+1 Especially in a discipline that requires solving new problems. One can appear unproductive, because it is hard to get a metric on thinking about a problem.

+1 Especially in a discipline that requires solving new problems. One can appear unproductive, because it is hard to get a metric on thinking about a problem. It might take a few days of writing junk then deleting it, no commits coming for review, whiteboarding the problem, slowly learning best how to solve it. Then a week later light bulb comes on and you can solve it. Code then gets written at high speed. And your manager thinks you're lazy, but worth keeping you around because when you work it's fantastic. But really, you've been working all along. That writing of code was only possible because of the time it was took to think about a problem.