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It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

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Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#31

Post by golergka »

gffrd wrote: post #3

This glosses over the fact that jobs are a central piece—if not _the_ central piece—of many people's identities in the States. We've lost religion and communities as things that define and provide structure and purpose, leaving us clinging to jobs. Is this good? No! It's terrible! We should fix this! However, I'm not convinced that workplace stress is a matter of hours … it may be a symptom of lack of life beyond wor…

Work is where you provide value to the society, create something for other people and make world better, while simultaneously applying and improving your main set of skills.

Why wouldn't you want tie your identity to something like that?

Just to be clear: I have a few hobbies aside from work — I make music, DJ, paint, cook, hike sometimes. I have friends, and I'm also not a productivity maniac (I actually work in a 4 day workweek startup). But do I see my main job in the way I described above, and I wouldn't want to tie my identity to any other community or hobby. In all other aspects of my life I'm mostly just enjoying life, but at my work, I'm actively improving someone else's. When I worked in gamedev, I loved interacting with players and seeing how they enjoy my work. Now I make professional software and relish in the fact that I make other professional's work easier and more enjoyable.

May be people don't need other identities, but just more fulfilling jobs.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#32

Post by toomuchtodo »

wonderwonder wrote: post #8

Its the lack of consecutive days off, 2 is not enough. 3 would really be a change. I bet I would accomplish just as much during the week as I do now, workplaces would just have to reduce the number of useless meetings. I spend 4 - 5 hours a day in meetings and am still expected to deliver actual code. Kill the meetings, my code generation would be through the roof. There are several things wrong with the American kno…

Picking up traction.

https://www.4dayweek.com/

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/14/countries-that-are-embracing...

https://www.google.com/search?q=4+day+week+pilot

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=fal...

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#33

Post by golergka »

charlie0 wrote: post #18
atleastoptimal wrote: post #2

More importantly, I think, with AI automation coming in full force, we need to decouple one's working hours with their right to live a comfortable life, especially for the lower and middle class.

I don't think this is going to happen. Increases in productivity eventually lead to race to the bottom in terms of prices. Which means whoever owns the means of production are not incentivized at all to just let their workers work less. The demands of workers will stay the same, if not increase because of lowering barriers to entry on the supply side of job seekers. I wish we as a society would just accept less work…

> whoever owns the means of production

This 19th rhetoric century doesn't work in modern world, especially when you're talking about creating software. To "produce" most of what HN readers do, you don't need anything more than a laptop and some cloud services — which you would need to scale up proportionally to load, and, therefore, revenue. If you need capital to hire others, it's also never have been more easily available than in the last 10 years.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#34

Post by cableshaft »

JohnFen wrote: post #21
petsfed wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those people feel like they have time to pursue more fulfilling activities? Speaking only for myself, my more fulfilling hobbies feel like a zero-sum proposition when I factor in taking care of myself, my kids, my home, etc. What little leisure time activies I pursue are almost all pursued between the hours of 9 and 11pm, because that's the time I have . I think the OP is right in a lot of ways, that work…

> How many of those people feel like they have time to pursue more fulfilling activities? And yet, most people have hours every day available to spend watching movies, YouTube, etc. That is time that could be spent doing something fulfilling.

I wouldn’t judge those people too harshly. That might be all they have the mental energy to do at the end of the day, they need to let their brain reset.

As someone who tries to spend most of my days after work making games, there are days I just don’t have the mental energy to do it. And there have been months where I haven’t worked on it at all, as work and things in my personal life get more stressful.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#35

Post by goostavos »

greymalik wrote: post #15
wonderwonder wrote: post #8

Its the lack of consecutive days off, 2 is not enough. 3 would really be a change. I bet I would accomplish just as much during the week as I do now, workplaces would just have to reduce the number of useless meetings. I spend 4 - 5 hours a day in meetings and am still expected to deliver actual code. Kill the meetings, my code generation would be through the roof. There are several things wrong with the American kno…

More code isn’t better. As an engineering manager I don’t want 5x as many lines of code. I want the code you work on to be solving the right problems. Figuring out what the right problems and solutions are and making sure everyone on the team understands them is why you’re in meetings.

I don't think more meeting are the solution here. Most meetings are a complete and utter waste of time. They meander, they lack focus, and beget more meetings as a result.

I am obsessive about correctness, I want to build the right thing, but meeting culture is fundamentally broken. It's faux productivity. Humans getting together on a call -- often many of whom have no real stake in the game -- is just about the slowest way possible to get alignment on something. And, more often than not, that alignment ends up wrong, because spoken word sucks at precision -- even when aided by Word / Excel.

I've become increasingly bullish on using formal methods for business requirements. The dev side can spent time modeling their understanding of the problem, then use small *focused* meetings with the business to move that understanding of the current model forward.

tbh, my experimenting with this approach is still early. But, initial results are really promising. It feels really good to be able to concretely model (and machine check!) something amongst a small group, and then only schedule/attend a meeting when you need to confirm that your invariant are correct.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#36

Post by sph »

JohnFen wrote: post #25
sph wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear me out. 40 hours dedicated to your employer, however you slice them, is modern slavery. Why the hell are we creating all this technology to slave even more, with only energy to drool in front of Netflix and repeat the next day? People should have the time to explore their passions, projects and families more than a couple hours every day. Not dedicate half of their waking life , their mental and physical prime,…

Oh, we agree more than we disagree. The only part I really take issue with is the notion that working for someone is modern slavery. I don't think it's anything even close that. Slaves can't quit and do something else. They can't even change who their "owners" are. > I'd rather eat ramen, than get $250k a year and expected to be at my employer's beck and call 8am-5pm. I know a lot of people who make that exact choice…

> Slaves can't quit and do something else.

I discussed the slavery point below, but here let me defend its usage: it is slavery if you consider the society as a whole, not just your job.

Chances are, if you don't want to work for a year, you probably can't afford housing because you are renting. Statistically, you do not even have money to support yourself for a year. Culturally, we do not share food with strangers and neighbours, unless it's a particular event.

One side of my family is from equatorial Africa. My great-grandfather had a hut made with his own hands, and readily available food. If he wanted he could have spent his time philosophising on nature.

We have invented machines so our quality of life is much higher than him, but in exchange our time is not our own. Statistically speaking, the average Westerner, if they don't think about earning money for a year, they end up without a house, possibly starving. That fate, the spectre of that inhuman life, is the metaphorical whip of our master.

The choice is made for us.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#37

Post by teaearlgraycold »

moffkalast wrote: post #27
charlie0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is going to happen. Increases in productivity eventually lead to race to the bottom in terms of prices. Which means whoever owns the means of production are not incentivized at all to just let their workers work less. The demands of workers will stay the same, if not increase because of lowering barriers to entry on the supply side of job seekers. I wish we as a society would just accept less work…

So in short, seize the means of automation.

Yes, comrade

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#38

Post by slily »

mym1990 wrote: post #23
sph wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear me out. 40 hours dedicated to your employer, however you slice them, is modern slavery. Why the hell are we creating all this technology to slave even more, with only energy to drool in front of Netflix and repeat the next day? People should have the time to explore their passions, projects and families more than a couple hours every day. Not dedicate half of their waking life , their mental and physical prime,…

Wow, 250k a year to go to work 8-5 is “modern slavery”. On a bit of a high horse there.

Seriously. I'll take that job any day. I am in the same boat for <$150k and consider myself blessed when I'm not reading HN commenters bragging about their salary. At least you have a shot at retiring early in exchange for a set of responsibilities that plenty of people share for much less money.

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#39

Post by srackey »

great_psy wrote: post #9
gffrd wrote: post #3

This glosses over the fact that jobs are a central piece—if not _the_ central piece—of many people's identities in the States. We've lost religion and communities as things that define and provide structure and purpose, leaving us clinging to jobs. Is this good? No! It's terrible! We should fix this! However, I'm not convinced that workplace stress is a matter of hours … it may be a symptom of lack of life beyond wor…

Maybe work became the central piece in people’s lives because they don’t have time to devote to other things. It’s a 40 hour work week, but add in commuting and chores and decent sleep and you’re left with a few hours left for other things. Hard to build an identity around a few hours of something else.

But we used to work more and this wasn’t as much of an issue?

Re: It’s time to embrace slow productivity (2022)

#40

Post by deet »

Comments here so far seem to be missing Newport's key point (in the second half of the article)...

For many modern (knowledge work) jobs, it's volume of tasks, not duration, that seems to induce burnout.

For instance, if you have 1 central task for the week--say, write a report--but there are ten subtasks (hold 5 meetings to prepare, read 3 background papers, ...), and then each of those have a bunch of subtasks (Slack each 5 meeting attendees 10 times to coordinate and schedule, get interrupted when reading each paper so have to resume X times each) ... this 1 central task can easily be dozens or hundreds of subtasks.

And then each coworker is doing the same thing, adding tasks to your load (you have to read their messages, respond to their emails, etc) in a multiplicative way. Newport calls it the "Hive Mind" in one of his books. The number of total tasks, from very small to very large, each individual has to accomplish in a week ends up far far greater than expected on the surface. And adding to that, they come in in an unpredictable way.

All this adds up to burnout, not just the number of hours. It's the intensity, and the unpredictability.

I've experienced this myself. I was at one of the FAANGs, constantly bombarded with new tasks, and felt burnt out. Now, I'm at a startup--very much inspired by Cal Newport, and using AI and context awareness to make teams operate together more effectively (see bio)--and I'm working far more hours per week than before, but with less interruptions and less distraction, I'm able to focus and feel far less burnout despite the increased hours.

All this to say, we really need to rethink how we work, not just how much.

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