Bricklayers have measures that are usable by people who know little to nothing about the profession who are incapable of doing the work. This is what people want. An objective measure that can be applied by people functionally incapable of actually doing the work.

Wherein the work isn't repeating existing work no such measure should be expected to exist.

Any creative work is going to suffer from the same problem.

If you asked a brick layer to develop a better workflow for his fellows to work more effectively in a particular sitiation it would be the same. Are you going to measure words per minute?