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1. Vitamin R 2 54 – Personal Productivity Tools
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In a world with countless life hacks and must-have morning routines, we’re all searching for the latest and greatest way to boost productivity. As employees, we want to do more in a shorter amount of time. When we represent our organizations, we want to generate more revenue with fewer resources. And we’re all trying to show that the tools we use actually have an effect on productivity.

The real challenge is proving that value of our efforts. How do you calculate productivity in employees, an organization, or from office productivity software?

This article will walk you through the different formulas to measure productivity at all levels (employee, organization, and software) and give some quick tips and tricks to improve productivity. We’ll also share a case study from market research firm, Forrester, and how they calculated the value of Smartsheet, an office productivity and work management tool.

Calculating Productivity in Employees

Many external factors can affect your organization’s productivity -- the national economy, a recession, inflation, competition, etc. Although you can’t control everything, you can control and measure employee performance. Employee productivity has a huge impact on profits, and with a simple equation, you can track productivity per individual, team, or even department.

You can measure employee productivity with the labor productivity equation: total output / total input.

Let’s say your company generated $80,000 worth of goods or services (output) utilizing 1,500 labor hours (input). To calculate your company’s labor productivity, you would divide 80,000 by 1,500, which equals 53. This means that your company generates $53 per hour of work.

You could also look at labor productivity in terms of individual employee contribution. In this case, instead of using hours as the input, you would use number of employees.

Let’s say your company generated $80,000 worth of goods or services in one week with 30 employees. You would divide 80,000 by 30, which equals 2,666 (meaning each employee produced $2,666 for your company per week).

Calculating Productivity by Industry

While the formula to calculate employee productivity appears fairly straightforward, you may want to make tweaks based on industry. How you define and measure productivity changes based on your job, so you’ll have to adjust your equation.

For example, the unit of service (UOS) will change depending on the job. The labor productivity formula doesn’t require a UOS, but defining it can be helpful to add context to the output. A salesperson may have “calls made” or “deals closed” as his or her UOS, while a housekeeper in a hotel might have “rooms cleaned per shift” as her UOS.

Benchmarks and Targets

Productivity benchmarks and targets also change depending on the industry. Some jobs already have basic benchmarks established. For example, customer service representatives have benchmarks that establish how long a “productive” call should take. However, many companies will have to establish these benchmarks themselves.

And, based on these benchmarks, you may decide to change the target productivity. In many jobs, like customer service jobs, employee don’t have much control over their own productivity (i.e. it depends on how many calls they receive, which they can’t control). In that case, it’s unrealistic to say they should target 100% productivity, so you may lower the target.

Industry Factors to Consider

When you calculate productivity using the labor productivity method, your outputs will change based on the industry. Here are some examples:

• Sales: To measure sales productivity, you should measure a variety of additional outputs, like the number of new accounts opened, the number of calls made, and the volume of sales in dollars.
• Services: The service industry is one of the hardest industries in which to calculate productivity because of the intangible outputs involved. You could measure the number of tasks performed or the number of customers served.
• Manufacturing: If you manufacture goods, you may want to use output per worker-hour required to produce a single product. In other words, you would want to calculate the product cost of one unit.

Measuring Efficiency

While productivity measures quantity, efficiency measures quality. You could calculate a very high productivity number per employee, but that number alone doesn’t give you any insight into the quality of work (in theory, an employee could seem very productive, but actually be producing horrible outputs).

To compare the productivity numbers against a benchmark, you can compare the current productivity with the standard amount of effort needed for the same output. Divide the standard labor hours by the actual amount of time worked and multiply by 100. The closer the final number is to 100, the more effective your employees are.

For example, let’s say the standard labor hours for a certain project is 80 and the actual amount of time worked is 92. You would divide 80 by 92, and multiply by 100, calculating your efficiency to be 87%.

As you compare productivity and efficiency, there are a few different ratios to consider:

• Idle time ratio: (Production downtime / total labor hours) x 100
• Activity ratio: (Expected hours needed to produce actual output / actual hours need to complete) x 100
• Labor capacity: (Actual hours worked / total budgeted labor hours) x 100

Longitudinal Reporting

The biggest benefit to measuring employee efficiency is in longitudinal reporting, where you calculate efficiency over a period of time. This allows you to identify trends that may impact how you organize staff, or hire and remove employees.

Measuring long-term efficiency and productivity can also help you decide who should receive a promotion or bonus. And lastly, this type of reporting can play a role in predictive modeling: if you know an employee’s efficiency rate, then you can predict how many items/tasks will be produced or completed in a certain amount of time.

Calculating Productivity in an Organization

1. Partial factor productivity

This formula is made up of the ratio of total output to a single input. Managers tend to use this formula most often because the data is available and easy to access. Also, partial factor productivity equations are easier to relate to specific processes because they only deal with one input.

To calculate partial factor productivity, let’s say that a company produces $15,000 worth of output and the weekly value of all inputs (labor, materials, and other costs) is $8,000. You would divide 15,000 by 8,000, calculating a partial factor productivity of 1.8.

2. Multifactor productivity

Whereas the partial factor productivity formula uses one single input, the multifactor productivity formula is the ratio of total outputs to a subset of inputs. For example, an equation could measure the ratio of output to labor, materials, and capital. This method is a more comprehensive measure than partial factor productivity, but it’s also harder to calculate.

We’ve asked Dan Keto, a productivity expert from Easy Metrics, to provide an example to illustrate one possible multifactor productivity equation.

One of our clients manages cross-docking operations for one of the nation's largest retailers. Cross-docking is where you take imported containerized ocean freight, unload it, then reload it into outbound truck freight. It is basically like taking apart a Rubik's cube and then reassembling it. The industry paradigm is to look at the production metric for the workers handling the freight in terms of cases per hour (CPH). Over a longer period of time, this is a reasonable metric. However, to manage operations daily per employee, it is not effective.

Each freight container can have from 40 cases to 20,000 cases on it depending on the type of product on the container and have as many as 100 different SKUs. The freight mix has a dramatic impact on the time it takes to process the work. Depending on the container mix, CPH can vary from 20 cases per labor hour to over 400.

Using CPH, the client was unable to have any consistency in either its productivity or labor forecast requirements because they were not using other factors present in the data to more accurately calculate the labor standard. By incorporating SKUs, splits, case weight and cube into the calculations, we were able to develop a multi-factor labor standard that could accurately and consistently predict the amount of labor required for each container of freight.

Using a linear regression model, the standard formula for this method is

HOURS = AX + BY + CZ + D

In the case of the above example, HOURS = A*(# Cases) + B*(Splits) + C*(SKUs) + D*(Cube) + E*(Weight) + F. The coefficients A-F are the calculated weighting factors multiplied against the input to get you the end result. These coefficients can be either calculated using time in motion studies (industrial engineering model) or if you have a large enough data set, linear regression tools. Modern technology and big data can now give even small operations the ability to calculate cost effectively multi-factor productivity standards.

The end result using the above example was that the client was able to see down to each employee what the productivity level was and then proactively manage and train accordingly. Labor costs were reduced by over 30%.

3. Total factor productivity

This formula combines the effects of all the resources used in the production of goods and services (labor, capital, material, etc.) and divides it into the output. This method can reflect simultaneous changes in outputs and inputs, however they do not show the interaction between each output and input separately (meaning they are too broad to be improve specific areas).

Once again, this equation is hard to calculate. Our productivity expert from Easy Metrics, a labor management system, shares an example to illustrate one possible calculation.

Measuring total factor productivity is both art and science. The key thing to keep in mind when building out this productivity metric is to focus on inputs that have a reasonable correlation for cost and efficiency to the output. Engineers will often want to measure every possible input factor around a process. Using big data analysis, we have often found that the correlation of many of these input factors is below the natural variance (noise) that occurs within the process, so collecting that information is often not worth the cost of doing so.

One of our customers is a large food processor that produces packaged vegetable products. They have roughly 200 employees per shift, working 16 equipment driven production lines and approximately 1000 different product SKUs. Their standard metric was to look at lbs per labor hour produced to measure their efficiencies, however this can be very misleading because depending on what the product is, there is a high variance between each product.

We worked with them to increase the number of factors measured to get a clear understanding of overall productivity as well as identify areas to focus on that can drive higher productivity. These factors were:

• Machine uptime: Measured as a percentage of shift hours
• Missing time: Variance between worker time clock time and time on production line
• Labor standard versus lbs/hr: Developed multivariate production standards based on pack style and commodity type/mix. Result scored as a percentage of standard where 100% means operating at expected productivity level.
• Product yield/loss: Qualitative factor that measured output weight versus input weight
• Input product quality factor: Commodity quality variances create variances in productivity
• Production run factor: Takes into account time to switch lines over to new product types. Short runs proportionately have comparatively larger set-up times per pound produce.

The end result was a comprehensive reporting dashboard with one macro result of the total productivity factor, scored as a percentage where 100% is daily goal, then each above sub-factor broken down so they could identify deficiencies. Each sub-factor is weighted in proportion to its importance. Labor standards and machine uptime were give weightings of each 30% with the other factors weighted less since those two factors were the primary driver of productivity.

Total Productivity Factor = 0.30 × Machine Uptime + .10 × Missing Time + .30 × Labor Standard + .10 × Product Yield + .10 × Input Quality Factor + .10 × Production Run Factor

The client now has clear visibility into their operations and the information at hand to address deficiencies as they arise.

Other Things to Consider

Once you have identified the formula that works best for you organization, there are a number of other factors to consider:

• Productivity index: Because productivity is a relative measure, it must be compared to something else for the data to be valuable. You may have a set of numbers representing your organization’s productivity, but how do you know if those are good numbers or bad numbers? To understand your own organization’s productivity, you must create a productivity index. This is the ratio of productivity measured in a certain period of time to the productivity measured in a base period. For example, if the base period’s productivity is 2 and the following period’s productivity is 2.3, the productivity index would be 2.3/2 = 1.15, meaning that your organization's productivity had increased 15%. By tracking these numbers over time, you can identify patterns and evaluate success or failure.
• Value added: Value added is a common measure for goods and services (output). It is the difference between what a customer pays and what the business pays for the raw materials. The higher the value of a product or service, the more money that can be put toward wages, profits, or taxes. Value added is calculated by subtracting the total cost from the sales of output.
• Utilization: Utilization measures management’s work. It looks at labor (available time) to open work and indicates how well managers have used labor resources. For example, there are 450 working minutes in an eight-hour shift. If 380 of those minutes were spent actually working, that person’s utilization would be 84%.

Calculating Productivity From Office Productivity Software

You know that technology helps your employees and organization be more productive, but how can you measure and prove it?

Calculating the value of office productivity software isn’t as clear cut as calculating productivity for employees or your company. There is no single formula that will generate the ROI from a new tool.

However, there are a couple of different tactics you can implement to help you prove the value of office productivity tools.

• Compare metrics before and after implementing the tool: Before you start calculating value and productivity from a tool, you must track metrics before the tool has been implemented. You need to have numbers to compare against, otherwise you won’t be able to attribute any upticks to the office productivity tool. If possible, track total numbers on a yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily basis before the tool. For example, in a subscription-based company, you should track trials, conversions, upgrades, downgrades, and cancels for each timeframe. Then, after you implement the tool, you can track the same metrics and compare numbers. While you won’t be able to 100% correlate changes to the new tool (other factors could also be contributing), you’ll have a strong anecdotal cause.
• Frame value in terms of employee time: Once employees are using the tool, ask each person how much time he or she is saving. For example, if your office productivity software automates a process that used to be managed full time by an employee, you’re essentially saving that person’s annual salary. Or, if the tool saves a certain employee 5 hours a week, figure out how much you are paying that employee per hour and multiply that by 5 to calculate the total savings per week.

Case Study: How Forrester Calculated Productivity from Smartsheet

Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company, quantitatively calculated the value of Smartsheet, a collaborative work management tool, in its study, “The Total Economic Impact of Smartsheet.” Forrester’s approach acts as a case study to help other organizations figure out how to assign a monetary value to software.

Forrester calculated the following business benefits from using Smartsheet:

• 25% increase in productivity of work teams, leading to $3,609,375 in savings over three years.
• 21% time savings for project, product, and process managers, leading to a $5,890,500 savings over three years.
• A reduced cost of $835,200 over three years to consolidate customer issues, increasing the responsiveness of sales and service engineers.
• Improved resourcing around projects, resulting in a cost avoidance of $450,000 over three years.
• ROI of 1,437%

How did Forrester come up with these numbers? Here is the framework and methodology they followed:

1. Interviewed internal Smartsheet employees across departments
2. Interviewed organizations currently using Smartsheet
3. Constructed a financial model populated with the cost and benefit data obtained from the interviews.
4. Risk-adjusted the financial model based on issues and concerns highlighted in interviews.

After extensive research and collecting hard data, Forrester plugged in their findings into a table like this:

Here is a formula to replicate this approach for your own organization:

Vitamin R 2 54 – Personal Productivity Tools

Number of teams in your organization X weekly productivity gain for team in hours X number of weeks per year excluding vacation X average hourly rate X percentage of utilization annually = increased productivity before risk adjustment

Then, once you get that number, you’ll need to adjust for risk (this requires that you assign a percentage value to represent risk in your organization).

Increased productivity before risk adjustment X risk adjustment percentage = risk adjustment in dollars

Increased productivity before risk adjustment - risk adjustment in dollars = final increased work team productivity

Quick Tips to Improve Productivity

After you’ve gone through and calculated productivity at the employee, organization, and software level, the next logical question is, “How do I improve the productivity?”

Here are some simple tips and tricks to improve productivity at all levels:

Improving Employee Productivity:

• Set clear goals: Employees are more motivated to go above and beyond when they have clear expectations and guidelines. By sharing specific goals with the team, they’ll be able to better manage their time and optimize productivity.
• Provide feedback on a regular basis: Effective feedback improves team morale and encourages employees to grow and do better. Make sure to give continuous feedback that focuses on action, rather than the person, and be precise.
• Give them the right equipment: Ask employees what tools and equipment they need to be successful and make sure they work! You don’t want to reduce productivity simply because computers or software aren’t functioning properly.

Improving Organizational Productivity:

• Design an incentive program: Employees work harder when they feel respected and appreciated. An incentive program, like offering extra vacation time or bonuses, can motivate an entire company to work harder. And an incentive program doesn’t even have to have monetary value to be effective. Something as simple as an employee recognition program can boost productivity.
• Ensure senior leadership buy-in: When you set organizational goals, make sure you have leadership buy-in. Leaders are always being watched and judged, so they need to sset a good example. If employees see them leaving early every day or on Facebook for hours, they’ll start to think that’s okay too.
• Encourage flexible schedules: Although it sounds counterintuitive, requiring all employees to follow the same rigid schedule is bad for morale and company productivity. Allowing employees to work from home, set their own schedules, and/or have unlimited PTO actually enhances loyalty and productivity.

Improving Software Productivity:

• Get the whole team on board: You won’t move the needle if only one person is using the office productivity tool. The key to generating value is to ensure widespread adoption. If everyone is using the same tool, your team can move faster and get more work done.
• Leverage free trainings: If employees don’t understand how to use a tool out of the gate, they just won’t make the time to learn it. It could be the easiest tool to learn, but employees may feel overwhelmed and not know where to start. Take advantage of the training options software companies typically offer, from on-demand videos to free webinars to in-person sessions.
• Explore integrations: Employees use dozens of different apps on a daily basis and if a new tool doesn’t connect or work with the apps they already use, they’ll forget about it. The goods news is that most productivity tools offer integrations with other tools like Google Apps, Evernote, Tableau, and others.

Improve Productivity with Real-Time Work Management in Smartsheet

Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change.

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Notes from trying to learn about Vitamin-R version 2:¹

Shortcuts

global:

• ⌘⌥R (Bring to front/hide) [default: Cmd-R]
• ⌘⌥N (bring up Now & Later board)
• ⌘⌥L (Later board)
• ⌘⌥S (Scratchpad)
• ⌘⌥O (Objectives)
• ⌘⌥⇧O (read objective aloud)
• ⌘⌥S (start time slice)
• ⌘⌥U (pause/resume time slice)
• ⌘⌥E (end time slice)
• ⌘⌥B (start timed break) [deleted]

in-app:

• ⌘-1 (toggle Statistics Window)
• ⌘←/⌘→ previous/next screens
• ⎋ [Esc] or ⌘W: hide/dismiss Vitamin-R
• ⌘↑ bring up the gear menu
• ⇥/⇧⇥ move between controls (outside text field). You need to use control key in field (i.e. ⌃⇥)

Checklist for tasks/objectives

• immediate (can be completed in time slice)
• specific
• actionable

Reasoning

Vitamin R 2 54 – Personal Productivity Tool Reviews

The purpose is to break up large tasks into short time slices with specific reachable objectives. Each slice moves closer to the goal while not triggering fight-or-flight response to prevent procrastination.

• Vague objectives cause procrastinations (uncertainty triggers fight-or-flight response)
• Unreachable objectives lead to failure (setting unreachable ambitious goals reinforce failure behaviours “not quite good enough”)
• Small successess = motivation (e.g. GTD forces next action”. success breeds success)
• Attention is more limited than time (quality time is hard to come by and when differs from person to person)
• We can’t multi-task (esp. “male-differentiated”or “l-mode” brains) due to 5-7 sized in working memory
• Distractions are killer (causes us to dump the 6-8 working memory stack, one distraction is more costly than the time it takes to deal with it because of that)
• Exocortex (external cognitive artifiacts) fills in gaps in brain function (ex. external tools like a paper and pencil can assist in tasks like long division)
• L-mode to R-mode (expertise is usually R-mode but L-mode works in conjunction to train that, also need to do something if R-mode doesn’t have an answer)
• Time slices are the building blocks (aka chunk of time, sprint, time box, pomodoro. Really an “attention slice” because we can only concentrate on one thing for a limited time)
• Pomodoro Technique: Developed by Francesco Cirillo using a (ticking) tomato kitchen timer. 25 minutes of work with 5 minutes breaks 4 times followed by 15 minute break. It may be a bit rigidm but can be customized with a continous ticking timer (® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Notifications ⇒ During Time Slice) and by setting the default settings on the workflow (® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Workflow)

Workflow

1. Define Time Slice through the define objectives popup: consists of objective and time frame
   • clear, specific, and easily reachable (can be completed in time frame) objective [see checklist above]
   • define time slice duration: by dragging the slider
     • ideally, time slices of 15-25 minutes with breaks (it’s an art)
     • two indicators: the Resistance Level and the Motivation Level: these are linked to duration and provide a guide to choosing, they are not logged.
   • eliminate distractions (visual clutter) by hiding non-essential applications and/or desktop (esp. social media, games, movies, music, e-books
     • can always exclude certain apps from the list (or always ignore certain apps) via: ® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Distractions
   • can restore recent objectives
   • can tag quickly
2. Work on Time Slice to help you stay focused by reminding you of your objectives and the time pressure that you are under
   • ideally time splices are small
   • Visually, the menu bar displays the remaining time
   • Audio cues through periodically play ticking clock sounds (optional)
   • Can also block out distractions in noisy environments through sound masking with Noise Machine integration via ® ⇒ Tools ⇒ Noise Machine to play noisescapes. If you need all 29 noisescapes, download Noise Machine and install it and Vitamin-R will recognize it immediately. Tips
     1. Start with a low volume setting. You need to give your brain time to get used to the new sound. Starting at a low volume, and only going up in volume once you no longer consciously perceive the noise, is a good way of acclimating yourself to this technique.
     2. Beware of headphone volume settings. Using headphones amplifies listening damage. If environmental noise is a big issue for you, you might want to invest in a pair of isolating earphones.
     3. Try “pink” noise first. Most people find “white” noise to be annoying, and many of those who can tolerate it find that it takes a lot of getting used to. “Brown” noise seems easier to get used to than “white” noise, while “pink” noise is preferred by many. Experiment to find what works best for you!
     4. Use background noise only when you have to. There is little point in training yourself to ignore white noise if you have a quiet workplace or do not find the noise around you distracting.
   • Use speech synthesis to inform you of the time passing. Fully customizable:
     • how much time has already elapsed
     • how much time is left
     • re-state your objective
3. Record & Assess: to allow you to become more aware of what works for you and keep you motivated by recording your successes. It will ask you to:
   • rate your attention/focus level
   • mark the time slice as overall success
   • mark objective as completed
   • if you have not managed to complete the time slice, it guides you through the process of assessing whether you should continue immediately or take a break first.
   • It will automatically record the details of your time slice and your assessment of it to allow you to gain more awareness of our work habits
     • objective
     • tags
     • time-frame
     • duration
     • completion status
     • concentration level
4. Timed or Informal (open-ended) Break
   • You are then sent to one of the above
   • Guilt free breaks are good (recharge batteries, avoid injury/health issues, allow R-mode to trigger)
     • timed breaks prevents open-ended ones/procrastination without the guilt or hurdle of having to overcome resistance each time, by promising yourself to stop working for a finite time period
     • the priming technique idea is to plan what to work on while taking a break by using the Now & Later Board (and allow our r-mode brain to work on it during break). This prevents having work stopped at a decision point (drawing a blank) that isn’t addressed. You do this by inserting a question to help start next time slice, think about it for a few seconds, and think, “I’ll need to have a decision by the time I come back.”
     • leaving breadcrumbs Make it easier to restart tasks. One problem of breaks is dumping working memory and having to reconstruct it. The idea is to write working stack to a text editor (just enough to jog the memory) so it can be restored when starting work again. You can do this by putting (only a few thoughts) in the Now & Later board below.
5. Go to 1
   • If timed, this is automatic
   • If open-ended, you need to go to Vitamin-R

Now & Later Board

now & later board is a full-features RTF scratchpad to leave anything on to be a “memory outside yoru brain” (c.f. exocortex)

• notepad that you can use to keep track of the resources you need to achieve your current objective
• jot down notes to dump your working memory
• remember things for later and getting them out of your mind without having to worry about forgetting them
• plan your current activity
• keep snippets

It is also a good place to review before taking a break (a la priming).

It is divided into four different sections:

• Now Pad is for dumping your working memory to make it easier to recover you were should you get interrupted or run out of working memory.
• Later Pad is for everything that goes through your head but isn’t relevant to what you are working on. Put it here, forget about, and continue on with task so you won’t worry about forgetting about it whille working.
• Objective section (same as time slice objective) is there to remind you of what you are currently working on and modify it if you really have to.
• Scratch Pad is a free form note taking tool for everything that does not fit neatly into the other categories

There are ready-made templates that get inserted at the beginning of the relevant sections and walk you through the questions to ask and the things to write down. You can restore them by clicking on the gear icon in the bottom-left of the Board.

Examples:

• Phone call during time splice you have to pick up. Jot down phone number in Later pad and keep working.
• If you forget what you are working on use the Objective section, then read the New pad to get back into the zone
• The Now pad has only the current thing working on. The next thing can be put in the the Later pad while workign on it

The FastType feature allows you to create action items, bulleted lists and checklists with a minimum of fuss by automatically translating certain characters into those formats.

• * task: bulleted list (use Tab to create indentation level)
• • action: indeded arrow (action item)
• 1. item: number’d list
• done’: make a checkmark
• text –: strike out entire line
• –: make a separator
• F6/Shift-F6 move between fields

The Statistics Window

Commands:
* Tools → Statistics → Toggle Statistics Window (or Cmd-1)
* The bottom-left popup menu chooses display period

It is really important to choose the right time and place for a specific kind of work and it can be tricky to work out what really works best, instead of acting like all chunks time is interchageable. Finding the right times to do the right sort of work helps get rid of internal and external “friction” in our effort.

The Statistics Window provides many tools that allow you to gain objective insights into the work patterns that actually work best for you.

• The Hour of the Day statistic shows you how your concentration levels change throughout the day.
• The Day of the Week statistic does the same thing for the days of the week.
• You can tag each time slice with as many tags as you wish, so you can run your own experiments by using the tag or date filtering features of the statistics window.
• You can also use the Statistics window’s Report statistic to keep track of different activities, clients, projects, etc (if tagged).

Overview ChartL Allows you to evaluate both the total time worked during the preceding period and how your concentration levels evolved during that period.

• Bar is time spent
• Colors: (Red: Flow, Orange: High, Yellow: Good, Blue: Poor)

Examples:

• You want to decide whether you are better off writing in your home office or in the coffee shop? Simply tag your time slices with “Location: Home Office” and “Location: Coffee Shop” and compare your concentration levels after a few days.)
• For no fuss time tracking of client projects (via tagging): you can just tag your time slices with client and project data, such as “Client: John Herbert”, “Project: NoFuss.com”. The report statistic will then tell you exactly how much time, how many time slices and how many days you’ve been working on this combination of tags. Good for client-billing

Day-of-Week Analysis: evaluate how your concentration levels evolve throughout the week. (longer = more data the better).

• bar is the percentage of time
• days with no logged time slices will be “grayed out.”
• if similar levels during the week: this is sustainable pace
• if concentration drops at end of week it is because of overexertion: take more breaks, do renewal activities (exercise, relaxation)
• if concentration rises during the week it is because you have problems getting started: take it easier during weekends, fail to finish work before weekend, sign of resistance to starting tasks

Log Book

Commands:

• access: Tools → Logs → Toggle Log Book
• access (advanced): Tools → Logs → Reveal User Log Folder
• export: Tools → Logs → Export as CSV (good for timetracking and billing)

log book is see how spend time for insights, keep motivated.

• work journal to backtrack to past tasks
• re-examine details around a particular decision
• motivate yourself by seeing accomplishments over periods

Things to store:

• any data that might be useful later on
  • rationale for decision
  • links to external resources used
  • stuff from Now & Later Board
  • each line has a UUID under a separator. Do not modify (it might break things)

Integration

Dropbox

® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Cloud Sync ⇒ Activate Dropbox Synching (remember to do this on every Mac with Vitamin-R). Normally logs are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/Vitamin-R

Vitamin R 2 54 – Personal Productivity Tool Boxes

• Synchronize logs between Macs using DropBox
• Future: Synchronize Now & Later

Growl

Uses Growl if available for notifications.
Customize through “® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Notifications”

Things integration

® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Integration

When you are asked to specify your objective for the next time slice, you can drag one or more to dos straight from Things into the text field (window must be open so no auto-hiding)

• a hyperlink will be created to the to-do in Things
• clicking on the hyperlink will bring you straight back to the corresponding to-do in Things
• this hyperlink will remain clickable in your Vitamin-R log for future reference

W(Optional) hen the time slice is logged as “completed” (in the Rate Your Time Slice step) the to-do will automatically be marked as “completed” in Things.

Settings

• “Dockless” mode (not available in appstore version): dock icon is removed and tit cannot be cmd-tab’d to (default). Activate by using main menu bar or keyboard shortcut. The Gear menu replaces the dock menu. (Select it by ® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Run as Full Application/Run as Dockless Application)
• Change look, feel, and behaviors of Now & Later board with ® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Now & Later Board
• Customize workflow (skip stpes, specify default values, etc) by ® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Workflow
• Customize keyboard access: To turn on full keyboard access do  ⇒ System Preferences ⇒ Keyboard ⇒ Keyboard Shortcuts ⇒ All Controls; customize global shortcuts in preference panel.
• ® ⇒ Settings ⇒ Auto-Hide Window : Note that this doesn’t allow drag and dropping
• Speech Reminder tags work properly only in minutes (there are special reminder placeholders)

References

• Vitamin-R homepageread: 2014-05-06
• Vitamin_R_User_Manual updated: 2015-05-05 read: 2015-06-04
• Vitamin-R help pages read: 2014-06-06

1. Yes, about halfway through, I started to use Vitamin R to help me plow through this. Note to self: buy over-the-ear headphones for work. ↩