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What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity

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Re: What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity

#11

Post by omarhaneef »

tomaskafka wrote: post #6
mojuba wrote: post #4

I feel like individual productivity is a pretty much solved problem and comes down to picking your tools. Whether it's one out of a million 3rd party Todo/Note taking apps, or just whatever is available in your OS, is a matter of taste. If you want to be productive you will find your way and most importantly, just don't get too obsessed about not being at maximum productivity. Group productivity and collaboration, ho…

I feel like individual productivity is a pretty much solved problem and comes down to sitting on your ass and doing the actual work (yes, I sometimes have trouble doing that, but in the end 'just sit down and start doing it' is the best advice to listen to).

Depends on what you mean by "solved"

If by "solved" you mean we have a theory, then perhaps.

But truly solved would include how to get yourself to do it.

Re: What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity

#13

Post by stadium »

tomaskafka wrote: post #6
mojuba wrote: post #4

I feel like individual productivity is a pretty much solved problem and comes down to picking your tools. Whether it's one out of a million 3rd party Todo/Note taking apps, or just whatever is available in your OS, is a matter of taste. If you want to be productive you will find your way and most importantly, just don't get too obsessed about not being at maximum productivity. Group productivity and collaboration, ho…

I feel like individual productivity is a pretty much solved problem and comes down to sitting on your ass and doing the actual work (yes, I sometimes have trouble doing that, but in the end 'just sit down and start doing it' is the best advice to listen to).

For me the harder problem with productivity is often picking the right work to do, and balancing that with analysis paralysis.

Re: What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity

#14

Post by cseleborg »

I'm at a stage in my life where I have a true love/hate relationship with productivity.

I have a business, a job, two young children and there's this thing going on in the world that makes everything kind of strange and our of our control. Every time I read an article like this one, and this one isn't particularly good, if I may add, I feel like saying, yes, right, you go ahead and try that calendar blocking thing with two children at home generating an almost infinite amount of entropy in all four dimensions. And do tell me how that willpower thing is working out for you, that thing about just cranking on with the most important goals every day, when your nights are most unreliable, and you're just generally exhausted all the time.

But I keep clicking those links anyway, secretly hoping that one day, I'll crack the mystery of productivity for stressed-out parents...

But since we're on the topic, I'll share what I think is the secret now: the less you try to accomplish, the more you'll accomplish. Super-laser-focus is the only thing that works for me. That, and being kind to myself when I have unproductive days, which is almost every day.

Re: What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity

#16

Post by bamboozled »

cseleborg wrote: post #14

I'm at a stage in my life where I have a true love/hate relationship with productivity. I have a business, a job, two young children and there's this thing going on in the world that makes everything kind of strange and our of our control. Every time I read an article like this one, and this one isn't particularly good, if I may add, I feel like saying, yes, right, you go ahead and try that calendar blocking thing wi…

That, and being kind to myself when I have unproductive days, which is almost every day.

I suffer from Insomnia, I have for many years, I'm up at 1am after a day which I let me discipline slide. I didn't feel as productive as I should've been today, So you know what I did? I worked till 8:30pm. I punished myself. I broke my new golden rule of getting off the computer by 6pm, which was working so well for me.

Then what happened? I didn't have any wind down time, then I couldn't sleep and now I'm up stressed about everything I probably won't get done tomorrow because I'll be too tired to focus on complex tasks, it's now a compound fracture, a cluster bomb of issues.

I think you're 100% right. Just walk away while you still can, retreat, then come out on the attack the next day feeling better.

I wish I'd taken my own advice.

Re: What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity

#17

Post by dotcommand »

Writing about productivity seems like a nice racket.

What's with the excessive productivity propaganda the past few years. Is that what humans are? What humans exist to be/do? Be products that produce as much as possible? So much time/resources/etc wasted to be more productivity. What's the end goal here?

Re: What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity

#18

Post by pricci »

treeman79 wrote: post #8
mojuba wrote: post #4

I feel like individual productivity is a pretty much solved problem and comes down to picking your tools. Whether it's one out of a million 3rd party Todo/Note taking apps, or just whatever is available in your OS, is a matter of taste. If you want to be productive you will find your way and most importantly, just don't get too obsessed about not being at maximum productivity. Group productivity and collaboration, ho…

Productivity was something I struggled with for many years. At times I was the best employee, and others the worst. Have a tricky problem to solve? Or a complicated architecture. I was the right guy for the job. Need to build 200 variations of the same feature. I was horrible. Chief problem being that anything boring was physically painful to me. Pair programming helped a lot, but those gigs are hard to find. Eventua…

Would you say that with the help of medication you learned to focus?

Re: What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity

#19

Post by gnulinux »

dotcommand wrote: post #17

Writing about productivity seems like a nice racket. What's with the excessive productivity propaganda the past few years. Is that what humans are? What humans exist to be/do? Be products that produce as much as possible? So much time/resources/etc wasted to be more productivity. What's the end goal here?

The end goal is value. And value changes from community to community. I don't get this skepticism against productivity. It really doesn't have to be work stuff. After work I play piano, chess etc and any improvement done to these are "productive" too because I'm increasing my value to my community by making music, playing chess etc. It's infinitesimally tiny, but there is an objective difference between that and e.g. sleep which is an activity we're bound to do that is not productive. Not all of this stuff needs to be corporate propaganda, take what works for you.

Re: What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity

#20

Post by 13415 »

gnulinux wrote: post #19
dotcommand wrote: post #17

Writing about productivity seems like a nice racket. What's with the excessive productivity propaganda the past few years. Is that what humans are? What humans exist to be/do? Be products that produce as much as possible? So much time/resources/etc wasted to be more productivity. What's the end goal here?

The end goal is value. And value changes from community to community. I don't get this skepticism against productivity. It really doesn't have to be work stuff. After work I play piano, chess etc and any improvement done to these are "productive" too because I'm increasing my value to my community by making music, playing chess etc. It's infinitesimally tiny, but there is an objective difference between that and e.g.…

I'd agree if only less people confused productivity with work / time efficiency and then get annoyed when the quality declines. As an old German proverb says, Gut Ding will Weile haben, which roughly means good things take time.
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