What do points mean?
But aside from that, I wrote nearly a month ago about David Seah’s Printable CEO; it’s a system for tracking your progress by assigning more points for completing things that progress your career the most. I’ve been using the sheets to keep track of the things I’ve done for about a month now, and I decided that it was about time to draw some graphs and have a look at the pattern. They’re a bit rough and ready and were knocked up quickly, but because I want to bore the pants off you, here’s the mean number of items per points category, plotted by day of the week:
The interesting thing from my point of view is that it reflects exactly the opposite pattern than I thought it would. Before I started this, I imagined that Mondays and Fridays were my most productive—-Mondays because I feel rested after the weekend, and Fridays because I’m trying to get things done in time for the weekend. What I can see from this graph is that I feel busier on those days because I’m doing a lot of fiddly little things rather than important things. Actually, in terms of important things, Tuesdays and Thursdays are the most productive, as you can also see from this graph (there’s also a lot of variability, as you can see from the whopping great standard error bars):
It’s been quite an interesting process, and has definitely changed my approach to work a bit.
1 While I’m on the subject of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’, last night’s ‘One song to the tune of another’ was an all-time classic: the words of ‘Teenage Kicks’ by The Undertones to the tune of ‘Jerusalem’. ↑
1
As much as I would abhor this type of system if it was placed on me by management, your experiment has piqued my interest. It looks like you actually get some good feedback from it, I may have to try it.----- I get the feeling that Tuesdays and Thursdays are my most productive days too (today it's Wednesday and here I am reading your blog rather than doing important things: QED). But by the size of your error bars I'd say you need to collect rather a few more weeks' worth of data before a real pattern can be discerned - perhaps you can do some significance tests then, and eventually write a paper? ;7)
by pitix @ 16/11/2005 2:12 pm • Permalink •
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bitweever: I agree about having it forced on you---it's certainly something that you need to instigate yourself. For one thing, it would be difficult to be totally honest about it if you were being assessed on it
pitix: Interesting. Yes, much more data is needed, as I mentioned. However, I now feel that I might be influencing the results because I've detected this trend (either by reinforcing or reversing the trend), so I wouldn't put much store by any stats I did on them.
I need a double-blind condition.
by bsag @ 16/11/2005 7:12 pm • Permalink •
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bitweever: Yeah, having this FORCED on you would be totally sucky and lame. I hope this isn't happening anywhere. I didn't think how people would be turned off just by the idea of keeping score on productivity; it was intended as a way to figure out where to focus, without a lot of "hey you didn't do task X" vibe to it.
On the other hand, it might force management to actually provide concrete metrics for productivity instead of winging-it and conveniently forgetting their past directives.
by Dave Seah @ 16/11/2005 10:11 pm • Permalink •
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Very cool...I should graph my data also. How do you determine error?
I've found it interesting to look week-by-week also, but I'm not sure how to analyze that quantitatively. Since I have something of a fluid schedule, I think that's the variability that I find interesting.
There's an interesting pattern in my original point-assignment list, everything worth 5 points or less tend to be "productivity support", and everything 10 points is "productivity". Where productivity for me in this context means "money and revenue". During a good week (when I'm charging billables), the level is pretty high and easy to maintain. When I'm not billing work, the levels are depressingly low, which encourages me to try to raise them by doing the other things. The point values chosen are roughly based on an intuitive sense of how many of those things you have to do before you get to the revenue event of signing new business: having something to show makes its easier to convince someone that you have what it takes, whereas just talking about it tends not to lead to anything except with a lot of repetition.
I'm curious if you found any patterns like this in your customized list, and how it might affect the statistics.
Thanks for writing up your experiences...very interesting to see how you're approaching it.
by Dave Seah @ 16/11/2005 10:11 pm • Permalink •
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Dave Seah: I did find those kinds of patterns, and the process of adapting the list itself was rather enlightening. My 10 pt items are to do with a) getting grant money in, b) increasing my RAE-worthiness (Research Assessment Exercise - an assessment of the quality of research that directly influences funding for Universities) and c) increasing my contribution to my School's TQA score (Teaching Quality Assurance). 5 point things tends to be activity to support those activities, plus networking, which also helps to bolster those aims. 2 point activities are acquiring skills and routine admin, but also an interesting category that I misleadingly call 'Brownie Points' as a short hand.
Academia depends to quite a large extent on reciprocal altruism. When you are a student, supervisors write references for you, or contact their colleagues to recommend you to them, and busy academics give up a whole day (or more than a day, including the reading) to examine your thesis, all for a pitiful honorarium. When you grow up, it's your turn to reciprocate. In addition, when you submit papers to a journal, someone gives up their time (without payment) to peer review it, and you are expected to do the same for others. Then there's sitting on the editorial boards of journals, committees of scientific societies, review panels for grant awarding bodies, etc., etc. So there's quite a lot of activity which isn't directly related to the getting of money or increasing of reputation, but is simply part of being a good citizen in a society of academics.
1 pt things for me are just maintenance of research (buying Lego, for example) or teaching (emailing students, dealing with administrivia).
by bsag @ 18/11/2005 9:12 pm • Permalink •
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