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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

#271

Post by simplyinfinity »

loganc2342 wrote: post #223
Bjartr wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 couldn’t have said any of this better myself. > Things I truly care about, or which are exceedingly important are a huge uphill battle just to put any effort at all towards them. This is the sentence that hit the hardest for me. I’ve been struggling with this since before I can remember and it frustrates me to no end. The worst part to me isn’t even being less productive than I want to be, it’s my brain sometimes n…

Talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist, to get you tested for adhd. It might not be that, as depression can also present itself as adhd symptoms, but either way, you will find out why it's like that and fix it. It helped me a lot when I found out what I'm battling with.

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

#272

Post by nebulousthree »

fragmede wrote: post #185
sberens wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I built that chrome extension I linked (WebBlock). ActivityWatch is great for single device tracking, but I wish there was a tool for multi-device tracking and also away-from-device tracking (tracking gym, sleep, etc...) that integrated all of the data into one place and made it easily accessible. My use case is pretty niche though :/

Have you considered a Fitbit or similar device?

The post shows data collected from a fitbit regarding sleep quality

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

#273

Post by drewrv »

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

I’m certain she wasn’t actually watching porn. It’s a pretty common joke answer to say “porn” when someone asks what you’re browsing and you don’t want to share.

The fact that the author seems to take it as genuine adds to the bizarre nature of this blog post though!

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

#274

Post by lofaszvanitt »

Aaronmacaron wrote: post #124
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

He's got a 'Date Me' button on his website which takes you to a Google Form where you can apply to be his girlfriend. I can't decide if this makes the blog post more or less believable. Could it be that he's just a satirical character and doesn't really exist?

He is a psycho.

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

#275

Post by pcthrowaway »

barry-cotter wrote: post #248
owjofwjeofm wrote: post #208

Can someone directly explain the understanding he is lacking of what is wrong with this / what makes it off-putting, such as not understanding "the human element", "power dynamics" or "people or human dignity" Obviously many people in these comments sections don't seem to understand whats wrong with this, and there is such a thing as aspergers and the like. Maybe discussion can help people come to an understanding. I…

Sure. There are people like the author, who respect the autonomy of other people and believe that if there are two people who come to a mutually agreeable arrangement on the exchange of goods and services that’s ok. Then there are some other people who have an aesthetic revulsion for people who violate social scripts. So if you hire a maid, secretary, therapist or other kind of service staff that’s ok, but if you do…

I don't think that's what people are "objecting" to about this (well, not even objecting in many cases, just... flabbergasted).

The author appears to do very little work, while he pays someone to sit there and be his surrogate mother, so that he can be a bit more productive.

It seems somewhat attention-seeking (I personally believe it's honest, though it does invoke Poe's Law). That's fine too, people seek attention on HN, but they usually offer something insightful in return.

This is more the equivalent of the Tiktok user who posted her "day in the life of an employee at (Meta? Airbnb?)" that involved very little work.

Also fine, work isn't the point of life. But when you're showing off a flamboyantly eccentric "productivity hack" that got you to work 80 hours in a month instead of 25, so you could spend more time starting blog posts, breakdancing, doing yoga, going to the gym, "unironically starting a company (it's in stealth, sorry!)", doing online courses (at least this is at least somewhat related to the job they are presumably actually paid to do)... many people reading are going to be amused at the very least.

It seems like they have time management issues that make this "experiment" only potentially useful to people who also struggles to get anything actually done due to battling severe ADHD while balancing working at a very casual pace, and shooting off in 10 different directions at once all the time.

They would very likely benefit from some combination of a reality check, therapy, counselling, or medication.

This blog post is remarkable because it demonstrates a hyper-exaggerated jumbalaya of first-world-problems, out of touch, unchecked privilege, and the "hacker" mentality, with a side of attention-seeking.

It's like Lucille Bluth's character from arrested development[1] and Bill Gates trying to guess the price of groceries[2] conceived a baby with Krazam's "Hustle culture"[3] and delivered it right into this unbelievably glorious blog post

I know, I'm being uncharitable, and I feel a little bad about it. I can even relate to the author with a lot of their struggles, interests, and activities. Best of luck to him.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad_higXixRA

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

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

#277

Post by loganc2342 »

simplyinfinity wrote: post #271
loganc2342 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn’t have said any of this better myself. > Things I truly care about, or which are exceedingly important are a huge uphill battle just to put any effort at all towards them. This is the sentence that hit the hardest for me. I’ve been struggling with this since before I can remember and it frustrates me to no end. The worst part to me isn’t even being less productive than I want to be, it’s my brain sometimes n…

Talk to a psychologist or psychiatrist, to get you tested for adhd. It might not be that, as depression can also present itself as adhd symptoms, but either way, you will find out why it's like that and fix it. It helped me a lot when I found out what I'm battling with.

Thank you for the advice. I’ve been seeing a therapist for about a year and a half now and I’m in the process of seeing a psychiatrist in the very near future. I wish us both luck in overcoming our struggles.

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

#278

Post by gershy »

bspammer wrote: post #110
4gotunameagain wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that it is a parody of what the modern western manboy ™ has become, otherwise it is a bitter window to the state of affairs of the west.

The whole time I was reading, all I could think of was this video. https://youtu.be/_o7qjN3KF8U

Ty for bringing me to this!!

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

#279

Post by humanizersequel »

mtnGoat wrote: post #206
pcthrowaway wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't hiring people to sit behind you and watch you work be a breach of contract?

I would think so. Also doesn’t Meta own everything you create when you work there? I know other companies of that size do. And if so, then creating a company is breach and technically the IP of that company now belongs to Meta too.

>Also doesn’t Meta own everything you create when you work there?

I've heard stories like this but I can't imagine this would be enforceable unless the "IP" was very obviously related to his work at Meta. What other companies are you thinking of, and do you have any stories of this happening to someone?

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

#280

Post by jameshush »

He started with the wrong goal in mind.

The goal shouldn't be to increase the number of personal productivity hours. The goal is to move a company vision forward.

The leverage you get by spending half as much money on a single full-time virtual assistant to handle tasks for you alone would easily be double the "output" as what he did here.

Hopefully, lesson learned on his end? :shrug:

Also looks like he's into standup comedy. If you ever want a spot in Taipei hit me up Simon!

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