Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A simple math equation can transform your productivity

nextbigideaclub.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 102 posts

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#71

Post by camillomiller »

BizarroLand wrote: post #56
erwincoumans wrote: post #27

His math literally doesn't add up. If you multi-task you need to ADD multiple multiplications, one for each task. For example, if you perfectly divide all attention, time and effort in two tasks, you ideally get: 0.5 * 0.2 + 0.5 * 0.15 (given that the value of the first task is 0.2 and the value of the second task is 0.15) One important point is likely, that there is overhead in multitasking, so the actual formula be…

Multitask repetitive or time consuming tasks only. When I was in college I worked for a mom and pop type PC repair store. Doing PC re-imaging, I set up 6 stations and would kick off one refresh and while it was running, start up the next one and so on. Using disks to install took ages, so I figured out how to make bootable USB sticks, so I would have all 6 or occasionally more (by stealing bench seats) stations hummi…

Well you were still concentrating on one task only: setting up computers. :)

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#72

Post by nefitty »

mynameisash wrote: post #59
dalmo3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes But if you're ascribing a higher meaning to the act is it still Zen? Maybe true Zen would be not even knowing it existed in the first place.

I never really considered myself a 'true' zen practitioner, but years ago I did regular zen retreats. It included sitting meditation, walking meditation, a mindful lunch with other practitioners, and... chores. (Maybe they used a different word - I don't recall.) One time I spent our ~hour washing dishes. Another time, sweeping the zendo. The point of it, beyond contributing to the greater community, was to do these…

You said you participated in that years ago. In my recent past I accumulated hundreds of hours of meditation.

Do you see any lasting benefits from your experiences? I personally still struggle with focus and attentiveness, especially when the demand is external. I haven't concluded whether I wasted my time, or if I need to get back to meditating. It's time-consuming!

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#73

Post by openknot »

jodrellblank wrote: post #21

> " When people meet a great leader, they often say, “She made me feel like I was the only person in the room.” Imagine giving that type of complete attention to everything you do—and making that thing the only thing in the room. " "Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes." ― Alan Watts. (In the sense that physically doing…

Wouldn't the natural behaviour of thinking about other things while peeling potatoes be an advantage, instead of a disadvantage to be solved with Zen?

Many discoveries or solutions to problems (from scientific to the everyday) are found on walks when the mind is working on problems in the background, and I believe this creativity could be lost with mindfulness of the current activity all of the time.

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#74

Post by SquibblesRedux »

BizarroLand wrote: post #56
erwincoumans wrote: post #27

His math literally doesn't add up. If you multi-task you need to ADD multiple multiplications, one for each task. For example, if you perfectly divide all attention, time and effort in two tasks, you ideally get: 0.5 * 0.2 + 0.5 * 0.15 (given that the value of the first task is 0.2 and the value of the second task is 0.15) One important point is likely, that there is overhead in multitasking, so the actual formula be…

Multitask repetitive or time consuming tasks only. When I was in college I worked for a mom and pop type PC repair store. Doing PC re-imaging, I set up 6 stations and would kick off one refresh and while it was running, start up the next one and so on. Using disks to install took ages, so I figured out how to make bootable USB sticks, so I would have all 6 or occasionally more (by stealing bench seats) stations hummi…

What you described is pipelining. [0] [1] Pipelining depends on some tasks being inherently parallelizable.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipeline_(computing) [1] https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/project...

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#76

Post by openknot »

josho wrote: post #62
function_seven wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pull quotes in general usually irritate me. I'm sure there's a place for them, when done correctly. But usually I'll see things like you pointed out. Or worse, the pull quote will come from a paragraph far above it (and so no longer relevant to the section I'm currently in), or far below it (so way out of context; I haven't even got to that part yet!)

I think they made sense in a world filled with paper magazines. You could quickly pickup a magazine flip through pages and see if anything caught your eye, if so then you buy the magazine. On the internet it only makes sense if people scroll through an article to decide if it's worth reading. Does anyone do that? I generally don't. The scroll bar tells me how long the article is, and the heading and subheading usuall…

Pull quotes could still make sense for long articles (1600-2000+ words, which take 10+ minutes to read), especially in online magazines. For these lengthy articles, a reader could be interested from the heading and subheading, but then stop reading or skim a section due to the length.

I do skim through articles that are a time commitment to read to decide if it's worth reading in full, but I generally look for section headings (e.g. that would let an article be split into multiple shorter articles). If there aren't any, pull quotes are decent strings to look for; and if not, it's manual skimming to better understand the structure (e.g. the first sentence of each paragraph).

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#77

Post by nefitty »

LambdaTrain wrote: post #60
erwincoumans wrote: post #27

His math literally doesn't add up. If you multi-task you need to ADD multiple multiplications, one for each task. For example, if you perfectly divide all attention, time and effort in two tasks, you ideally get: 0.5 * 0.2 + 0.5 * 0.15 (given that the value of the first task is 0.2 and the value of the second task is 0.15) One important point is likely, that there is overhead in multitasking, so the actual formula be…

Right. It feels like Op uses wrong math but gets a good conclusion in the context of doing daily job: focus on one shit. However, in general sense, the return of an investment is considered as random variable, so the problem is not just max value, but max value while minimizing risk, and the solution is multitask/portfolio

Your comment helps me. I think I'm getting closer to the mechanism of what causes me to procrastinate. When many tasks are due, all important but of tiny ROI, like washing dishes and vacuuming, I feel overwhelmed because my mind can't sort them by expected reward.

I also noticed that I engage in extreme procrastination when the rewards of a high effort task are uncertain. It's like my body recoils at the idea of expending energy unnecessarily. For example, creating a "portfolio-worthy side project" immediately queues up questions, "But I heard recruiters don't look at them. If they do they'll look at it for a second. What if they think my code sucks and I blow myself out instead?" Etc etc

If anyone has some sort of mental model or frame which they're conscious of in these situations, I would love to hear it. I started researching CBT for ADHD last night and now I have 30 tabs of research articles, infographics, blog posts, book reviews and god damn it if I didnt go and get stuck in Wikipedia instead...

Post reply on HN