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I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

simonberens.me

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Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#171

Post by SMAAART »

12345hn6789 wrote: post #29

I honestly cannot believe this. The porn part, the make me a smoothie request, dating dinners. This guy seriously paid people to sit behind him and didn't even think about them stealing his $1000 monitors until after the fact? He didn't try blocking any non productive sites? No productivity software? No pomadoro technique-esq focus methods? This guy should have paid $88/hour for therapy if we are being honest here

Don't let the truth come in the way of a goods blog post that makes it to the front page of HN.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#172

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

Mustache wrote: post #117

I'm not sure why there so many negative comments. I work from home for myself and I can say not having a boss to report to makes it easier to get bogged down in non productive tasks. When I used to go to an office and had a manager there was always that external pressure to get things done. I have to constantly remind myself to be productive and not spend time on time wasting websites so I can see how just knowing so…

Most people would agree that having somebody keeping you accountable in the same room does tend to increase productivity in the short term. Long term, not being micromanaged has a positive mental impact.

Regardless, I think most people are rather reading between the lines, since there's some weirdness to hiring (from Craigslist) a "productivity manager" who watches you, does house chores and cooks for you. This is basically a servant with another title, and not acknowledging it makes it seem like the author is missing some common wisdom. There's other details like his assistant being caught watching porn, to which the author reacts in an.. even more awkward way than expected? It reads a lot like satire.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#173

Post by nickjj »

Apocryphon wrote: post #66
isoprophlex wrote: post #42

Chop wood. Carry water. Just do the work, or don't. This is some bullshit.

There’s something to be said that manual labor is probably less anxiety-inducing or at least less easy to shirk than abstract work.

I think in a lot of cases manual labor is extremely ironed out because the workflow is defined before the work is done.

    - Pick up shovel
    - Move dirt from pile A to pile B
There's not much else to think about, you do it and you know you're doing the right thing so there's no opportunities to second guess yourself into not doing it.

Compare that to a vague action of "build xyz app". There's a million things to think about and you can easily talk yourself out of it because maybe you're doing what you think is the wrong thing (note: the "what you think" is a really important phrase here).

But if you break that down to "open up code editor" and "design user registration page" that at least starts to get less vague. Eventually you get into precise actionable tasks like "create user model with an email, password and username" which you can start progressing on without much distraction.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#174

Post by joxel »

SunghoYahng wrote: post #144
urbandw311er wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the people who don’t support his experiment can probably justify their reasons for themselves without you insulting them.

[flagged]

Dude you literally called people who disagree mediocre and respond to people saying you’re a dick with an email like reply. Do you think you’re a good person?

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#175

Post by monkey_monkey »

joxel wrote: post #170
sberens wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I was good enough of a fiction writer to fake this :/

Do you think having a girlfriend application on your page makes any sense? Is it a joke? Or are you just that self absorbed and insane?

Yes (to him). No. Yes.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#176

Post by fencepost »

So hiring someone to be around you and enforce productivity - kind of like hiring a personal trainer and working out while they watch.

I'm pretty positive a lot of the folks around me in a late-night Starbucks in the Before Times (always packed but now closed, no drive-through) were doing exactly the same thing. There were a bunch of regulars working on side projects, they all knew each other, and if someone was screwing around they'd probably get a question "How's the project going?"

Second, you could probably do this for less by arranging a "study buddies" setup with college, grad or medical students but you'd also have to commit to keeping them productive as well.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#177

Post by Kibae »

One thing I've done to increase my productivity after reading a comment from a Hacker News post [1] is recording my work sessions on OBS.

The benefits for me are two-fold:

1) It keeps me accountable while working and

2) I can rewatch my work sessions and recall my thought process from a future me perspective.

It's amazing how much you forget about a day, but by watching the recordings after the fact, you recall the micro lessons you learned during your work sessions and you have the opportunity to encode these lessons into your long-term memory.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215277#32215958

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#178

Post by vl »

isoprophlex wrote: post #65
tiagod wrote: post #46

Well fuck. This is definitely the weirdest thing I've read this year. I doubt something will dethrone it before the end of the year.

I miss updates on n-gate.com They'd have a field day with this.

First rule of n-gate you can’t talk about it on HN. Now we both broke the rule.

But honestly, his last updates stopped being fun. It became just too repetitive.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#179

Post by khazhoux »

strgrd wrote: post #16
DaviNunes wrote: post #10

This reminds me of "This Guy Hired Someone To Slap Him In The Face Every Time He Got On Facebook" https://www.businessinsider.com/this-guy-hired-someone-to-sl...

This comment reminds me of reddit, where people feel like reading a headline warrants a comment without actually reading the article

Why do you think he didn't read the article? There is clearly a strong similarity between the OP and the article he posted.

Re: I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month

#180

Post by capableweb »

doubled112 wrote: post #169
capableweb wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve hired people just to help me focus and also to help with chores But were those people the same? Usually have have one type of person for each purpose, one psychologist/therapist to help you figure out why you can't focus and then one cleaner that helps you keep a tidy house.

I'm not sure everybody needs a psychologist/therapist but I'd be willing to bet most would benefit from somebody to talk to (or even at) If you ramble on long enough and your maid starts to answer and ask questions, are they a makeshift therapist?

> If you ramble on long enough and your maid starts to answer and ask questions, are they a makeshift therapist?

If all you think a therapist does is just answering and asking questions, you should maybe see a therapist and experience it for yourself ;)

Joking aside, the struggle of loneliness can probably be helped by having just somebody to talk to, though not in a professional setting.

But if you're constantly having trouble focusing, it could be a sign that something is amiss. Personally, sometimes I get affected by things in my social environment without really noticing it, just that things gets less interesting and that I'm being less productive than usual. A therapist can help you realize those things, while friends will usually be more supportive rather than trying to actively combat your "inside problem", as they have their own.

Could also be that some sort of medication can be helpful for you. I have some friends who didn't realize that suffered from ADHD until they were 30-40 years old, and having access to medication and therapy helped them a lot. A therapist can again help you realize if you need/don't need this.

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