Lately, I have been assessing myself on not being productive. I am measuring my productivity based on the completion of the tasks for the day. Productivity, like many things in life, cannot be measured by a single number.
My bike buddy asked me the other day what’s my best time. After giving him the answer, I started thinking about why my time varies so much from ride to ride. Why am I not able to consistently ride on my best speed?
We need to consider other factors that go into a bike ride. How was the weather outside? How did my body feel? Was I tired? How much did I eat? Was there wind? If so, did it help or did it work against me? Did the GPS track the distance correctly? Was there enough pressure on the tires? What was the terrain like? Was it a flat road or was there elevation? Any of these could change my best time on any given day.
Similarly, productivity can not be measured by just the completion of tasks. We need to consider other factors like mood, the difficulty of the tasks, our energy level, the accuracy of the estimated level of effort. Was the task something I like to work on or hate it? Did I have all the tools and information needed to complete the tasks? Was there any unnecessary distraction like email or chat? Was there any unplanned unavoidable distraction like taking care of kids?
Only by taking all of these parameters into consideration, we can measure our productivity. As long as we make progress, we should consider the day productive.