Learnings From Inaccurate Time Measurement
A month ago, I did a course on Time Management. It was a 90-minute funfilled lecture by Ankur Warikoo, founder of Nearbuy. More than 3500+ people have bought this course. It was wondrous. I took a bunch of interesting lessons that were super-practical which helped me to be more productive.
One of the most important lessons, that is universally applicable, and not only to time management was this: “You magnify what you measure.” This implies that whenever you measure a parameter linked to a habit, you magnify that habit.
The explanation behind this hypothesis is simple. When you measure something, you are technically giving it more significance than the rest of the things you do. You get subconsciously coded to magnify it.
In the context of this course, Ankur advised us to measure our time, to create a report documenting each activity performed during the day. I misinterpreted his advice and started measuring my time. Here's what I did.
The First Formula
I started documenting my daily routine. From the moment I woke till the last blink of my eye, I wrote everything I did in the respective time brackets.
The last task of my day was to evaluate my productivity. I used to calculate the ratio of my working hours to the number of conscious hours.
What Was Wrong With the First Formula
This formula is fundamentally flawed. Why? Because I was measuring the wrong—the *number of hours* I worked. I wasn’t measuring my productivity or efficiency, which I thought I was.
Now, my outcomes don’t disprove the above-mentioned theory. You do magnify what you measure. I was measuring the number of hours I worked, and they did increased day-by-day. For the first two weeks, I was very happy with the results. But later on, I observed a curious pattern. The number of tasks I completed, my actual milestones, remained the same while I was getting busier every day.
So, if it took me 30 minutes to complete a task, I was spending an hour on that. And it made me feel good. Because “who cares how many things I get done, I am busy.” This illusion of busyness blinded me from looking at my unproductive schedule.
Productivity is not about the number of hours you work, it’s the number of things you get done in a given amount of time.
Here’s a very insightful blog on the
busyness paradox
.
So, I was measuring the wrong thing, and over that, I was rewarding myself when those metrics expanded. Which kept me working all the time.
The New Formula
I tried. I failed. I pivoted.
After fruitlessly failing at time measurement, I pivoted. Instead of measuring the number of hours, I started measuring the number of tasks I completed in an hour (tasks per hour i.e. tph).
Here’s how I did it:
I made an n-tasks to-do list every night for the next day.
I calculated the total time it took me to finish all those tasks individually.
I divided n by total time.
This formula worked because it was:
rewarding me for saving time
rewarding me to work faster
rewarding me for finding tools that make my work efficient
rewarding me to relax
punishing me for being distracted (because distractions extended my work hours decreasing my tph score)
Key Takeaways
Here’s a quick summary of the blog, for the *busy* readers!
You magnify what you measure
Measure the right things
Tasks > Time
Reward yourself to save time
Live life scientifically; run experiments on your modus operandi
That’s all for this week, till then, keep experimenting with your lifestyle!
Cheers
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