Well, I didn’t exactly state any particular experiments in the above post, but I did get some results.
First, the system of measuring my time worked just fine. RescueTime and similar software products do this as well and I encourage anyone considering doing experiments on yourself to get one or arrange a system like I did and then just start measuring. You’ll get a nice baseline to compare to. It’s surprisingly difficult to notice a significant difference and if you don’t have a quantitative approach and historical data, it might be impossible to say if some experiment made any difference. You might think that improving your productivity with some method will feel somehow different, but it won’t. The only way you can say for sure is to have some kind of measuring system.
The measurement system and subsequent noticing that I wasn’t nearly as productive as I’d like to be didn’t make much of a difference. I could clearly see how I spend my time and what kind of events hindered my productivity, but this alone didn’t improve my overall efficiency.
The experiment I did on myself was to start using the Pomodoro method. On average, I got roughly 20-25% more real work done per workday. (Say the baseline was 4 hours which improved to approx. 5 hours a day.) It sounds somewhat pathetic, but I could sustain this over long term. (Since then I’ve switched jobs and I have different kind of desktop setup and I don’t have a similar measurement anymore.) I didn’t become a productivity monster over-night and I do have difficulty motivating myself some days. Pomodoro doesn’t help when I just don’t have the motivation. But now I know that I can improve my efficiency when I am on the groove. I think the difference is that the normal way of chunking the workday drains some mental resource faster and sometimes that will result in the disability to re-focus after a longer pause.
So, all in all, I recommend setting up a system of measuring what you really do during your computer time. But that won’t, in and of itself, make a difference. But it will provide a platform that enables for you to experiment on yourself.
It’s been nearly a year since this post. I’m curious what your results are, if any.
Well, I didn’t exactly state any particular experiments in the above post, but I did get some results.
First, the system of measuring my time worked just fine. RescueTime and similar software products do this as well and I encourage anyone considering doing experiments on yourself to get one or arrange a system like I did and then just start measuring. You’ll get a nice baseline to compare to. It’s surprisingly difficult to notice a significant difference and if you don’t have a quantitative approach and historical data, it might be impossible to say if some experiment made any difference. You might think that improving your productivity with some method will feel somehow different, but it won’t. The only way you can say for sure is to have some kind of measuring system.
The measurement system and subsequent noticing that I wasn’t nearly as productive as I’d like to be didn’t make much of a difference. I could clearly see how I spend my time and what kind of events hindered my productivity, but this alone didn’t improve my overall efficiency.
The experiment I did on myself was to start using the Pomodoro method. On average, I got roughly 20-25% more real work done per workday. (Say the baseline was 4 hours which improved to approx. 5 hours a day.) It sounds somewhat pathetic, but I could sustain this over long term. (Since then I’ve switched jobs and I have different kind of desktop setup and I don’t have a similar measurement anymore.) I didn’t become a productivity monster over-night and I do have difficulty motivating myself some days. Pomodoro doesn’t help when I just don’t have the motivation. But now I know that I can improve my efficiency when I am on the groove. I think the difference is that the normal way of chunking the workday drains some mental resource faster and sometimes that will result in the disability to re-focus after a longer pause.
So, all in all, I recommend setting up a system of measuring what you really do during your computer time. But that won’t, in and of itself, make a difference. But it will provide a platform that enables for you to experiment on yourself.