Normally are unexpected meetings, phone calls or something new I found out that fascinated me so I get distracted. Hope it helps!
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@alexandragc Doesn't feel lame at all, I completely understand what you mean! Thanks for sharing, this is super helpful π
I use Clockify for time tracking. I use it only for tracking time spent on tasks that are either important or urgent.
At the end of a week, if I have clocked more than 40 hours, I consider it a productive week.