that radio tower looks like the one from the movie Golden Eye
Had to listen to this as soon as I saw that photo
Against Productivity
61–70 of 110 posts
Re: Against Productivity
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much productive effort goes into solving these problems versus other less necessary problems? Let me define productivity: conscious effort to re-organize the world's energy and matter. Am I honour bound to re-organize the world's energy and matter until it's in the ideal state (which of course is never obtainable and not even definable, since it's different for each person)? The author has an issue with productiv…
The author has an issue with productivity for the sake of productivity. I agree with that sentiment. Spending time helping people in need is obviously a valuable and wise use of time, but you shouldn't feel guilty for not spending every waking moment increasing your net worth. Again, I agree, but the author seems to be A-OK with goofing off for years instead of pitching in with the rest of us.
I wasn't reading that in the first few paragraphs, what I read was the author has a huge feeling of guilt for not being productive enough, moving abroad in a rather random attempt at being more productive - whatever that means. It ended up being goofing off for a couple years, probably because she didn't have to make any money or didn't have much expenses down there - and probably realizing that pushing yourself to be more productive will actually lead to procrastination, and feeling guilty about not being productive is self-destructive and futile.
Re: Against Productivity
#63This post is full of mistakes and unclear thinking. I can't figure out what the author is arguing against or for. Is she against quantifying wealth? I'm not sure. Is she against working hard? Maybe. Does she think it impossible to quantify happiness and well-being? I get the impression she does. First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. Her comparison used absolute instead of per-capita values. In…
I believe the article is full of astute thinking.
> First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP.
A common theme of the article is measurement, value, and the measurement of value. Does Canada create the same 'value' as India? The notion seems preposterous, as how can a country 1/35th the size of another produce the same value - the author directly questions what 'value' is, as a measurement of something called 'productivity'. The entire article is a critique of what productivity is.
> The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!
It is not disparaged, quite the opposite. The author highlights that Japan measures (again, a theme of measurement) the number of deaths by overwork, and pretty explicitly and bluntly states that some other countries do not (and sarcastically concludes it must therefore not exist in those countries).
> Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things.
I agree. I believe the author is questioning what needs to be optimised and what is optimal. Before that, measurement has no scope, and what is currently optimised for 'productivity' may not be productive (excuse my pun).
Re: Against Productivity
#64This reminds me of PG's essay - http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html Basically, I believe Author would be better off making the claim that many people (himself included) confuse the definition of productivity.
the author is a woman
To be fair that Medium website doesn't exactly make it clear who is writing.
Re: Against Productivity
#65This is the major problem when you do things for reasons other then you love to do it. Stop trying to do whats "hip" and find your passion. A lot of the thoughts given in the article have the slight taste of the author wanting to do them because they are intellectual/trendy/response from society. Do what you love, simple as.
Work will never feel like work again.
Re: Against Productivity
#66Okay we should spend more time wasting more time. But how to pay your bills in that time? As long as this question is not answered all this discussion is meaningless in my eyes.
How about a regular 40 hour / week or part-time job for a decent wage? It's what the vast majority of people do.
Maybe I misunderstood the article? I understand that he wants to go to other countries, walk around, watch the rain and think about life in general. Maybe you can do that if you are a museum security guard, but in most jobs that's not possible. And at least I am quite tired after working 40 hours plus taking care of the basics needs I have (buying grocieries, cooking, cleaning) and my family has (spending time together, solving problems of other family members). I'm quite happy if I can manage to squeeze in 7 to 8 hours of sleep.
Re: Against Productivity
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're attempting to find a productive rhetorical truth in a piece about shedding productivity as a focus, you're missing the point. In fact, you're arguing that she should 1) be able to quantify happiness, 2) consider life-expectancy as a proxy for life quality, and 3) pursue optimizing life by quantifying and measuring it. I think you're missing many points. The whole idea—the wisdom, if you will—is that you los…
> And this is when you begin looking into Zen, and things become clearer and muddier at the same time [...] I hope you take this the right way, but this position is very California-ized pseudo-Zen. Many of the most well-regarded Zen practitioners and teachers very much would have savaged it, EX: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku#Opposition_to_.22D... > "One of Hakuin'…
This I agree with completely, but you must recognize the need for a stepping stone when speaking to people who are otherwise totally ignorant of Zen, and also the fact that with this set of ideas, surely it is not a maximization effort: even a moderate comprehension of Zen is better than nothing. Some would say that this does not exist, but I have personally experienced great benefit from the way of thinking if not fully the way of life, and I know others have a chance to as well.
In other terms, it is very difficult to sell a way of life, but people readily accept one small idea in that direction. I very much respect what you have written and know it to be true, but I also believe that the intellectual part of zen, while surely not complete at all, has so many useful and real benefits that it can't be ignored, and it makes a fine introduction. Whatever the destination, the western mind needs some convincing.
However, I have taken to heart what you have said and I will further my learning by going and doing.
Edit: After some thought, I do want to re-iterate that I think there are two realizations (not close to enlightenment, or to Zen, per se, but related) that I think are relevant to this discussion: that reality is paradoxical, and that one of those paradoxes is that often effort in a certain direction is inversely proportional to success. We often find what we're looking for when we're not looking for it, and we often hit the target when we're least trying to.
The major realization is that these are not just silly anecdotes or trivialities, but a core part of life itself and what it means to be human. They are very important, and the original article shows a manifestation of those ideas in a very clear and human way without identifying them exactly.
Re: Against Productivity
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can have my Humanity Card, because that's a complete load of crap. You don't need to always drive yourself to misery wanting what you don't have, especially because, if you know you're not going to enjoy it when you get it, you can simply stop wanting it. Bloody hell, give me three months of vacation time to spend at the beach and I can make a solid start on coming up with an ideal way to spend the rest of my lif…
You completely misunderstood me. I'm not saying that you always drive yourself to misery wanting what you don't have , just that human happiness is often a very complicated thing, and not one that should be viewed first through the SV prism of "optimization". > if you know you're not going to enjoy it when you get it, you can simply stop wanting it. Actually, Daniel Kahneman has spent the last few decades showing tha…
You're optimizing the wrong thing if you're looking outside of the human mind. Change the behavior surrounding our desires and happiness and you solve many of these problems.
You might say changing the way our minds work is very difficult, but surely it's easier than attempting to create an impossible utopia.
Re: Against Productivity
#69Fantastic piece. I believe in similar things. Here, where I currently live, we spend so much time working and being productive that we forget to ask questions. "Why am I doing this?" "What is the meaning of it?" "What is really important?" Then we end up lost, depressed and what not. Not all of us do, but some? Certainly. We do it because others do it. Because we believe that pursuing a different venue is not realist…
Sometime I wonder about the "meaning of life", but the real question is "what is the purpose of civilization?".
Cynics could argue that civilization is like a cancer, thus we should make sure civilization grows as fast and as big as possible to survive a cataclysm or to make sure one's country wins a future war.
That's the only argument to have higher standards and incentives to be productive, just so that society can be fatter and faster. There is no incentive to be happier at all when you want to be the strongest. Modern, developed capitalistic societies is just about scoring money. You just can't be happy in a society like this, because everything, to economical policies to the customs, are now made towards bigger faster stronger.
Sometimes it seems that the poverty and the crisis of the 30s scared one generation, and set a whole mentality of never being poor and unproductive ever again. Economics and scoring are now the highest priority. We're not individuals, we're just scores.
Re: Against Productivity
#70"Above all we become interesting [sic] in measuring ourselves. Word count/day, lines of code/day, hamburgers served/hour, steps taken/day, test questions/100, money earned/field’s average salary. We got quarterly reviews, job evaluations, and tested certifications." I've a dilemma: I've come to believe that this really is a bad thing, not just because we're suboptimizing output at the expense of quality of life, but…
Just remove the individual metric. We know they don't work.
Incentivize the entire company for the success of the company. Pay people fairly in an uncomplicated way. Align all the incentives and don't reward anything that is not directly connected to the clear and well-communicated success of the company.