Just feeling productive doesn't mean you are productive and conversely not feeling productive doesn't mean you are not productive. How do you measure a softwar

Just feeling productive doesn't mean you are productive and conversely not feeling productive doesn't mean you are not productive. How do you measure a software developer's productivity? It's very difficult. Reducing the build time might not seem very "productive" but the value it produces over a long time might be higher than any feature or clever code you'd write at this moment. You can feel like you're producing great code but the proof is in the pudding. It might all need to be thrown away and rewritten. Value also depends on other factors. Maybe if you spent more time with the junior in the next cube to ensure his piece turns out good the product would actually be successful. You wrote all that good code and the project was cancelled, what was your real productivity? I go through periods where I don't feel like doing anything and then I go through periods where I have a burning desire to build stuff. Different ideas are in different phases in my mind, some are in long term hibernation, some are ready to execute. EDIT: I know people who create a lot of code. Even good code. The problem is sometimes we didn't actually need that code at all. Very smart people, wrote a ton of good code, with no leverage. So step #1 in being "productive" is knowing where to put your efforts. I say software engineering is all about leverage, when you have leverage a little bit of code will move the world. With no leverage you can write all the code you want.