✦
Experiments

Productivity personality testThere are sixteen ways
to get things done badly.

Most productivity advice is written by one type of person for the same type of person, which is why so much of it feels like it was meant for somebody else. It was. Telling a natural improviser to plan their week in fifteen-minute blocks produces a beautiful plan and a wasted Sunday; telling a natural planner to just start produces panic.

Free, no sign-up. Worked out in your browser, nothing sent anywhere, and the result imports into EvyOS.

PSAF
Planner · Steady · Alone · Finisher
Planner ← → ImproviserPlanner
Steady ← → BurstSteady
Alone ← → CompanyAlone
Finisher ← → StarterFinisher

Your failure mode

You will recognise this immediately or not at all. If not, the answers were aspirational.

  • Your plans are excellent and your tolerance for them going wrong is low. A disrupted Tuesday tends to take the rest of the week with it.

Advice to stop trying to follow

You have probably been failing at some of this for years and blaming yourself.

    What you are actually good at

    • You can be trusted with something that has a lot of moving parts.
    • Your output is predictable, which compounds in a way that bursts never do.
    • You can hold a hard problem for hours without needing anything from anybody.
    • You finish. It is rarer than it should be and it is the whole game.

    This is not a personality test

    It has no theory behind it and makes no claim to be measuring anything stable. It is four questions about how you work, turned into the advice that follows from your answers — which is more than most productivity writing does.

    Everything is worked out in this page and saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere.

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    Only the link and that one line are shared. Nothing you typed goes with it.

    ✦ How to use it

    Three things that make it work.

    1
    Answer for how you are, not how you would like to be

    The aspirational answers produce a type that describes somebody else's problems.

    2
    Read the failure mode first

    You will recognise it immediately or not at all, and that tells you whether the answers were honest.

    3
    Ignore the advice it tells you to ignore

    That is genuinely the highest-value line here. You have probably been failing at it for years.

    This scores four axes that actually change what works: whether you plan or improvise, sprint or sustain, need people or need silence, and start easily or finish easily. Sixteen combinations, each with a real failure mode.

    The most useful output is not the type. It is the list of advice that is a waste of your time, because you have almost certainly been trying to follow some of it and concluding you are the problem.

    ✦ The limit

    An answer is not a record.

    This works something out and then forgets it. It cannot tell you whether the number moved, because it has no memory of the last time you ran it and no idea what you did in between. Every calculator on the internet has that limit, and if it has never bothered you then this one is yours for free for good.

    EvyOS is the same structure with the work recorded against it. Send the result across and it becomes real goals, tasks or habits with their dates — then the next answer is computed from what actually happened rather than from what you remember typing.

    Start free →Everything else
    ✦ Questions

    Productivity personality test, answered.

    No, and it says so with the result. There is no validated instrument here and no claim that the four axes are stable traits. It is four questions about how you work, turned into the advice that follows — which is honest, and more than most productivity writing manages.
    Planner or improviser, steady or burst, alone or in company, finisher or starter. They were chosen because each one genuinely changes which methods work: streaks fail for burst workers, deep-work isolation fails for people who need others in the room.
    Because that is the most useful thing it can do. Most productivity advice is written by one type for the same type, so a large amount of it fails for you specifically — and the usual conclusion people draw from that is that they lack discipline.
    Then you probably answered how you would like to be. Try again with the failure mode in mind: the right type has a failure mode you recognise instantly and slightly resent.
    The axes shift a bit with circumstance — small children make everybody an improviser. What matters more is working with the current answer than trying to move it.

    Keep the answer.
    And the record of doing it.

    Goals, projects, tasks, habits and skills in one system, with the work logged against what it belonged to.

    Start for free →