While working yesterday I got my Grammarly insights; a weekly mail that evaluates my writing performance and compares it to over 6.9 million Grammarly users around the world. The report shocked me in the sense that I was ranked way above average in terms of the quality and quantity of my writing. My competitive side was happy with having outranked most people, however, on closer scrutiny, I realized that while Grammarly was advising me to "keep it up", it wouldn't be in my best interest to take that advice.

SOME PRODUCTIVITY GROWTHS METRICS AREN'T SUSTAINABLE

Last week was quite demanding for me as a professional, while I was able to accomplish a lot, it came at a price and that price can't be paid on a recurrent basis without health consequences. What I'm getting at is that while we are chasing personal improvement through the use of some productivity applications, we shouldn't get carried away with vanity metrics. Numbers are a great metric for evaluating impact, however, they shouldn't be the only metric factored in the process of evaluation. As we evaluate numbers we should also evaluate sustainability or risk burnout. Our current socio-economic environment encourages stress and this is evident in the way people brag about medical issues relating to stress or burnout while forgetting that blaming a problem on nature doesn't change the nature of the problem.

PROPERLY ANALYZING YOUR PRODUCTIVITY METRICS IS KEY

Burnout is a common risk in software engineering and this is why productivity applications that we use should be used as tools for providing insight into how we're working, when we're pushing too hard, when we need to pump the brakes a bit rather than a gaming high score feedback that only drives us to play a lot more in order to win everyone else. When a sharp increase in productivity is accompanied by poor sleeping habits, poor eating habits and unsustainable working hours, it's safe to say those metrics should be a warning sign rather than a high score achievement.