I love data. I collect it all the time, not knowing if or when I might use it.

One thing that I have tracked consistently over the last 7 years is how many hours I've worked. Not only do I keep track of the hours, but I also have data about what I was working on, the time of day I worked on it, if I was interrupted, and a variety of other data points. One day I may sift through it all, but there is one graph I produce annually to reflect on the year that has passed.

Paid hours worked over the last 7 years.  The green line represents the project I've been working on for the better part of 2 years. — Paid hours worked over the last 7 years. The green line represents the project I've been working on for the better part of 2 years.

You can see spikes of work effort throughout the graph, likely coinciding with project deadlines or something I'm passionate about (which usually has me losing track of time late into the night). Let's drop everything except the project I'm currently working on, which is really what I want to see.

The first year of this project was a bit rough because the project was understaffed; you can see my workload steadily going up and peaking at some crazy number of hours twice in 2015. By the end of 2015 we had hired an additional body and my workload was halved. The first half of 2016 was reasonable, with a large milestone mid-year, and another that has just passed.

Hours worked is a good indicator of project health. Overall the project is in a better place than it was this time last year and my hours reflect that. Once this project launches in early 2017, I'm looking forward to some vacation.