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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

#231

Post by Johnny555 »

fho wrote: post #146
darth_avocado wrote: post #20

I like how he concluded that $88 per extra productive hour is worth it and more people should consider it. Here’s other ways you could introduce productivity: 1. Hire house cleaners @400/month for a large house to come in twice a month. 2. Get a grammarly or similar subscription @60/month to write documents faster 3. Personal trainer 2 days a week for $60/session 4. A dietitian for weekly sessions @100/session (you c…

Just what you listed comes out to USD 1540 a month ... which (here in Germany) is more than half of what an average software developer earns [1]. [1] https://platri.de/informatiker-gehalt/

Still a bargain compared to paying someone $20/hour for 16 hours/day 30 days a month, which would be $9600/month

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

#232

Post by usefulcat »

Bjartr wrote: post #207
usefulcat wrote: post #33

> I have an endlessly growing list of projects I want to make, books I want to read, and skills I want to learn, so productivity means a lot to me! If it really meant a lot, it wouldn't be a challenge to actually do it. It sounds like the real problem is a lack of interest in the particular books, skills, etc.

> If it really meant a lot, it wouldn't be a challenge to actually do it. Dear god I wish this were true. You have no idea. Hell, I would pay good money right this second to make it true for myself. One of the major struggles of ADD is having things you actually care about being challenging to do. Doesn't matter how important, your brain just says "nope". I struggle with this constantly. Things I truly care about, or…

I mean no disrespect to sufferers of ADD, or for that matter anyone who finds it difficult to do anything which is 'important' to them. I too have many things that I wish I had done that I think would be very worthwhile but which, for whatever reason, I haven't.

What I have observed repeatedly is that the best way to tell what is actually important to a person (myself very much included!) is to ignore what they say and look at what they actually do and don't do. That's where my comment was coming from--not a glib dismissal, but an invitation for frank introspection.

Often the things we want to be important to us are different from the things that are actually important, and it can be difficult to even be aware of that difference.

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

#233

Post by eddsh1994 »

darth_avocado wrote: post #20

I like how he concluded that $88 per extra productive hour is worth it and more people should consider it. Here’s other ways you could introduce productivity: 1. Hire house cleaners @400/month for a large house to come in twice a month. 2. Get a grammarly or similar subscription @60/month to write documents faster 3. Personal trainer 2 days a week for $60/session 4. A dietitian for weekly sessions @100/session (you c…

> Personal trainer 2 days a week for $60/session

Can't wait to leave Palo Alto where a personal trainer is way closer to $200 than $60 per hour. $120 a week for a PT is great.

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

#234

Post by iamleppert »

granshaw wrote: post #76
vuckin wrote: post #26

This is incredibly bizarre, to the point where I wonder if this isn't just a creative writing exercise. Why does he feel the need to be 'productive' for 16 hours a day? Why did he think the best way to deal with this was to hire a group of babysitters? Why was he being so weird to his assistants? It just doesn't add up. The whole thing is so damn strange. Maybe this is an experiment on the readers of his article, to…

> Why does he feel the need to be 'productive' for 16 hours a day? Yeah after reading the post I’m like this guy must be a founder to value productivity so highly… NOPE, just works at Meta! EDIT: Oh wait, he DID also start a company, during the experiment in fact, but of course it’s in stealth mode! Can’t make this stuff up…

Facebook will catch wind of this and add him to the next layoffs spreadsheet, for sure.

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

#235

Post by eddsh1994 »

SunghoYahng wrote: post #91

What a great idea. I've been grappling with low productivity for 20 years, trying various solutions without success. I would love to emulate your approach, but don't have the means at present. Regardless, I'm eager to observe the outcome of your experiment, with hopes of replicating it in the future. Don't pay attention to detractors, as tackling productivity is a critical concern and worthy of pursuing with determin…

What sort of productivity challenges do you face that need $9,600 a month and five bodies to fix it?

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

#236

Post by [deleted] »

megablast wrote: post #181
Kibae wrote: post #177

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 m…

OBS - why do people use acronyms that most people have no idea about?

[deleted]

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

#237

Post by anonymoushn »

sberens wrote: post #30
vuckin wrote: post #26

This is incredibly bizarre, to the point where I wonder if this isn't just a creative writing exercise. Why does he feel the need to be 'productive' for 16 hours a day? Why did he think the best way to deal with this was to hire a group of babysitters? Why was he being so weird to his assistants? It just doesn't add up. The whole thing is so damn strange. Maybe this is an experiment on the readers of his article, to…

Related the being productive 16 hours a day, I enjoyed this blog post by Dan Luu: https://danluu.com/productivity-velocity/

Achieving a lot per time spent working seems unrelated to achieving a lot of time spent working per day. Are you sure your comments are written by a human rather than a LLM?

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

#240

Post by dymk »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #228
sberens wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Therapy would take away productive time :) I did actually use my own custom built productivity tools to block websites[0], and I used ActivityWatch[1] to track my time. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webblock/jeahkphmd... [1] https://activitywatch.net/

Yoga takes away "productive time" too.

So does eating and sleeping
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