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A simple math equation can transform your productivity

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81–90 of 102 posts

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#81
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sectio…

Maybe. I still think just heading and subheading would suffice. However, if pull quotes are used, they should function as links to bring you to the part that caught your interest and to give context for the quote. Or, alternatively, provide that context in a pop-up on hover, with the quote itself bolded.

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#82

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…

+1. Your 0.1 estimate is an underestimate. Context switching is a very costly if I'm balls deep in a bug fix where I already need to care about 10 thinks. When I go back it's very easy to miss out on something which makes my productivity 0 because you introduced a new bug while fixing the older one lol.

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#83

This is meta, but I'm not a fan of this trend of adding a pull quote to add emphasis to a sentence that was never really lost in the text to begin with, e.g. , A short sentence. A second short sentence. > A second short sentence.

A trifecta is pull quote, of body text, that's quoting a social media post that's already included as an image/frame inline in the same text flow.

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#84
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, sit down, keep quiet and don't disturb others and do as your told/asked.

You forgot about naptime. Huge productivity boost, and a central part of most kindergarden curriculum's.

I'm in the wrong job to have enough free time for that :P

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#85
post #65

> " 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…

I don't dislike Alan Watts, but by his own admission he is an entertainer. If you're actually interested in zen the best place to start is with the texts: 大道無門 The Great Way is gateless, 千差有路 Approached in a thousand ways. 透得此關 Once past this checkpoint 乾坤獨歩 You stride through the universe. https://sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/mumonkan.htm

Strongly disagree. The playful nature that Alan Watts conveys ideas with completely blew my mind. He combined so many influences. Entertaining or not by his own admission, it’s a hundred, a thousand times more accessible. At its core it is also so much more transmissible back to the day to day life as an organism on this planet. I still have yet to encounter anything like it. The stuff you list right here reeks of long study in a library to me. There are gurus who sit for hours every day meditating, eat their single bowl of rice, clean the temple, sleep on hard stone. And there are gurus who drink, smoke, and laugh, wandering the countryside. A thousand ways indeed. I know which path I prefer. I think of Alan as the latter, whatever he may have said. Play is at the core of the deep lessons, for me. So him straying towards that side rings much more true.

I would start with this short series of animated Alan Watts lectures by Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VvrfnE7Q-0w, listen to some of his lectures (the ones where he’s drinking are often the best), read The Book, and then just have fun with all the other books/content he put out there. Alongside it, dive into the deep texts, Zen, the Vedanta, etc.

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#87
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

From the meditation, no. Unfortunately, that was during the season of my life when I had very young kids, and I was dedicating myself to work. Consequently, I struggled with devoting time to sitting and not thinking. I was trying to bootstrap a good practice, so Zen retreats were a great way to force myself to do it. It wasn't sustainable, though: where I lived, there was no local group (the retreats were >1hr away). So I didn't actually do a ton of meditation.

However, I feel like the retreats were a positive for me, albeit not in the same way that meditation might be. Sitting, walking, and doing "work practice" (the term they used) mindfully gave me a great perspective shift. I found doing dishes truly enjoyable and worth my effort even if it wasn't changing the world.

Maybe I enjoyed it so much because of my personality. Or maybe the retreats helped me appreciate silence and downtime, thereby changing my personality. I can stand in line at the grocery store without needing to be entertained by my phone, which is a herculean effort for many people I know. It's too hard to say :)

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#88
post #46

i dont know about this. i cant get on the treadmill/elliptical unless there is some soccer match or action film streaming on the tv.... I could focus on the pain of doing exercise but that seems to be counter productive...

Actually, next time, why not try focusing on the pain? I do this sometimes when I run. Instead of trying to ignore the pain, really focus on it, and sense what it is about it that’s discomforting, and when you realize that it’s not going to harm you in any significant way, it kind of loses its power over you and you sort of accept it and keep going.

Re: A simple math equation can transform your productivity

#90
post #65

> " 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…

I don't dislike Alan Watts, but by his own admission he is an entertainer. If you're actually interested in zen the best place to start is with the texts: 大道無門 The Great Way is gateless, 千差有路 Approached in a thousand ways. 透得此關 Once past this checkpoint 乾坤獨歩 You stride through the universe. https://sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/mumonkan.htm

> I don't dislike Alan Watts, but by his own admission he is an entertainer.

I find Watts' advice to just peel the potatoes more useful than this concept of striding through the universe through The Great Way.

But that might just be because I don't find gratuitous capitalisation spiritually enlightening, or entertaining.

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