I'm a PhD student, so apart from once-a-week conversations with my supervisor, I'm on my own when it comes to picking what to do today. For the objective metri

I'm a PhD student, so apart from once-a-week conversations with my supervisor, I'm on my own when it comes to picking what to do today. For the objective metric of productivity, I've found Rescue Time [1] very helpful. It is literally a little virus that sits there watching everything you do (including what websites you visit, what programs have focus, and so on,) and uploading it all to the cloud. Then, the kicker; a weekly email saying what fraction of your time was spent productively, and the total hours spent on productive stuff (you can configure what's productive pretty finely.) you can view all the graphs and charts you want, but ultimately I find total hours logged, and % productive, to be the only two numbers I need. (it also sets you goals; N productive hours a day, less than M distracting hours per day, and so on, and reports your success or failure in the email too.) [1] https://www.rescuetime.com/ https://www.rescuetime.com/