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Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

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Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#11

Post by blastbeat »

paultopia wrote: post #6

Um. "I don't keep a calendar" means "I consider my time more important than yours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience." I would love to do that, but everyone else in the world would rightly understand it that way and would treat it as a refusal to do core elements of my job. A: "Let's schedule a committee meeting." B: "I don't keep a calendar." A: "So what you're saying is everyone else on the committee has to find…

Fully agree. Also the rest of the article has questionable advice. I doubt the helpfulness of later lists and anti todo lists. Not answering the phone or pretending to be incompetent sounds like an idiotic idea too.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#12

Post by coldtea »

paultopia wrote: post #6

Um. "I don't keep a calendar" means "I consider my time more important than yours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience." I would love to do that, but everyone else in the world would rightly understand it that way and would treat it as a refusal to do core elements of my job. A: "Let's schedule a committee meeting." B: "I don't keep a calendar." A: "So what you're saying is everyone else on the committee has to find…

>Um. "I don't keep a calendar" means "I consider my time more important than yours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience." I would love to do that, but everyone else in the world would rightly understand it that way and would treat it as a refusal to do core elements of my job.

The advice is for free persons, not for us salaried workers.

(Not to mention that TFA already covers this: "I'm totally serious. If you pull it off -- and in many structured jobs, you simply can't" and again later: "Clearly this only works if you can get away with it. If you have a structured job, a structured job environment, or you're a CEO, it will be hard to pull off.").

See also: https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person...

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#13

Post by jumbopapa »

fluffycat wrote: post #4
MRD85 wrote: post #2

Some of the points in this article I disagree with but others I like. Compared to my past self I am "super productive". I have a full-time career, a single parent to two young kids (approx 70% of the time I'm not at work I'm parenting) and I study nearly full time (3 units per semester) with a perfect GPA. I somehow still have time for "wasting", like commenting on online discussion boards, going on dates, etc. * Kee…

You get angry when you see someone does not touch type? This sounds petty and weird.

I don't think they actually get "angry", but rather pretty annoyed. I do the same thing. If someone asks me for help or something and I see them "hunting and pecking", then I get slightly annoyed that this person hasn't spent a couple hours learning how to properly type. It would save them so much time! I just want everyone to be more productive and something like typing is a pretty easy place to gain productivity.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#14

Post by glormph »

I dont think an anti to-do list makes me more productive. But I sure like to keep a log of things done in a text file so I can find what I did later. There is of course a limit to what I keep, but even one-liners etc can be stored in it. Especially when used seldomly, I dont remember all the bash tools invocations. And no, I wont "tear it up and throw it away".

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#15

Post by codazoda »

glormph wrote: post #14

I dont think an anti to-do list makes me more productive. But I sure like to keep a log of things done in a text file so I can find what I did later. There is of course a limit to what I keep, but even one-liners etc can be stored in it. Especially when used seldomly, I dont remember all the bash tools invocations. And no, I wont "tear it up and throw it away".

I also keep a list of things I've done. Typically I just add those things to my to-do list and check them off.

There are other good ideas in this post and for me they're timely. I'm crunching on a business where I teach programming through art work. I'm definitely going to borrow some of these ideas for that. If that sounds interesting to you, checkout https://splashofcode.com

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#17

Post by onemoresoop »

lordfoom wrote: post #9
tosh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ymmv but often typing isn’t the bottleneck, thinking is (typing faster != more nor better output)

But not having to think about typing reduces your cognitive load. Touch typing as a coder isn't about speed, it's about freeing your mind from having to think about your fingers.

Touch typing is somewhat overrated. I never learn to touch type and never had any regret over it, don't get me wrong, I do t peck for keys either but the speed of properly touch typing is no need for me, I'm not a professional typist. I on the other hand am great at remembering shortcuts and I think that's way more important to my work than touch typing, I feel that using the mouse to open a menu and click debug as a complete waste of resources and mental focus.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#18

Post by baby »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #8

If there's anything I'd take from this article, it's techniques to avoid meeting cultures; there's far too many people that want to book an hour long block for a meeting about a thing that can be decided on in five. I think meeting culture is a form of decision anxiety - have we considered all the facts? What if I'm wrong? Is everyone aware that this is happening? It was really quite bad at my previous assignment. I'…

See pg's article on maker vs manager schedule.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#19

Post by sigi45 »

all2 wrote: post #10
number6 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds unreal: Job + parenting + study? How are you doing this? This can't just come from keeping lists and or touch typing?! Can you give me some background on what you are doing?

Consider: - 8 hours of work (a generous estimate). - 4 to 6 hours of parenting (between children's wake time in the morning and the evening). - Commute time? Is she driving? Public transit? Other? We'll neglect this. - 3 hours on study (an hour per day per semester hour). With a two hour commute, that's a 19 hour day. Without, 17 hours. That leaves no room for other daily necessities, though those could be built into…

There is still a weekend with two full days.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#20

Post by lqet »

While I think that completely avoiding a calendar or any fixed appointments is a bit unrealistic (think of doctor's appointments), I agree and deeply sympathize with the gist of it. One of the main reasons I quit my previous job was that I was unable to get any meaningful work done, because the day was very tightly organized around a central ticketing system. Oh, you had a nice idea to solve one of the problems in the long-term project the company is currently working on? Too bad, because there are already 4, oh wait, 5, high-priority tickets waiting for you, and by the time you have finished those, you will have forgotten the idea. This happened so frequently and was so frustrating that after a few months I just shut off my brain and was basically a robot finishing off tickets assigned to me. Needless to say, I felt miserable for 1.5 years.

After I quit, I lived off my savings for 6 months and literally had no schedule of any kind. I woke up and did whatever I was interested in. I got more work done in these 6 months than in the 2 years before.

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