
Productivity in 2017: analyzing 225 million hours of work time - jorymackay
http://blog.rescuetime.com/225-million-hours-productivity/
======
hinkley
Let me try to save you all a year of therapy sessions:

You do not have a time problem. You have an energy problem. We. Have an energy
problem.

The reason you only get three hours of stuff done on Saturday and then you
‘waste’ the rest of the day is because you had three hours of energy. The rest
of the day you’re just filling time. Not because you’re bad, or lazy, or
selfish. Because you’re spent.

The difference between productive people and you is not time management. Their
skill is in dealing with taxing experiences. They avoid it, delegate it, or
confront it on their own terms at the time of their choosing. Some shift their
perspective to make it less taxing (not everyone hates weeding). And when they
run out of energy they _engage in activities that recharge them instead of
filling time_ or merely drain them slower (see also: me and video games or TV)

If you know where to look, we already know this subconsciously. A bunch of
industry Best Practices are more time consuming but less energy intensive than
the alternative. We balk at scheduling two difficult tasks in the same time
interval even though they both “only” take less than half of your time. A task
that takes four hours might leave you exhausted, and all you can do for the
rest of the day is read email and code reviews and browse Hacker News. Nobody
can rearrange your schedule or demean youbinto anything productive during that
time. If you try you’ll just make mistakes. Which is why you’re trying to Do
No Harm by “goofing off”. You already know this you just don’t have the words
like “self-care” to express it.

~~~
rconti
This may be great for some people, but simply isn't true for others. I've
found no difference on focus from working out, even heavily. Not from getting
up and walking a mile and going back to my task.

~~~
dudzik
I can relate to that. When I exercise in the morning I cannot get anything
done during the day.

On the other hand I find it relaxing to workout after work. My mind becomes
more or less empty afterwards. When I then do things that require more complex
thinking the effect wears off pretty quickly though.

~~~
eckza
Lifting after work gives me something to look forward to.

It also wears me the fuck out - so I go to bed early, sleep really well, and
wake up the next day feeling recharged.

------
ivm
This article is a nice reminder that RescueTime keeps all your computer usage
history (including site URLs) on their servers and can access it at any time.

But there are Selfspy[0], ManicTime[1] (Windows), and Qbserve[2] (Mac, my app)
for private productivity tracking.

[0] [https://github.com/selfspy/selfspy](https://github.com/selfspy/selfspy)

[1] [https://www.manictime.com/](https://www.manictime.com/)

[2] [https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/](https://qotoqot.com/qbserve/)

~~~
ryanianian
I'm always skeeved out by reports like this. I know they're PR bits for the
companies, but to me they're just another constant reminder that I'm just a
data-point for any app that collects my data and all my data is theirs forever
to use to build their product.

~~~
ProAm
It's a weird constant feeling that no matter what I do on my computer or my
phone that someone else knows what it is, is watching, recording, analyzing my
activity. No stopping it now, but it takes away from the magic.

------
shimon
There's some potentially interesting data here but I found it disappointing
that this article was mainly showing averages. I'd love to learn what
distinguishes the most productive folks from the average. Are they more
consistent? Do they check email a lot less? Do they tend to work more in the
morning?

~~~
loteck
To this point, I'd like to know what distinguishes the _least_ productive from
the average. Or more plainly stated: what are the traps everyone should avoid
to maintain reasonable levels of productivity.

~~~
watwut
The least productive people I knew simply did not worked much. They did spend
time in work, sometimes a lot of time, but ultimately most of that time was
slacking around and then pretending that 10 minutes task actually was
difficult and took whole day.

So like, avoid not working on the job.

~~~
serpix
They might have been burned out. At the stage before your body prevents you
from getting physically to work your work output takes a very serious nose
dive.

~~~
watwut
No, people I have in mind were not burned out.

~~~
dkersten
How do you know? Sometimes it can be difficult for others to tell if somebody
is burned out or not besides that their productivity, motivation etc tank.

~~~
watwut
Burned out people have history of producing a lot in the past or working on
high pressure projects. Also, they don't keep doing nothing long term, they
tend to seek solution.

Lastly, not sure how them being burned out would changed all that much. The
impact on team would be all the same.

~~~
dkersten
Regarding your second point, sure, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome much,
but most people have more sympathy for someone who is burnt out than for
someone who is just lazy. Also, a burnt out person can be helped to recover
while a lazy person probably should just be fired.

~~~
watwut
I agree with helping people, especially those burned out because your own
management pressured on them. And it is also true that a lot of demotivation
happen when management is bad and those people start working good once they
are in better environment or more suitable position (it positions are not made
equal and one can excel in one and fail in different one).

But sometimes, laziness is the thing.

My original point was meant to be that as long as you think about out
productivity, have somewhere back in your mind that something should be
produced today, you are fine and not in that worst performer category. Because
you are trying and that will keep you away from such fall. It was meant to be
reassuring in some way.

~~~
dkersten
Absolutely, I didn’t mean to imply that they weren’t lazy in this particular
case, I just wanted to make sure because I often hear people dismiss actual
problems (eg recently I heard someone say that most people with anxiety are
making it up...). Obviously that isn’t the case here, but I sometimes feel
compelled to defend people who might suffer from
burnout/anxiety/depression/etc, so I wanted to be sure.

But, sometimes, laziness really is the thing.

------
work_hn
From how they measure the productivity score:
[http://blog.rescuetime.com/breaking-down-the-rescuetime-
prod...](http://blog.rescuetime.com/breaking-down-the-rescuetime-productivity-
score/)

"But the bottom line is that the productivity score doesn’t tell you anything
about what you actually produce. It’s simply a number that can give you an
interesting baseline of where your attention is, but doesn’t tell 100% of the
story. It’s a way to understand your patterns, and not a prescription for how
you should be spending your time."

So, this is basically an indicator of how much time you spend on an activity
and not how "productive" you are. Like they say, productivity is a charged
word. I wish there was a way to tag productivity and efficiency together.

------
habosa
Holy crap. The stats about social media.

> It’s not only time spent that’s the issue, however. On average, we check in
> on social media sites 14 times per workday, or nearly 3 times an hour during
> our 5-hour digital day.

We're checking this stuff 3x an hour while we're supposed to be working!

I can't help but see the parallel to the incessant cigarette breaks of the
previous generation. Social media might turn out to be just as bad for
health/productivity.

------
Top19
I like RescueTime, although I think it’s good to use for a few months, get a
baseline, and then move on.

More to the point, and taking out my axe to grind, all of this focus on
productivity and being a “success!” is helpful, but also amusing and
adisheartening. Please stick with me here, but if you look into sociology
written over the last 20 years, it’s tragic (but also inspiring) how Americans
tried and tried to work harder, even though the cost of everything went up 3x
and the amount of work needed to attain that same stuff also went up 3x, thus
meaning everything required 9x more effort.

I love people working hard, but it’s shocking when you learn that adjusted to
BOTH population growth and inflation, an apartment in New York City should
rent for about $900 today.

If linear trends continue (they won’t fortunately, some kind of large crisis
will reset them) we’ll be talking about preparing kids to be a “CEO!” at 14 or
earlier, maybe even there will be “CEO Camps”. What a delight...

~~~
AJ007
According to this, people are mostly pretending to work hard.

~~~
dazc
You already knew this though?

~~~
sundvor
"Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for
probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only
do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work."

(I watched this again three nights ago. Brilliance never dies.)

------
FollowSteph3
I would love to see an analysis of the productivity an hour before meetings.
My guess is that it’s generally much lower than the baseline. And especially
half an hour before

~~~
dazc
'And especially half an hour before'

Not related to productivity as such, but...

In a previous life I was a manager in the construction industry.

And, generally speaking, before every meeting there was another meeting that
only a few people were invited to.

If you didn't know about this meeting then God help you...

I'm guessing this wasn't an industry specific thing?

~~~
spery
Not sure how much it correlates with IT. I'm sure it does on higher levels.
But on lower/mid levels, lot of meetings are just regular work stuff.
Inter/intra team communication, talks with clients, etc.

------
wott
Looking at the plots, it seems obvious that it is useless to work on Mondays
and Fridays. I cannot agree more.

~~~
clamprecht
If Monday and Friday were days off, would Tuesday and Thursday become the new
Monday and Friday?

~~~
Apocryphon
You're right. Maybe Wednesday-only work weeks is the optimal solution.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Nah, that's equivalent to no work at all.

~~~
mod
The final solution.

~~~
dajohnson89
HN needs a Godwin's law but for UBI instead of Hitler.

------
whiddershins
“The biggest piece of advice we can pull from all this data is to be aware of
the limited time you have each day for meaningful work, and spend it wisely.

Our days are filled with distractions, and it’s up to us to protect what time
we have.”

To my mind it represents a failure of imagination to present this conclusion
as if it might be an unavoidable reality.

I prefer to take it as a diagnosis of a solvable problem.

------
androck1
I’ve always been curious how much work the average person does per day. It
would be a very valuable metric to have for setting expectations - of course
we’re all different and listen to yourself, but just to have a ballpark...

I burned myself out at my last gig trying to be nearly 100% productive all the
time since expectations are opaque. Sure, “nobody cares how much you work as
long as your work gets done” but what about when the work is estimated poorly
(and everything is always late...). Too nebulous of a statement.

The 12.5 hours number from the article seems pretty rough given that it’s
based only on time spent in app, but it’s something.

~~~
jeffshek
I wrote [https://betterself.io](https://betterself.io) (open-sourced) to
figure this out for myself. After analyzing a year's worth of supplements and
habits -- meditation at the start of my day had the highest correlation of
productivity beating out any supplement I bought (I tried about 70+
supplements last year).

~~~
SomewhatLikely
Any other useful correlations? Also a note on the page linked: it's not clear
to me whether I need another app collecting the data or if I will need to
directly enter it in your app.

------
patkai
One trick I discovered last year is that whenever I feel like procrastinating
I reach for my Kindle Oasis. It sucks much less energy than HN or browsing or
aimless computer work.

------
gedrap
My pet peeve with all these time trackers is that... It's just a wrong metric,
unless what you're doing is an assembly line equivalent, where you just need
to put in the hours. And don't get me started on such trackers having
'leaderboards' where you're 'competing' with colleagues.

------
AngeloAnolin
"if you’re a writer, time spent in Microsoft Word or Google Docs is
categorized as very productive while social media is very distracting."

Just wondering how about those people whose job is to actually monitor social
media sites, or are the social media personnel for some companies? Their time
obviously should not fall under the _distracted_ category.

And also, even for writers, there would be occasions where you'd need a peek
at social media sites to gather some inspiration. Or if you are writing about
a topic, and social media becomes your source for relevant information, then
that as well should not be construed as wasted time.

Will there be a way to have an objective measurement of every person's
productivity? Collect all data based on outcomes desired for each task? At the
moment, there's just too many variables at play to even consider measuring
productivity.

~~~
r3bl
These are just the defaults.

As someone who briefly used RescueTime, you can flag every website (and app)
on a scale from "highly unproductive" to "highly productive." They can also be
neutral or "in between" (as in, (un)productive, but not highly
(un)productive). So in this situation, you would tag social media as being
productive and move on with your work.

------
pimmen
The stats are a bit misleading maybe for software devolopers because we spend
a lot of time reading specs on features and reading about solutions to
possible problems on Google before we can implement them.

