In my experience, programmers think they know when they're being productive, but they're often wrong: for example, coding for 5 hours straight without realizin

In my experience, programmers think they know when they're being productive, but they're often wrong: for example, coding for 5 hours straight without realizing the time has passed might feel productive, but if you've been doing the wrong thing, or writing buggy or hacked-up code that will cost you in the long run, you probably haven't been nearly as productive as you think you have. Likewise, I often feel totally unproductive when pair programming, because everything feels slow and I'm not just cranking on something, but if I try to think about it objectively it's often the case that I get more done in that time by avoiding mistakes, finding better ways to do things, and by only doing the minimal necessary work. Similarly, to the point of the article, productivity of a team is a different metric than productivity of an individual: interrupting me might cost me 15 minutes of work, but if it saves someone else two hours of wasted work it's a big net win for the team. That's not to say that programmers have no clue, just that our internal radar isn't exactly infallible. People tend to feel "productive" when they feel like they're "getting a lot done," but real productivity depends on whether you're doing the right things and whether you're doing them well. And, let's face it, most programmers (myself included) really enjoy that feeling of just cranking on something and becoming so engrossed that they don't notice time pass. So I think that people are biased towards thinking that always corresponds with maximum productivity simply because it's enjoyable, and not because it's truly always optimal.