It’s been a while since my last personal blog post (I’ve been doing two a week on serverlesscode.com, so check those out), but I’ve been continuing to add metrics around productivity at work and at home.

Last time, I talked about refining feedback loops and using Pomodoro, and that’s continued to work well. I’ve added a hook in Clockwork Tomato to post the end of each session to numbers.today so I can look at week-over-week differences in the number of Pomodoro sessions per day. That’s turned out to be informative, on days when I start earlier (7am instead of 8am) I get more work done, including more sessions in the afternoon.

At first glance, this says “starting earlier makes me work later,” but there’s something else at work. I think that getting started earlier in the morning instead of puttering around the house or reading triggers more focus. Not having these other tasks in the morning means I take shorter breaks later, and can finish my work for the day earlier.

There are two (seemingly obvious) conclusions here. First, when you have work to do, get started! Get over the hump and get to it. You’ll finish sooner, and might even be more efficient. Second, metrics are a good thing. Setting goals is good (like “be more efficient”) but if you can’t measure that, you don’t know if you’re succeeding. I’ve already made several modifications to my schedule based on metrics, and I expect to continue to learn from them.