The Right Way to Measure Productivity (and Why It’s Harder Than it Seems)

A dimension in measuring productivity is looking at the big picture or fine-grained details.

• The big picture: Looking back over the years, how much difference did it make?
• Fine-grained means adding up the hours worked, which gives an immediate measure of progress.

But there is a trade-off. The big picture is slow to measure and may only be visible in the long run.

What matters most is often the hardest to track. We then measure things we don't care about with the hope that it will give some clarity. The solution:

• Pick a few metrics that will estimate what matters. The metrics should be easy to measure and timely enough to give good feedback. Rewarding only hours may mean paying for a lot of overtime and not much useful work.
• Use meta-feedback to tune your short-term metrics. Your big-picture output is harder and slower to measure, but it serves a role in regularly adjusting which of the short-term metrics will estimate progress. For example, if you track the number of essays written for your productivity, it may be good initially, but the quality may suffer in time. Following the articles' results can indicate if "hours per essay" should also become a metric.

Instead of relying on a fixed standard, regularly tweak and adapt what you measure.

Changing what you're measuring may seem like a drawback, but it really makes your work more robust. Meta-feedback on what you measure stops you from reaching a fragile solution.