Part of why I'm doing it is because I feel like I struggle to work effectively. I've been looking for a metric that I can use to see how I'm doing and I've decided that the best way is to just evaluate my work qualitatively.
Here are some of the pitfalls I'm trying to avoid as I evaluate my productivity:
When I've tried to use objective goals, I've found that how effectively I work does not correlate well to whether I accomplish the goals because I do research in a physics lab at BYU and, by the very nature of the work, it is hard to gauge the relative difficulty of the tasks. Thus, I want to make sure that I give myself credit when I work hard on a surprisingly hard problem and that I am honest when I lazily tackle a problem that turns out to be surprisingly easy. I think this will also help motivate me since I should have at least something to show for a hard day spent testing ideas that didn't pan out.
I want to extricate my productivity from my natural talents. Sometimes I'm able to work ineffectively and get things done just because I'm good at them. I don't want to inflate my perception of my productivity, I want to improve my productivity so I can maximize the use of my talents.
I'm trying to avoid something that I'll forget to do. I've tried measuring how much time I spend on different things and it's hard because I would frequently find that I would forget to stop the timer and I would have, e.g., 30 hours of scripture reading or something like that (which was obviously untrue).
I also want some system that is impossible to game. I know when I've been working well. Sometimes I'll set goals (like doing work for a certain amount of time) and I'll reach them, but still manage to avoid working on the most important things. I always know, however.
I want something that allows me to evaluate my productivity on a wide variety of tasks.
I guess mostly I want something that's really flexible so I can get the most accurate view of my productivity.
This blog is mostly for me. I'm hoping it won't be too negative, but some days it will be. I'm hoping it will help me know where I stand. Others can read the blog if they want. The name is just a random number. I got it by taking the hundredths digit from my stopwatch.
For my part, I promise to be honest. I'm setting a goal to write on this blog every day.
With love,
492072
A few other thoughts: according to an article I read in the Harvard Business Review, whether a person has a good day at work is strongly correlated to whether they get things done. Also, check out this video about worker engagement.
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