Productivity Metrics
The Problem
Nearly everyone who uses a GTD-like system to increase their productivity has a different implementation. Different tools, emphasis on a different aspect of the system, or the incorporation of hacks and techniques all lead to unique workflows. In order to
- determine whether a modification to your system makes a positive difference, and
- compare your system to those of others
it is necessary to have a standard productivity metric.
Potential Metrics
Number of tasks completed per day
Benefits:
- Quantitative
- Unambiguous
- Easy to calculate
Problems:
- Priorities busyness over actual productivity
- Incentivizes over-planning (creating many tasks when a single will suffice)
- Doing many unimportant tasks scores higher than a few important tasks
Tasks completed per day weighted by priority
In this regime, each task would be given a number on a priority scale, perhaps 1-3 or 1-10, with high numbers meaning high priority. The metric, instead of counting tasks, would add the total priority of each task completed.
Benefits:
- Calculable
- Reflects the importance of completed tasks
Problems:
- Not strictly quantitative (assigning priority has a qualitative component)
- Requires more planning time in assigning priority to a task
Earnings equivalent
If someone was paying you to complete the tasks in your trusted system, how much would they have had to pay?
Benefits
- This metric ($) makes productivity comparable not just to other GTD systems, but to any general economic activity
Drawbacks
- Non-deterministic
- Difficult to calculate for many necessary tasks
Number of projects completed per day
Similar to number of tasks completed per day.
Composite metric
A metric comprised of a number of factors:
- number of items in your inbox (closer to 0 is better)
- whether items were captured and processed during the day
- number of items completed
- number of stale projects (> 7 days without completing next actions) (closer to 0 is better)
- ...potentially other items
This would be too cumbersome to calculate regularly without tools to do so.