At the start of the year I began keeping a journal, and scoring my own productivity in it. Not how much I got through. Whether the day had been worth anything.
Alongside it I was running Notion, a Pomodoro timer, and a couple of to-do apps. Every one of them needed templates set up the way I worked. None of them would simply tell me later that something had gone quiet.
The scoring habit is what stuck. One question per task: does this actually move the business? Zero, half, or one, added up at the end of the week.
The first number was uncomfortable. Most of what filled my week scored zero. Necessary work, all of it, but none of it moving anything forward.
Then I started hearing the same complaint from the people I work with. Business owners, sales leads, project managers, people running everything alone. All of them buried in tools that organise work but never say whether the work counted.