Microsoft Teams provides an integration with Microsoft Viva, which schedules daily check-ins to record your perception of your mental state. Once a day, at 4pm, I get a notification that asks me to select one of five emojis that reflects how I feel.
Clearly, the last few weeks have not been particularly excellent, but I’m not sure what the value of this type of check-in or chart provides. We can come up with reasonable estimates of our own satisfaction with our work. I frequently journal, and I believe that the self-reflection forced through written inquiries gives way to a better sense of being, rather than an even shorter point-in-time indicator with almost no ambiguity.
Our days are composed of moments, and for most, are each filled with a wide range of emotions. This survey, given in the morning, likely would see different results as I start the day less stressed. Near the end of the day, I am likely thinking about all the tasks that remain undone.
What is the natural evolution of work software that attempts to summarize work habits? What are the aspects that I would find valuable to improve my productivity? It is hard to beat the simplicity of a well-kept task list. I can’t say I look much beyond the satisfaction of checking off tasks each day.
That said, some analytics and productivity features I would like to see:
I would be curious about intelligent time use measures during meetings. For example, what percent of time during meetings am I speaking, or not paying attention and doing another task? A small note on requested recurring meetings that states “you usually don’t speak during this meeting. Consider reading the meeting notes after,” or something similar.
Better email management and task linking would be extremely helpful - grouping emails, creating and resolving tasks, etc. A log of what I completed each day, stored and aggregated locally on my computer, that I could track over time would be great as well, e.g., if VSCode notes I edit a code file with name “file_x”, and push it to a remote repository, then my daily summary could note “Spent 1 hour editing file_x and pushed to remote”, along with “replied to 6 emails on new dashboard, notes on proposed analysis,” etc.
The new OCR integrated into the screen snip software is excellent, and I use it very frequently. More like this! Better copy and paste of tables would be great.
Improved auto-complete, similar to GitHub Copilot.
Better voice support. The new Windows 11 Voice Access needs lots of work.
Overall, I am less interested in my work software trying to identify and improve my emotional mindset, and more on streamlining how I work.