10 Months at Harvard, Quantified

Re:10 Months at Harvard, Quantified by ximeng on Thursday July 25, 2013 @10:30AM (#6102605)

"I must admit to feeling some hesitation before writing this post, as I fear it may come across as self-indulgent. My motivation in writing it was to communicate how useful self quantification can be. It is a lifestyle change that I believe some can benefit from, and one that can reduce the chronic stress from which far too many of us suffer."

It seems more interesting than useful. Lots of analysis, not much benefit. Maybe

"The only hard targets I currently have is to spend >10% of time writing, and >15% of time reading, which I have hit. This was something I struggled with tremendously before, and I only succeeded when I started tracking work type specifically."

is a benefit, but it's fairly representative in that it's something of a goal within the system rather than an external benefit.

Perhaps there's guilt relieved by realising that a tedious week spent organising a mentoring group increased the amount of interaction as a mentor, but what are the benefits beyond that?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:10 Months at Harvard, Quantified by superfx on Thursday July 25, 2013 @11:22AM (#6102887)

I think it has been useful to me. For one, I'm more motivated to work because if I slack off, I'll be staring at an empty indicator all week long which really upsets me. I suppose it's just a psychological trick that may or may not work for everyone, but it does for me.

The second thing this helps with is project-based tracking. That is super useful, because I had no idea before how much time I'm really dedicating to my different projects. Of course, my initial assumptions have to make sense. I.e. if I decide to spend 25% of my time on a high-risk project and 35% of my time on a more attainable project, those targets have to make sense. But assuming they do, this system helps me match my targets.

I suppose the next step would be to regress those indicators on some external output, like number of papers published, but I think coming up with a sensible metric would be very difficult.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:10 Months at Harvard, Quantified by NhanH on Thursday July 25, 2013 @04:54PM (#6104910)

"but it's fairly representative in that it's something of a goal within the system rather than an external benefit."

But if the system allows us to achieve some desirable goal, why would it need to have any external benefit by itself, besides helping you to attain the goal?

[ Parent | on HN ]