I completely agree with this. Measuring productivity solely by hours in front of a screen is completely useless.
On the other hand, tracking hours can be really benificial too, if done correctly. I love using DeskTime.com for personal use (for company use it seems counterproductive) since it lets me easily track how much time I've spent on productive apps/web sites compared to unproductive apps/web sites.
Yesterday I had a great work day for example, I spent 14 hours in front of the computer screen. 11 hours of those were spent in productive apps/websites, like my text editor, FTP, terminal, API-documentation sites, CRM, admin backend etc and 1h 30m in unproductive apps/websites like Hacker News and Reddit.com.
I got quite a lot done, so I was really satisfied with my day. On the other hand I spent over 3 hours trying to fix what turned out to be a missing comma in a configuration file. If I had spotted the error faster I could have spent more than 3 hours less time working, while still being just as productive. If I had more experience with the things I did yesterday I could probably have done as much in half the time.
Just goes to show that even "productive hours" isn't the most important thing, the only thing that matters in the end is the results.
Productive hours are the right thing to measure. Some task can take few hours or minutes depending on luck. Also expeirience but that's already factored into your hourly rate. If you had fixed (low) pay for adding missing coma you'd have to swollow the risk that it might take you hours and pay a little. That's what most programmers and lawers try to avoid by charging hourly rates.
On the other hand, tracking hours can be really benificial too, if done correctly. I love using DeskTime.com for personal use (for company use it seems counterproductive) since it lets me easily track how much time I've spent on productive apps/web sites compared to unproductive apps/web sites.
Yesterday I had a great work day for example, I spent 14 hours in front of the computer screen. 11 hours of those were spent in productive apps/websites, like my text editor, FTP, terminal, API-documentation sites, CRM, admin backend etc and 1h 30m in unproductive apps/websites like Hacker News and Reddit.com.
I got quite a lot done, so I was really satisfied with my day. On the other hand I spent over 3 hours trying to fix what turned out to be a missing comma in a configuration file. If I had spotted the error faster I could have spent more than 3 hours less time working, while still being just as productive. If I had more experience with the things I did yesterday I could probably have done as much in half the time.
Just goes to show that even "productive hours" isn't the most important thing, the only thing that matters in the end is the results.