Have you measured how much of your time is really productive? Don't try to measure it, I'll give
Clarifying, I do not intend to tell you how productive you are, in fact this article is about how productive I am, but considering that I am an average human being and with quite acceptable statistics I can tell you approximately how productive you can be and how to make changes about.
76%
(approximately)
Now I tell you where I got that number and how I got to get it.
Remember I told you not to try to measure it? Well, it is a JOB to do what I did in the last year and I confess that there are margins of error in this regard. First, I installed an application on my computer that measures the time I spend in each application, whatever it may be: Internet browser, document processors, various applications, etc. The tool is called Timing and it is for Mac OS. There are many more options on the market and each one presents the measurements in their own way, some more picturesque than others. If you want to investigate I leave you some names:
I have not used them all. I tried Timing on recommendation, I liked what I wanted and started measuring.
the interesting thing is that I was able to configure each application that I used on my laptop a productivity level, in such a way that the tool counts the total time that I was using the said application and multiplies it by the configured percentage factor.
And here comes a tremendous exercise in honesty, because you cannot fool yourself. For example, I gave the Telegram application 50% productivity, because I know that almost half the time I am writing to people who have to do with my work, be it, clients or colleagues, at Vauxoo. And to be honest half the time it doesn't have to do with work stuff. On the other hand, WhatsApp has 0% productivity. I know there are family groups, friends from school, friends from university, neighbors, etc.
With that in mind then I diagrammed all my applications and sincerely placed a productivity percentage in a range of 0 to 100%.
Another important detail is being able to establish productivity at the URL level in the web browser. As you will see later more than 50% of my time is in the use of a web browser, then it is vital to be able to census my productivity not at the application level as such but at the level of the page, I am visiting.
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So I did things such as: if the URL is named Vauxoo or Odoo the productivity is 100%. If it has the name of any of the clients I manage, 100% productivity, and so on.
And the social media? Everything that is Twitter, Instagram, 0%. Youtube? I placed 25% because I see things related to work on several occasions.
A great protagonist: email. Here at both the URL and application level (I have been testing for a few months Kiwi) set 100%.
With everything configured, there are still things that fall into “unclassifiable” and it takes me a few minutes at the end of the day to manually sort them (This is part of the JOB) and I honestly didn't get to do it 100% of the 365 days. Maybe I will let it go in about 25 to 30 days.
Now what did I measure?
Total Time
Daily Activity
Average hours per day of the week. As they see quite evenly from Monday to Friday, minimum 7h 4m on Fridays maximum 8h 35m on Thursdays. Again it is just time of use.
Daily Productivity
Graphically it is the multiplication of the active hours with all the productivity factors that I mentioned that I had configured. It varies between 75% and 78% from Monday to Friday. I cannot say that there is any important peak in the week.
Most Active Hours
The average distribution throughout the day of the hours of use on the computer. As you can see, between hours 10 and 13, and after 15 to 17 they are the most active.
More productive hours
Here productivity does not show peaks, since I am almost always doing the same activities with the same level of occupation, no matter if I use the computer more or less time.
And how does it look during the year?
Measuring from April 30, 2019 to April 29, 2020
Colors are part of the project name configurations that correspond to clients and other regular activities such as R&D, Operations, Sales Support, etc.
And where is my time going?
Here is the pulp of the analysis
As I said at the beginning, the web browser takes more than half the time of use. So the importance of catching productivity by URL.
Instant messaging and video calling reveals the nature of my work. My collaborators and clients attend them remotely. Much of my time I did Home Office in the last year (here you can see a post related to productivity doing Home Office).
Seeing the Timing application, managing all these statistics took me almost 5 hours a year (in the end it is not so much work).
By space, I only show the first 19 apps that I consumed the most.
I only used Kodi to watch a movie, the rest I saw on VLC, hehehehehe.
As a final result, although I mentioned it at the beginning, the productivity that this measurement scheme gave at least was: It is important to indicate that the time in which
I use my mobile phone for both working and procrastinating is not included in this analysis. Likewise, phone calls or physical meetings that consist of not being on my computer, and that was productive time do not enter this statistic either. But not being most of the time I can say that between 75 to 80 percent is my level of productivity.
As a final message for you, I don't know if these numbers and these applications can make sense with your daily activity. If at any time you dare to measure yourself and you get a similar result, which I am sure will be between 70 and 80 percent, take into account the following: If you are being required between 7 and 8 hours of quality time in your, You have two options: you work between 10 to 11 hours a day or you increase your productivity to more than 90%.
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