Statistics/data on productivity

Posted by Dr Andus
Jun 18, 2018 at 10:32 PM

Dellu wrote:
>But, I am very skeptic of your manual logging: I don’t think that is a
>reliable, object means of acquiring data. It might be better than
>nothing; but nowhere close to the reality.

Maybe we have a different definition of what “work” means. In my line of work it’s quite simple: I am either engaged in a productive activity (call it a pomodoro) or I am on a break. It’s a binary system.

So I only measure “pure productive work”, by which I mean that I am engaged in focusing on solving a task (usually on the computer).

Tracking it is quite easy in Google Sheets. I already have a template set up, so all I need to is type a number (“1” etc.) at the start of the row, which represents the session number (kind of like Pomodoro 1, 2 etc.), to start a session.

Then when I’m done, I just hover the cursor over the “last changed” indicator, and it tells me how much time had passed since I typed “1”. Then I record the time elapsed (e.g. 40 min), and this automatically starts the break time.

When I’m back from the break, I just check how much time had passed, record it, and type “2” to start the next session, which starts/resets the clock.

Google Sheet tracks the time for me automatically, I don’t need to look at a clock or stopwatch at all.

BTW, getting stats about my software usage is not very useful for me because it doesn’t tell me whether I was using it for work or pleasure.