A Study of Productivity: Activity Tracking
Have you ever had an experience that gave you a result that was so far and above your expectation, you just had to wonder? Well, I have so sit back, folks, and enjoy the ride.
I was recently privileged to be included in a productivity “bootcamp” where a group of like-minded individuals are performing daily activities to support our collective goal of improving our productivity. Now, this is tantamount to telling me to run a 5K when I’m a marathon runner. As a student of productivity and a certified Franklin Covey productivity trainer, I believed myself to be fully trained in the art of productivity. David Allen is my nighttime “fun” reading. I eat the “7 Habits” for breakfast. Productivity is an art form and, like any other artist, it requires focus, self-awareness, and the cojones to examine what is not working in your life … and create something beautiful from the struggle. What I’m chronicling below the first activity in the #CharmedGTDProductivityBootcamp. We were to begin tracking our activities each day for later distillation and analysis. I was game and ready for the challenge!
Now, a little about tracking. The tracking of one’s activities has all types of results and is believed to be critical to performance. An article in Psychology Today, titled “Stop Making New Goals—Create Habits,” discussed the formation of habits to achieve a goal. However, one must truly assess their activities, or “habits” before understanding what serves them…and, more importantly, what no longer of benefit. For example, I began tracking my eating in January to create better habits towards my goal of improved health. In tracking my eating habits, I was able to remove routine habits that no longer served me and replace them with more healthy habits to begin marching me to my goal of improved health. 
It is the journey forward that creates the opportunity for growth. Each stumble with my heavy load allows me to really assess the load from a mental and physical perspective. Do I need to carry this much? What am I carrying and how does it benefit me? Does it help me or hurt me? If it hurts me, why do I do this? (You can see how deep this type of exercise can become.) I’ve seen my positive result of food tracking in how I feel, think, and my own sense of self. Tracking my eating and including meditation and periodic self-assessment as an internal tool for focus has resulted in an improved state of health. So, wouldn’t tracking my productivity also help me to achieve improvements in that area?
For the first seven days of August, I tracked my activities, faithfully writing down as best I could the time, activity, and marked each with a key for later analysis. This key was the following coding:
- R/Routine (yellow)
- U/Unexpected or Unplanned (pink)
- P/Planned (blue)
In some cases, I had both an R and P code as something where I planned my routine. In other words, it was a routine activity that I had planned at a specific time and/or day. You’ll note that I later color-coded each entry to help me immediately see the context of my day, e.g., the more “yellow”, the more “routine”, etc.
My analyses created a number of “A-Ha” moments that I’m labeling as “Surprises”. I love nice surprises like the dishes were done or I have a little gift from my husband. Nasty surprises, like a paper cut, can pass me right by. This activity provided no shortages of both the fun and nasty types. And, being positive, the nasty surprises ended up leading to the positive ones. OK, I’m getting ahead of myself and you’ll lose interest so let’s get into the details. Rub your hands together and get ready for the feast!!
August 1st, day 1. I began my tracking using a steno notebook for easy portability. In the beginning, my tracking was neat and artistic…until about 7:30am. Once I arrived at my office, I began to try and track my actual WORK and, by about 9am, I gave up in utter defeat. There was so much going on around me at such a frenetic pace that demanded my attention. Tracking while performing the work was impossible. I had to decide: WORK or tracking. (The term WORK – set apart in capital letters – is to identify the time spent at my job that pays the bills.) I opted to track at a higher level my tasks as “chunks” for my work day. However, the fact that I could not track and do at the same time did not escape my notice. Additionally, looking at my tasks, I was left wondering just what I had accomplished. I was busy so I should have results, right? Just what had I produced besides a head ache? This left me with a feeling of having wasted time yet I felt and believed myself to be very busy. Curious.
P.S. While I initially thought to track in a steno notebook, I soon realized that I wanted to record greater details and also that I wanted it to be pretty, starting with doodles, drawings, and unique lettering. (You all are lucky I could not find my stickers!) By about 3pm, I had ditched my steno notebook and converted it all to the 24-hour tracker … and began to doodle.
August 2nd, day 2: Tracking began as usual and, once again, my work portion of my day exploded into a hot mess. I could not keep up with the level of incoming information. This fact, in turn, gave me the first of a few realizations that I’m calling “surprises” resulting from this activity.
Surprise #1: My bureaucratic job is anything but routine.
Because I could not keep up with just how fast ‘things’ moved, I decided to track it as a “chunk” I called “WORK.” Again, I did not have a feeling of producing anything. I was, however, very busy. I noticed a level of frustration in my energy, too, that resulted from the conflict between what I believed I should have accomplished and what actually happened.
August 3rd and 4th, day 3 and 4: WEEKEND! Tracking became much easier once again. Most of my events were planned and routine with the exception of a nasty Walmart experience and my need to go back and forth to multiple stores to resolve it. There was a very good reason which I now recognize as a lesson learned. This event also led me to my second realization, or “surprise.”
Surprise #2: My “unexpected” events weren’t as keenly felt on the weekend as they were on a random Thursday.
For this surprise, the most obvious possibility was that my unexpected events occurred on different days of the week; one unexpected event occurred on a weekday and one on the weekend. The weekend event felt much easier to manage than those occurring during WORK. I do have more time on the weekend in which to resolve the unexpected event which creates a greater feeling of control. I surmised that another reason could be because the feeling of accomplishment did not resonate with the action or result. In both situations, the unexpected required my full attention. One situation left me feeling satisfied and one did not. Why? The second reason is that, at WORK, my unexpected events are based on others … and their interaction or expectation with me. These unexpected events occurred under my own control. Does the control of the event have any bearing on my feeling of productivity?
In order to fully analyze this, I realized that I needed to track my WORK. By Sunday evening, I resolved to track my WORK day but in two different ways. The first day was a “free-for-all”. What does a day look like without ANY planning? The second day was how my day looked with minimal planning or goal-setting. Is there a difference in how the unexpected events are managed?
Day 5, August 5th: The “free-for-all.” Working from home, I performed my normal routines and planned personal activities. For work, I completed what called to me. There was no order or context other than trying to “stay in the flow.” Notice the HUGE amount of email I did this day. I had a few U’s that required I focus on those as ‘emergencies’ along with a few technology issues. The resolution involved numerous calls, emails, and attempts at system intervention. (I had a few “unexpected” events which really caused my day to careen off the rails into a ditch.) And, here is Surprise #3.
Surprise #3: Email does not create a sense of productivity for me.
The amount of email was necessary, sure, but could have been better sorted and scheduled instead of an taking my immediate attention. Each reaction resulted in my attention to communicating versus my attention on a product or goal. The lack of formality of setting a goal and achieving it was a pain point. On my “surprise” notation, I added an important emphasis here. Because my job is not about email, it can be considered a time waster. If my job involved emailing as a measure of productivity, then I would have been very successful. It was here that I realized context an important distinction in measuring productivity.
Day 6, August 6th: This is an office day for me. On my commute in to my office, I studied a refresher on functional planning and set my Top Five goals for the week. On this day, I tracked work as a big block once again while I prepared for Day 7. (Since Monday was a day I worked from home, I wanted the comparison to also be in the same work environment.) On this day, however, in the afternoon, I completed one of my Top Five goals. I left feeling productive.
Day 7: August 7th: This is where the rubber met the road for me. You’ll see I had way more “pink” or unexpected events yet this is the day I felt the most productive! I want to emphasize that I FELT productive. I also noticed, too, that I had way fewer routine activities and more planned. And, here is Surprise #4 & #5.
Surprise #4: Productivity is planned, can be interrupted, and is contextually measured.
Surprise #5: Productivity is not just a tangible result but is a feeling.
I worked based on my Top Five goals for the week and completed two of them. In the middle of all of my working, had the unexpected payroll issue come up once again. In handling this again, while unplanned, I still felt productive because I created a structure to my day that allowed for producing expected results while also fielding the unexpected. This level of flexibility within my planning created the ability to meet my goals and also handle the unexpected. The feeling of being productive resulted from the completion of tasks that I had identified and not the busy-ness of email.
In summary, this exercise has caused me to rethink how I define productivity, and how my own view of what I “should” be able to do (or be?) impacted how productive I “felt.” Yes, productivity is a feeling based on our own personal assessment of what we believe we “should” – there is that “s” word again – be able to achieve. This was also a good exercise in self-actualization by answering the question of “What do I want out of life, and how can I achieve it?” The measurement of “should” to an expectation can create an unintended feeling of busyness without being productive. Productivity is a feeling and truly reflects how you feel…about yourself and your place in the world.