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My response to Patrick's post on his blog, which I am replicating here ----------- Hi Patrick, thanks for writing a detailed post which you say is an anti-the

My response to Patrick's post on his blog, which I am replicating here ----------- Hi Patrick, thanks for writing a detailed post which you say is an anti-thesis to my post. I agree to most of your key points here that measuring the output for each unit of effort put in is ultra important and that there can be no real progress without measuring productivity. However what I fail to see is that it cannot be an excuse for not working harder. In fact measuring productivity makes you even more motivated to put in more hours as you can (and often do) clearly see that the amount you derive from a business correlates to the hours you put into it. Of course there are gazzilion other factors which determine eventual success such as vision, rightness and smartness of effort, big competitors like Google, intellect, funding. However, somehow I fail to comprehend why such factors should be considered a case against hard work. Regarding your point of “working hard” as a bad strategy because it is easy to copy, that is my point exactly. One may not be subscribing to “working hard” strategy, but that doesn’t guarantee that his competition also doesn’t adopt that stance. Irrespective of his beliefs, competition will work as hard as they can. So you have no other option but to take the best guess (and worst case) and work even harder. No doubt your points on outsourcing, automating and delegation are valid and make sense. Good thing about such activities is that they free you from sub-optimal activities such that you can work harder on the stuff that matters. You can make an exponential dent to your chances of success, if you put in MORE efforts doing things that really matter. Anyhow, I thoroughly enjoyed your post but I still subscribe to my philosophy of working harder. Of course, one should realize when he is bordering at insanity. Mental and Physical Health first. Work later. PS: Google being my competitor gives me even more kicks to put in more effort. I know I can never match them in resources, that is why I avoid working average hours which would eventually spiral to not working at all because, hey, I am competing against Google and of course I stand no chance.

patio11 17y ago
In fact measuring productivity makes you even more motivated to put in more hours as you can (and often do) clearly see that the amount you derive from a business correlates to the hours you put into it. I think it would be interesting if you described what your setup for measuring that was and, in rough terms, what your productivity was at various levels of labor per week. Eric Ries had a phrase called "shadow belief": the unvoiced, unquestionable assumptions we make about the business world we're operating in. My day job had, for decades, a shadow belief about engineering productivity: namely, that it was a constant number per hour, and that therefore the number of kousuu (a unit of engineering production) produced could be computed as kousuu = constant * # engineers * # hours. Then one day quite recently we sat down and said "Hey, we keep obsessive records of how many kousuu we produce. We keep obsessive records of how many hours each engineer works. Let's divide." And we found that the constant changed. Some changes were not unanticipated: our best senior engineers were routinely more productive than our new company employees, OK, training period and whatnot. Some of the differences between expectations and results were so vast that I could not tell you them in good conscience. Don't just say you're measuring. We did that, for decades. Measure. Then, act on it. (I wish I could tell you what my day job found when actually started to measure. I think I can tell you this: there was audible skepticism and derision when we introduced a "temporary, experimental cost-cutting measure" obligating employees to leave at 5 PM two days a week. It was thought that, aside from the sheer un-Japaneseness of it all, it would throw schedules into disarray, necessitate extra crunching on the other days, and be widely ignored anyhow. That was months ago. On Friday, we received word that, on review of Actual Results, the experimental policy was henceforth merely Policy. 90% of the office was not there to read about the news, as the news arrived at 5:02.)
- sachinag 17y ago
  It would be really interesting to hear 1) how you measure - what data do you track, and what tools do you use to do so and 2) how you analyzed (simple Excel, something more sophisticated?). I imagine it's not simply RescueTime. I think many, many people would love to have this to take to their employer and also for themselves.

patio11 17y ago

In fact measuring productivity makes you even more motivated to put in more hours as you can (and often do) clearly see that the amount you derive from a business correlates to the hours you put into it. I think it would be interesting if you described what your setup for measuring that was and, in rough terms, what your productivity was at various levels of labor per week. Eric Ries had a phrase called "shadow belief": the unvoiced, unquestionable assumptions we make about the business world we're operating in. My day job had, for decades, a shadow belief about engineering productivity: namely, that it was a constant number per hour, and that therefore the number of kousuu (a unit of engineering production) produced could be computed as kousuu = constant * # engineers * # hours. Then one day quite recently we sat down and said "Hey, we keep obsessive records of how many kousuu we produce. We keep obsessive records of how many hours each engineer works. Let's divide." And we found that the constant changed. Some changes were not unanticipated: our best senior engineers were routinely more productive than our new company employees, OK, training period and whatnot. Some of the differences between expectations and results were so vast that I could not tell you them in good conscience. Don't just say you're measuring. We did that, for decades. Measure. Then, act on it. (I wish I could tell you what my day job found when actually started to measure. I think I can tell you this: there was audible skepticism and derision when we introduced a "temporary, experimental cost-cutting measure" obligating employees to leave at 5 PM two days a week. It was thought that, aside from the sheer un-Japaneseness of it all, it would throw schedules into disarray, necessitate extra crunching on the other days, and be widely ignored anyhow. That was months ago. On Friday, we received word that, on review of Actual Results, the experimental policy was henceforth merely Policy. 90% of the office was not there to read about the news, as the news arrived at 5:02.)

sachinag 17y ago
It would be really interesting to hear 1) how you measure - what data do you track, and what tools do you use to do so and 2) how you analyzed (simple Excel, something more sophisticated?). I imagine it's not simply RescueTime. I think many, many people would love to have this to take to their employer and also for themselves.