"Did I help someone today?"

Let me borrow from Simon Sinek's Golden Circle Model for a second: Why, how, and what.

At the end of the day, the bottom line is no small line in business. KPI's are a target to keep an eye on. Performance metrics and weekly outputs are something to continue monitoring. The "what" matters.

In the trenches, tools do matter. The systems we chose to implement, the ways we refactor our code, the time spent experimenting with a new technology. The "how" matters.

What matters most is certainly the "why" of helping someone.

Everything else almost feels like bike shedding when the question "Did I help someone today?" is the main guide.

Software is pretty expansive when it comes to this question, too!

Some days, that answer is "I helped a coworker debug a problem that's been slowing them down for weeks!" A deep and impactful day!

Some days, it's "I released a feature that will be used by thousands of people!" A broad impact sort of day.

The nice thing is, even on "low productivity days," we can answer affirmatively to that question in some dimension, if we're genuine.