It’s nice to talk about productivity, but what happens when you keep track of what you did during the day and then you take a look at the results?

The experiment

here’s a realistic log of what I did on Nov 15 2009:


  • 10.13 – 10.35: reply to comments on blog.

  • 10.35 – 10.53: browsing.

  • 10.53 – 10.57: break.

  • 11.00 – 11.26: work on guest post (1 pomodoro).

  • 11.26 – 11.27: break.

  • 11.27 – 11.34: check email and rss.

  • 11.34 – 11.57: work on guest post (1 pomodoro).

  • Lunch.

  • 12.36 – 12.38: print invoice.

  • 12.38 – 12.52: calculate yesterday productivity time.

  • 12.52 – 13.21: read.

  • 13.21 – 13.24: break.

  • 13.24 – 13.30: check emails and comments.

  • 13.30 – 13.47: read.

  • 13.47 – 13.55: break.

  • 13.55 – 14.12: work on showmemoneyapp.

  • going out.

  • 14.39 – 14.45: checking emails and comments.

  • 14.45  - 15.11: work on showmemoneyapp (1 pomodoro).

  • 15.11 – 15.13: break.

  • 15.13 – 15.39: work on showmemoneyapp (1 pomodoro).

  • going out

  • 19.00 – 19.26: work on guest post (1 pomodoro)

According to my log for that day, I worked for a total of 286 minutes, or 4 hours and 46 minutes. Of that time, more than 40 minutes were spent dealing with emails, and only 142 minutes doing actual work. I still consider reading to be important, but that should not be considered work.

chart-1

In reality, I really occupied more than 9 hours that day to produce those results, so here’s a more realistic graph.

chart-2

As you can see, only half of the time I was actually doing something, regardless if it was important or not.

About those 142 minutes of work, it turned out later that I had to outsource part of what I did, so the only really valuable work I did that day was for the blog, meaning that in one day I only worked for 75 minutes, but it took me more than 9 hours to do that.

Lesson learned

I guess it’s hard to miss some valuable lessons from this experiment. Here’e mine.


  1. It’s hard to do real work. The number one reason for not working are distractions. Emails and feed reader were my major distractions that day, and I’m fortunate enough to not have a phone.

  2. Parkinson was right. Parkinson’s rule states that if you have 10 hours to complete a project, you’ll do everything you can think of to fill those hours. Indeed I found so many was to fill my day doing low value activities.

  3. Even Pareto was right. Of the actual real work I did, half of it was useless, and I’m sure that if I could go deeper on what I did that day, the exact amount of valuable work I did would reduce even more.

Some alternatives

This instead is what I’m doing now to avoid situations like that to repeat again.


  1. Limiting my time even more. I thought that it was nice to work only four hours per day, but after viewing that chart, I realized that it’s useless to work four hours per day if it takes 9 hours to complete them. Instead I’m cutting down the number of hours to see if I can avoid distractions. If on a particular day I found myself browsing the internet instead of working, that usually means I had too much time or that I was overwhelmed.

  2. Banning email. During working hours, emails can easily become a very time consuming activity, so I decided to ban email when I’m working. No more checking email during my working hours.

  3. Planning in advance. I found that planning the day before is really useful because I don’t have to spend time each day deciding what to do next, I simply have a list and 2-3 hours of time to deal with it.

  4. Enjoying life after work. Of course I had to find something to do after 3 intense working hours. In this time, I can go out, read a book, study programming or do whatever I want. Oh, and I can also check email and socialize with other people.

Conclusion

The funniest thing is that I thought that I was productive at the end of that day. It wasn’t until I made a graphical representation of how I spent my time that I discovered the truth.

If you are working for yourself, or if you are working in an environment where you are free to set your own hours, I highly recommend to keep track of how you spend your day and then act accordingly. I only do this every two or three months, but every time I do it I learn some great lessons.