What describes a productive day for you?

Generally it's a feeling I get at the end of the day. Sometimes I can be productive having only completed 1 thing, other days completing 10 things seems unproductive.

I have no concrete measure really. But today seemed unproductive (despite 2 major merges going to our main branch).

Productivity is hard to quantify.

One possible approach is to measure tasks that you have planned for the day vs how much you have completed. But there are so many things beyond your control that can affect it.

Another way, if you are using the Pomodoro Technique is to measure completed pomodoros.

Also recently I tried another way to measure my productivity - try to estimate how much time during a work day is wasted vs how much time I spent on doing something that helps to accomplish my goals. For example, time wasted = meetings with no outcome, unnecessary long workflows, manual processes that can be automated.

But overall personally for me it is a very subjective thing that is not always quantifiable. Maybe there is a silver bullet, but I have not found it yet. Personally I try to combine the 3 approaches above.

Not today!

When the user’s experience has been improved in some way. That’s when I feel productive.

Automating something for myself or the business also feels pretty good too.

I think defines whether you were productive or not in a day is if you completed your goal of the day or not.