[chejazi]

One of my university professors always said: "No metrics, no movement."

The opportunity to add value is by intersecting the metrics. As a software engineer who likes to work in cafes, I'd like to know at which cafe I have the highest commit frequency. As a coffee drinker, I'd like to know at which cafe my resting heart rate is the highest (strongest cup!)

[jcheng]

I don't know if this was intended to be tongue in cheek, but I started working remotely 6 years ago and found that where I was working had a huge effect on my productivity. It took a while to identify the pattern but I think it is settings that are unfamiliar or, even better, where I feel very out of place. So the first time I go to a cafe, and especially if there aren't a lot of people with laptops there, I do great. If I keep going there for a month and feel really comfortable, then my productivity falls.

I gave up on trying to understand why, and just accepted it.

(That being said, firing up Self Control[0] and a pomodoro timer provide a much bigger boost for me.)

[0]https://selfcontrolapp.com/

[chejazi]

I was being sincere, and I think I identify with what you mean. A subtle (not discomforting) blanket of anxiousness has the power to snap me into focus.

[hunvreus]

I honestly doubt that the low hanging fruits in terms of productivity hide in these kind of things. I'm pretty sure there are about half a dozen obvious things you could do to drastically optimize your commit output (if that's what you're shooting for) before these tweaks become viable.

EDIT: however I agree on the first point you made. You can't improve something you don't measure. I'm merely pointing at the fact that as of now most tools/products in this space provide nothing actionable beyond the obvious.

[TeMPOraL]

The point being, you have to actually do some movement to reap the benefits of metrics. The current trend among people both in fitness and in ad analytics is to have pretty graphs (with details often abstracted; because smoothing things up and removing scales makes a graph prettier) that give little more than pleasure and sense of being in control. People often don't know what they mean, besides "higher is good, lower is bad". We can do better than that. Charts and dashboards are means to an end.

And I say that as a person who absolutely loves pretty graphs. AprilZero's design is exactly what I dreamed of building for my own tracking. But again, it's not the data that matters, it's what you conclude from it.

[rbinv]

But maybe you just frequent one particular café when you're in a good and productive mood to begin with ;-)

[dragonwriter]

Of course, once you have a hypothesis (this café causes better productivity), you can actively choose to go to that café in circumstances where you wouldn't before, continue tracking, and test the hypothesis.