Stop being a productivity nerd, and chill out

Re:Stop being a productivity nerd, and chill out by btilly on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @10:33AM (#1010046)

The article missed the most important point, which is mental flow. If you are engaged in anything complex then a certain amount of your job can only be done when you have established a good mental flow. Tracking your time closely will keep you from ever entering mental flow, and therefore blocks productivity.

Put into pg language, detailed time tracking only works for people on a manager's schedule, and not those who are makers. See http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html for an explanation of that.

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Re:Stop being a productivity nerd, and chill out by mikemainguy on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @11:05AM (#1010110)

I disagree, part of the value of time tracking is that you can illustrate the many distractions you have during a day and consciously block off time to get into flow. Obviously this doesn't apply if you set your own priorities and objectives, but often (in organizations bigger than 1) your priorities are set or impacted by someone else's contribution.

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Re:Stop being a productivity nerd, and chill out by btilly on Tuesday December 22, 2009 @11:19AM (#1010129)

That depends on how you do time tracking.

The most commonly described strategy is to write down what you are doing every 15 minutes. That definitely kills mental flow. A more useful one is to get a Freshbooks account and track whenever you change tasks.

When someone talks about time tracking I usually assume they are talking about something like the first strategy.

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