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I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
71–80 of 179 posts
Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
#72Anybody else get an immediately negative visceral reaction from this? If I'm understanding this correctly, the aim is to manipulate our sense of shame/guilt to boost productivity. After sitting with the feeling for a bit, here are some ideas that come to mind: 1. Maybe we should ask why we feel shame/guilt in the first place. Is it "normal" to feel this? If it isn't we should not rely on it for our happiness (or prod…
>What is the value of productivity? Why does it make us happy? [...] And the value of productivity is something that has been handed down to us by a culture which we've been thrown into.
I think it's more that the business-speak label of "productivity" bothers you rather than its underlying idea of efficiency of input effort in relation to desirable output.
The concept of "productivity" doesn't have to be a Peter Drucker style management guru propaganda. Productivity makes us happy because it's an intrinsic human desire to improve our lives. For example, consider a prehistoric hunter in Africa that's running barefoot with a spear in hand and chasing after antelope to kill and eat it. He doesn't need modern McKinsey consultants to tell him he wants to do the least amount of running for the most amount of food. The better that ratio of expended effort to food quantity, the better the productivity. It's just that the hunter didn't label that concept as "productivity". If he has a sprained ankle, his chasing ability will decrease and his productivity will also decrease. He becomes unhappier. If the hunter uses his brain and notices the paths the antelopes use to the watering holes and takes advantage of those patterns to intelligently intercept it, his hunting productivity increases, and he becomes happier.
In the case of this thread's article, it looks like the author is a freelance journalist and so "productivity" to her is writing articles faster and/or writing more articles.
Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
#73My first month of pair programming was utterly exhausting, but once I got into the pace, it was the best thing I've ever done. The mutual focus is definitely a big part. You're in a social context, and there is no place to stray from the mutual task, and that discipline is very liberating, weird as it may sound, for someone prone to procrastinating like myself.
There are some pre-requisites to Pair programming. That you need to have a well defined task, that you need not be bogged down by insane deadlines and can afford to have 2 people work on the same thing and both need to be well versed at the task at hand to live up to the promise of productivity. My experience pair programming for a year was sh*tty enough to never consider it again unless I have these pre-reqs met. I'…
a lot of this depends on the dynamics of the team.
i don't think pair programming necessarily means typing 100% of the time. I get a ton of value in tackling a very ill-defined task with another member of my team, especially in the design / architecture phase where I find that a lot of engineers tend to over-think and over-engineer a task.
i don't want to discount your experience tho - i def. have moments where i absolutely do not want to pair, but i do think it's a practice that is super context (team) sensitive
Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
#74I particularly enjoyed the follow-up article "I burnt out and lost my sanity/health/job/gone to opioids/alcoholism/etc after pressured to maintain this 'more productive' pace for months on end as if I'm a hamster on a wheel".
Yeah. I've experienced this working to project deadlines at several jobs. Like everything else, "crunch" and "pair programming" are good in small doses for getting productivity. I couldn't handle it long-term. I have seen some people thrive on it with no ill-effects, but I have never had an extremely-focused, very driven work personality.
Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
#75I was always fascinated by some of the offices in Zurich having a large glass wall, with worker's desks and computers next to them. Almost as if put on display, "see we are working here".
Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
#76My first month of pair programming was utterly exhausting, but once I got into the pace, it was the best thing I've ever done. The mutual focus is definitely a big part. You're in a social context, and there is no place to stray from the mutual task, and that discipline is very liberating, weird as it may sound, for someone prone to procrastinating like myself.
There are some pre-requisites to Pair programming. That you need to have a well defined task, that you need not be bogged down by insane deadlines and can afford to have 2 people work on the same thing and both need to be well versed at the task at hand to live up to the promise of productivity. My experience pair programming for a year was sh*tty enough to never consider it again unless I have these pre-reqs met. I'…
I haven't had a job that required pair programming, but I've found it can be a pretty useful tool in certain circumstances. There have been a number of times when a colleague and I have naturally fell into pair programming for tasks, normally starting with us just sharing ideas and one of us eventually jumping in front of a keyboard and the two of us trying out several ideas live. It certainly isn't as formal as "pair programming" normally might imply, but as someone who's hasn't been in the industry all that long, I've found the times that one done it with more senior teammates to be insightful, as well as pretty effective for certain types of tasks.
Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
#77If you did this everyday with a new stranger you'd stop caring eventually.
My girlfriend tried one of these recently. It mapped to her "Obliger" personality, per The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin.
Me..? I'm a Questioner. But I'm happy for her to find whatever makes her self-employment day-to-day life more manageable and uplifting.
Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
#78I wonder if live streaming your work to the whole internet, potentially allowing others to comment, i.e. to help you to spot mistakes along the way, would also work. This wouldn't be applicable to everything, but for open source side projects or open companies like GitLab, that could be amazing. It would also be extremely valuable for other people, particularly in junior positions, as they could see how other people…
There are already many people on Twitch live-coding for fun and profit.
Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
#79Procrastination has destroyed my life.
Three years ago I finally achieved my dream of working from home. I was writing my thesis and believed I could finish my masters in 8 months. I decided to fully focus on it and, afterwards, I would create my long dreamed own software company.
It worked really well for some weeks. I was much more focused than I used to be working in regular offices, with bosses. But soon I started getting distracted with amateur radio, social media, couch and TV and so on.
Then I couldn't concentrate on anything anymore. After almost a year I had finished only half of my thesis. I started to feel desperate because I hadn't even started my company, and my savings were being burned day after day. This contributed to further drops in my productivity and concentration.
I finished my masters 14 months past what I initially imagined. And I eventually had almost no energy left to work on my products. I sporadically had some boosts in productivity and managed to get something done. But I wasn't able to commit to plans anymore. I was always getting stuck. And my money going away.
My life-worth savings are basically depleted now, I have no wife anymore and I feel pretty bad and alone.
Coincidentally, yesterday I started to work on a co-working space. That new atmosphere helped me significantly and I hope it keeps this way for some time at least.
Good to know about Focusmate and alikes. I will definitely try them if my productivity drops again.
Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive
#80Procrastination has destroyed my life. Three years ago I finally achieved my dream of working from home. I was writing my thesis and believed I could finish my masters in 8 months. I decided to fully focus on it and, afterwards, I would create my long dreamed own software company. It worked really well for some weeks. I was much more focused than I used to be working in regular offices, with bosses. But soon I starte…
If you need a place to work among other people in quiet without having to pay, try the local library or university. Could help you save some money.