What it is and when to use it
The productivity score condenses a period of work into one number between 0 and 100 by combining two questions: did you finish what you set out to do, and how quickly did tasks get done? Completion measures reliability against your own plan. Efficiency measures throughput per hour. Weighting completion at 70 percent and efficiency at 30 percent rewards finishing the planned work while still recognising pace.
It is most useful as a personal trend line. Enter the tasks you planned, the tasks you finished, and the hours you worked for a day or a week, then track how the score moves over time. It also helps when you are testing a change, such as batching email or planning fewer tasks per day, because the same formula is applied every time. It is not a performance-review metric, since task size, quality and interruptions are not captured.
The formula and how it works
The calculator computes three numbers from your inputs:
- Completion (%) = tasks completed / tasks planned x 100.
- Efficiency = tasks completed / hours worked, shown as tasks per hour to one decimal place.
- Score = min(Completion, 100) x 0.7 + min(Efficiency x 10, 100) x 0.3, rounded to a whole number.
- The efficiency term is capped at 100, which happens at 10 tasks per hour.
Because the displayed efficiency is already rounded to one decimal before it enters the score, results can differ by a point from a calculation that keeps full precision.
Worked example
Suppose you planned 10 tasks, finished 8, and worked 6 hours. Completion = 8 / 10 x 100 = 80.0 percent. Efficiency = 8 / 6 = 1.33, which the calculator rounds to 1.3 tasks per hour.
The efficiency component is 1.3 x 10 = 13, well under the cap. The score is 80 x 0.7 + 13 x 0.3 = 56 + 3.9 = 59.9, which rounds to 60. The calculator prints: Score: 60/100, Completion: 80.0 percent, Efficiency: 1.3 tasks/hr. Notice that a strong 80 percent completion still yields only a 60 because most tasks here take hours, so the efficiency slice contributes little.
Common mistakes and how to interpret the result
- Comparing scores across people or job types: task granularity changes efficiency dramatically, so a score is only meaningful against your own history.
- Gaming the number by splitting tasks: breaking one task into five raises tasks per hour without any real gain. Keep task definitions consistent from week to week.
- Reading a low score as failure: if efficiency is low because tasks are large, the completion percentage is the more informative figure.
- Entering zero for planned tasks or hours: the ratios are undefined, so the calculator asks for valid values instead of returning a score.