Is it important to monitor your productivity?
Sergei Petrov
42 replies
Almost a month ago, I did a little performance tracking research. I have met the opinion that it is important to numerically evaluate and record the indicators of daily, weekly and monthly productivity. What do you think about this?
Does anyone record their productivity? How has this affected your work?
By the way, I have not yet forced myself to start doing this. Help me please 😅
Replies
Cem Bulut@cem_bulut
Yes, it definitely helps improving productivity.
In my experience, working hard does not always result in delivering efficiently. You might have lots of things going on within the day and you might try to touch every one of those issues but when your target is not clear and visually available, you could be sliding into burnout as well as experiencing difficulty in closing some issues completely.
You should be aware of your destination within a given time period to be able to tell apart your priorities and the things you're just losing time with.
When combined with task management, performance tracking visualizes your progress. It reminds you what big rocks you planned to deal with and breaks them down to your weekly priorities or sometimes even to your daily tasks. Also it is kind of a gamification, so you push yourself to get things done otherwise you wouldn't find the time and energy for.
On a team or company level, I would recommend OKR methodology, where you set common goals that will inspire you, which consist of measurable sub-targets so you can objectively see where you're at. It also helps you set better goals and do better when evaluated retrospectively.
Here is a helpful article about OKRs: https://medium.com/@corvisio/okr....
You might not want it to get complicated in the beginning so you can simply set monthly or quarterly goals and track them. They should be agressive enough to make you grow but realistic enough so you don't give up and demotivate yourself. (80% realization of goals might be considered as success while 100% might be described as crème de la crème)
To combine your performance tracking with task management the following tools might help (to measure your achievements in quantity):
-Jira (agile sprints are useful for product and development teams),
-Notion (simple but organized when you use the templates)
-Todoist (to keep it at the simplest way possible)
Additionally, any OKR tool might help to manage the big rocks you're dealing with.
Hope it would be helpful :)
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/@corvisio @cem_bulut Thanks a lot for the detailed answer!
I've heard about OKR and even used it, but your answer gave the full picture. I'm sure it will be useful to me and other guys from the Producthunt community.
Launching soon!
Yes. It's perhaps the most important thing you can do to make your days more effective. That's because you can use the information to figure out how you can get things done more productively in the future. The window of peak mental capacity is different for everyone. Do you only seem productive for a few hours, then fritter away the rest? If you do, you likely need to create a better environment for yourself in which you can get more done.
@qudsia_ali Well noticed about the mental differences. How do you measure productivity and how do you record it?
I guess it's really important, but also really hard to track
The best way - do some experiments every week and write in a diary how do you feel and what you did
You brain should automatically select what works for you
@stas_voronov Hmm, maybe once a week is too often. I heard it takes 20 days to form a habit. But you are absolutely right - experiments are important. In addition, it is also exciting, especially if you do it with friends!
Launching soon!
The best way I have found is - detail out what we are working on, break it in micro tasks, set the OKRs and track them week on week. This helps tremendously in keeping a check of how things are shaping up and course correcting wherever required.
@mjain_mayank Yes, it sounds great. We do the same in a team.
Do you think it makes sense to check productivity at the end of the day? For example, to determine the most productive period of time and plan the most important tasks at this moment in the future.
Launching soon!
@sergeipetrov One should do that for self, but not for the team. I feel its counter productive to micro manage. But, one should always take out 30 min in the day to reflect back and course correct :)
Absolutely important.
Setting up and tracking OKRs is one of the best ways of doing it. Setup monthly and weekly OKRs.
It helps you be on track as well and not pick up low priority stuff.
@gauravgoyal_gg Well said! It really is one of the best ways.
How do you manage to stay focused on the most important tasks? It often happens to me that I do a lot of small and less important tasks instead of doing what is really important to do now.
@sergeipetrov Ya this remains a bit of challenge.
What I have seen is that day end check-ins for individuals and week level check-ins for the whole organisation is one of the most effective ways.
For example - When I do eod check-in and realize that my OKRs have not moved, the next day is more productive and focused.
@gauravgoyal_gg Sounds logical and convincing. I'll start doing the assessment at the end of the day.
By the way, do you plan in detail every morning or once a week and then make small daily adjustments?
Well, It depends; one thing I found with advice is that some things worked for me, some don't. I will tell you what worked for me in tracking. You can just invest a month/2 weeks doing it and seeing the progress. This is also related to what I read in "Eat that Frog" about progress and procrastination.
Just Write down all the things that u need to do on paper, all the things no matter the priority or the urgency. After doing this, just select the things that will impact the growth in 1 month. Write down those on the new paper, select the top tasks, and break them down into weeks. Just check the progress each day, marking the progress for the week. It will boost your productivity.
@bestapkmodz Thank you! Very interesting technique, I'll try it on myself, suddenly it will work too.
By the way, how did you understand that it worked for you and how did your productivity increase? How long has the progress been?
Yes, it's a helpful practice. I am product manager in startup and my the main metric is new adopters for my project.
And I know my goal every week. I use Ordemio and ToDoist for my job.
Therefore I know:
- How many contacts I was able to add
- What tasks I was able to do
If I don't know about metrics in my job it means that I have bad results and maybe results not at all.
@deni_klim hmm yes, that seems to work. And do you always have a direct dependence of your results on your efforts?
It very often happens that I make a lot of efforts, but for a long time I do not get the proper results. But then there are moments when the results come easily, as if by themselves. But I believe that this is the result of my past efforts. Like deferred reward.
@sergeipetrov Yes. It's normal. Because we are managers and we can give results just over time.
You concentrate on 20% of movings and don't build expectations. Or you can burn out.
Should we measure productivity numerically or by goals achieved? I prefer the second.
@javieraguilag I understand your approach, heard that so many do. And it's really important to improve productivity.
But the question is how to understand whether you have set difficult enough goals for a day or a week. After all, you can start doing them at the very end before the deadline and still have time.
I also always set overly optimistic goals.😝
If you can't measure, you can't scale-up anything. Thus, I think that it's important to monitor your productivity. Because, efficient work is different than hard one. You can find the pain points which would be barriers, when you work, and you can develop them!
@huseyin_kara totally agree with you. This is exactly what I want now - to move from hard work to productive work. And I am looking for suitable ways and patterns for myself.
Can you give an example from your own life, how your work on mistakes influenced your productivity and further development?
@sergeipetrov First thing first, I decide what I want to achieve monthly. After, I divide tasks over weeks. Thanks to it, I can see what I have to finish daily. This is how I run after my tasks. In this case, I can see big picture and small details. I generally use Notion to track my tasks and personal life. But, I still believe power of writing. That's why, I'm also writing my tasks to journal. Everysunday I usually list my daily tasks, and I check what I have done during the day at end of the day.
I simply started allocating one hour a day for planning the entire day and 30 minutes to reflect the productivity at the end of the day.
It helps me to build the basement for further numerical evaluations.
@daniel_chepenko sounds awesome! Could you elaborate on how you record your productivity at the end of the day?
Yes, I do!
You could check it out here: https://bit.ly/m/Branding
@getrealclicks Oh, I can't see anything.. Looks like something very raw. I hope you are not a scammer. 😵💫
@sergeipetrov Hi there! I monitor my productivity. I have Yaware TimeTracker installed on my laptop. Now I know exactly how many hours I worked per week and month. According to the statistics of the time tracker, it is clear that I work more productively in the morning or in the evening. And I was also surprised by how much time I spent on e-mail correspondence and searching for new information to review. In general, you will be interested to see productivity reports. Just in case, I'll leave a link here, so you understand what I'm talking about. https://www.producthunt.com/prod...
@tetiana_nikolaieva Thank you for sharing with me! I'm just looking for a solution that will suit me and the people in my team.
The site looks nice, but when I click on "Free trial", I'm immediately redirected to the home page.
By the way, I would appreciate your opinion about my product - https://www.producthunt.com/upco...
I've tried a lot of productivity tracking apps: Toggl, Rescue Time, Time doctor, phone apps. I've found the best combination for me is the Mac app "Timing" (automatically tracks time) and a paper notepad.
I use my own app (focusbear.io) to remind myself to log my time every 20 minutes. I find writing it down is most helpful in actually leading to change as it gives me awareness in the moment. Looking at the logs in Timing at the end of the day is mainly helpful in tracking whether I'm getting better at deep work.
The biggest factor for me in upping the proportion of time I spend in deep work is eliminating distractions. I built a super pomodoro mode feature in Focus Bear which guides me to do 4*50 minute pomodoros in the morning and blocks all distracting apps and websites. Keeping my mental alertness high is also important. I do micro workouts throughout the day (e.g. 1 minute of pushups every 20 minutes) as I find otherwise my energy levels dip and I'm more likely to procrastinate.
@jeremy_nazgul you have made great progress in this way and have developed your own technique. Sounds incredibly cool! And the site is very friendly. How long did it take from idea to creation? And are you going to launch on producthunt?
Hello!
I think it depends on the field: personal or work productivity. Because all work tasks are tracking by corporate system (Jira, Asana etc). And usually we have some unpleasant consequences of low productivity =)
But I have some issues with my personal goals so here I'm developing my own system. It's hard to give advice just because it's really depends on you lifestyle, tools (like phone or tablet) and even your sense of beauty. But I can recommend bullet journal - at least you'll enjoy the process!
Good luck.
@geruangelina Thanks for your advice, I will try this! 🙏
I feel like I work a lot, but I wish I could do it less and be more productive. Now I'm just trying to find a system that suits me. That's why I started this discussion.
Could you tell me a little about your personal system? How do you do it and what are the features?
@sergeipetrov nowadays it is really simple: I just block hours (usually it's morning) for my personal tasks. I have short blocks from Mon to Fri and long at Sat. All tasks and ideas I land on my personal note tool (I have the only one place for it). Thing which helps me a lot - a "lifetime" of my notes, I made up this idea to finish (exactly finish not accomplish) all my tasks.
@geruangelina Sounds intriguing! Can you read more about "lifetime" somewhere?
@sergeipetrov I think I could write more fully about it but shortly: all notes/ideas/tasks have the lifetime after the end of which are going to be "harmful"
@geruangelina hmm, I didn't even think about that. How to determine the lifespan? And what to do if the deadline has passed, but I still want to implement the idea?
I think it's important to keep track of your productivity. But I'm wondering how?
I'm a product design lead in a startup in Iran. We started to run OKR recently and I believe it's helpful for the team, but I'm searching for a methodology to monitor and improve my personal productivity. I tried writing my tasks down and keep logs, but it didn't represent productivity. If you find a system that helps, please share again😅
@paria_adib haha, we have similar desires. There is already a lot of advice in this discussion. Personally, I liked a lot of things here, but I haven't had time to try everything yet.
One of the most useful tips for me was to do a little planning at the beginning of the day and debriefing at the end of the day. It takes very little time, but disciplines and helps to make pivots in a timely manner.
What matters the most for me in monitoring productivity is-
Am I making progress on what matters most?
Almost everyone overestimates what they can do in a day and underestimates what they can do in a month/year. If you make some progress towards what really matters each day, you're in great shape.
For time management, I've tried using variations on the Pomorodo method. A Pomodoro is a 25 min block of time (or longer if you like) where you are 100% focused on the task at hand. It's followed by a schedule break for triaging any asks from the team, resting, etc.
Pomodoro helps me make sure my inputs are consistent (and intentionally aligned with what matters most - even if it's not what's easiest to get started with). Here's how: https://www.stashpad.com/blog/po...