The 3 Things to MeasureYour Productivity
If you are a high achiever, you want to maximize your resources that make up a significant part of your success. If you do not measure your progress into a number, you have no way of knowing if you are improving. I am obsessed with tracking my progress for personal achievement and satisfaction. The most important items to measure and quantify are your time, money, and educational activities. You should document everything that is measurable and vital to your progress. Quantification is one of the essential habits that can boost your productivity and growth.
Time
I started to track my time using a daily planner. However, writing down on each 15-minute block was not as accurate as I wanted to follow my time. Also, it isn’t easy to quantify the data if recorded on paper.
Then, I started using the app Toggl, which tracks your time even down to seconds. The app also sends a weekly report at the end of the week through e-mail. Tracking time has given me data about the valuable time; where I spent most of the time and how much I waste during the day and week.
I record each activity by category in Excel spreadsheets to calculate the total amount of time spent on each event. The overarching groups on my time tracking report are study, exercise, eat, daily routine, watch, and others. Over the past month of July, I spent a total of 100 hours studying. My total sleeping hours were 252 hours, about nine hours per day, on average. These data can help me build a better habit of knowing what I do daily and areas that I should spend less time.
The only downside of using Toggl is you must remember to record before and after each activity. Besides, if you change your activities frequently between work intervals, it may be time-consuming to change each work on Toggl. I recommend tracking only essential actions that you want to measure and improve over the years. If you want to read more books, only follow how many hours you spend on reading a book per week. Let say you only read one hour for this week; you could aim for two hours next week.
Quantifying the data about time can give me an accurate picture of the current status. Improvement is only possible if you know where to improve, in this case, time management. There could be millions of tips on time management, but the most helpful was to quantify the time I spent on a daily and weekly basis. By knowing where I spent most of the time, I could set specific goals with the numbers in mind.
Money
- Have you budgeted your spending on dollar amounts for this month?
- Do you know how much you spent last month?
- What is your total net worth right now?
The first step to financial stability is to track your daily budgeting and spending. I use the app YNAB, which gives me the whole picture of the monthly and yearly spending reports. I’ve been recording every transaction since November 2016. Now I can view previous years’ financial statements and how the net worth has increased over the years.
It makes me happy to look at this graph every time as the net worth increased slowly, but steadily over the years. The red bar represents debt levels, and the blue bar represents assets. The black line shows the net worth.
This graph shows spending trends for each month. Different colors represent spending categories, such as saving, housing, food, etc. I could easily see which month had the highest spending and where I spent the most.
Knowing financial assets gives a tremendous advantage to plan for future budget and spending. Just like tracking time, you should record every dollar spent and analyze your spending habits for improvement. Financial goals must be quantified into the numbers, and it is one of the most visible items to observe progress.
Books & Movies
I record all the books I read and movies I watched on an excel spreadsheet. Documenting what you read is essential for any readers and content consumers to record everything you read or watch. At the end of the fiscal year, you can compare how much you read to the previous years. When recording, I include the title, author, date you finished reading/watching, category, and a brief comment about the book you read. My annual report consists of the number of books in each category and the total books read.
Here is an example from my record:
I read a total of 155 books so far. I know this number because I track all the books I read for a personal record. I have this book record for the past decade in the excel document. As I go down the list, I can see the book’s names and what the book was about in the comment section.
I do the same thing for the movies or documentaries I watch. I comment on each movie I watch to remember the lessons from watching. If you spend your precious time on something, you should make it a meaningful activity by tracking. By learning about what you read and watch, you could build the data that can help develop personal success habits in the long-term.
I keep it simple when tracking my educational activities to one page of an excel spreadsheet. After recording the number of books you read, you could get the motivation to beat the previous year’s record by setting a goal based on the number of books read — if you read 100 books this year, you could set the goal of reading 110 books next year. Every objective should have a quantifiable number to measure the progress.
Conclusion
All these tracking records are your assets that can build up your success portfolio. These records can be your documents that can be used to set your future goals, plans, and strategies to upgrade your habit. This is how I strive to be the better version of myself tomorrow.
Actions to Take
Track your measurable progress — time, money, and books you read.
Compare your quantified data from the previous week, month, or year.
