When are you most productive?

When are you most productive? Collapse

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Do you want to have a comment that is way too long for a question so short? Here, have one.

You tell me "make this better" and then remove all limitations on hours and time of day on when to do it, with only expectation being that there will be delivery and that changes are communicated. No feature requests, just "better".

I'd likely be working during late afternoons, and occasionally at nights. I'd probably work less hours than I do now.

Most likely nothing immediately obvious happens. Code changes here and there. However over the long term:

• Conversion and user happiness metrics improve
• Team members complete their tasks quicker
• Team spends less time on bugs

What has happened? Users are happy. Team is happy. There have only been some code changes!

Code is a language. People read it. You take the time to make it clear, remove things that don't make sense, consider what helps a developer get things done, and when there is less friction it is easier to understand each part of the underlying system the code reflects.

UI is a language. People experience it. You take the time to make it clear, remove things that don't make sense, consider what helps a user get things done, and when there is less friction it is easier to understand each part of the underlying system the UI reflects.

I also think productivity is a lie. It is a metric of accomplishing things. I rather replace it with a state of least friction, because that is what it really is. To be able to do things well you need time, well-being, and support. Accumulated skill and knowledge helps, but those are gained by the other three. If you are a curious person you will eventually become an expert in anything given enough time, well-being, and support.

Eventually "productivity" means that you don't do certain things, because you don't need to do them. Say, you can simply fix a problem immediately hitting the right thing. Or better yet, you create things so that some problems never arise. This is totally invisible "productivity". But you can't measure it, because it is something that never happens.

If you want an ultra productive team you want to have a lot of problems that never happen. Put other way, team has to make sure that they choose the right problems to have. Also, over time it makes sense there are people who work to make sure possible problems may not arise, even if this means they're not providing the short term feature accomplishment productivity.

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TL:DR; I'm most productive when I change things indirectly resulting to people wasting less time cumulatively thus making everyone else "more productive".