Stop trying to make hard work easy
superorganizers.substack.com
Stop trying to make hard work easy
1–10 of 58 posts
Re: Stop trying to make hard work easy
#2Long but the meat is missing.
The most important subsection is "Most moments of distraction are caused by internal triggers." But that section lacks anything approaching concrete advice. It just repeats already written ideas then offers this:
> So if you want to deal with distraction the first thing you have to do is deal with the negative emotional triggers that lead to it.
The next section, regardless of the title, is about routines rather than internal-emotional triggers and is primarily an anecdote about their writing with no larger take-aways.
I think it is an article with good ideas, going down the right road, but never quite reaches a useful destination. Too bad.
Re: Stop trying to make hard work easy
#3Long but the meat is missing. The most important subsection is "Most moments of distraction are caused by internal triggers." But that section lacks anything approaching concrete advice. It just repeats already written ideas then offers this: > So if you want to deal with distraction the first thing you have to do is deal with the negative emotional triggers that lead to it. The next section, regardless of the title,…
> But that section lacks anything approaching concrete advice.
Maybe because he wants to sell his book :)
Also notice he uses distraction instead of procrastination most of the time. The core ides is solid though that it's a emotion management problem. If you can control your emotions related to a given task, you can be more productive.
Re: Stop trying to make hard work easy
#4Long but the meat is missing. The most important subsection is "Most moments of distraction are caused by internal triggers." But that section lacks anything approaching concrete advice. It just repeats already written ideas then offers this: > So if you want to deal with distraction the first thing you have to do is deal with the negative emotional triggers that lead to it. The next section, regardless of the title,…
I was just about to write a review along the same lines, but you did it already. The article is not going anywhere, just rambling along.
Re: Stop trying to make hard work easy
#5Long but the meat is missing. The most important subsection is "Most moments of distraction are caused by internal triggers." But that section lacks anything approaching concrete advice. It just repeats already written ideas then offers this: > So if you want to deal with distraction the first thing you have to do is deal with the negative emotional triggers that lead to it. The next section, regardless of the title,…
Sometimes one of the triggers is that it’s hard, and if it’s a hard thing you have to regularly do, you should be looking to find a way to do it easier.
Otherwise it becomes a suck-it-up-and-just-do-it strategy, which is a fine when used reasonably, but it too can be exhausted as a strategy.
But anyway, all of our tools and progress flys in the face of the author’s suggestion. We are at this point in society because we put a lot of thought into not having to work hard.
The irony of working hard to not work hard.
Re: Stop trying to make hard work easy
#6Long but the meat is missing. The most important subsection is "Most moments of distraction are caused by internal triggers." But that section lacks anything approaching concrete advice. It just repeats already written ideas then offers this: > So if you want to deal with distraction the first thing you have to do is deal with the negative emotional triggers that lead to it. The next section, regardless of the title,…
On the contrary, I feel pretty comfortable after reading the whole article. It's well written and examples provided by the author are really illuminating. Anyway, there's no universally applicable advice for everyone. I think we just need some patience and effort to find the right path for ourselves. Try not to make the hard work easy. :)
Re: Stop trying to make hard work easy
#7ITIL and anything related to providing support and services, is diametrically opposed to the idea of blocking out and being unhelpful to other peoples' progress. Support and being supportive, even assisting with organizing workflows, is work too.
Re: Stop trying to make hard work easy
#8Long but the meat is missing. The most important subsection is "Most moments of distraction are caused by internal triggers." But that section lacks anything approaching concrete advice. It just repeats already written ideas then offers this: > So if you want to deal with distraction the first thing you have to do is deal with the negative emotional triggers that lead to it. The next section, regardless of the title,…
Sometimes one of the triggers is that it’s hard, and if it’s a hard thing you have to regularly do, you should be looking to find a way to do it easier. Otherwise it becomes a suck-it-up-and-just-do-it strategy, which is a fine when used reasonably, but it too can be exhausted as a strategy. But anyway, all of our tools and progress flys in the face of the author’s suggestion. We are at this point in society because…
I think it's worth distinguishing between hard work (working long hours), rote work (doing lots of menial work) and challenging work (important work that requires attention/concentration).
I agree with you that rote work should be minimized with better tools and processes. I can delegate the bookkeeping for example.
Hard work seems like a matter of culture. There might be the expectation from your organisation, family, community etc. that working long hours is the only right way of working. But I don't think that's what the author is addresssing here.
So that leaves challenging work, like writing, marketing, cold-calling, etc. I should be cold-calling much more for example, but I've become quite proficient in finding excuses not to do it (one of them is that it's illegal here in Germany for my product in many cases). I certainly see the author's point about avoiding the discomfort for these types of activities.
Re: Stop trying to make hard work easy
#9This has already been posted 5 other times in the past week: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Re: Stop trying to make hard work easy
#10I wish technical people would stop using the words hard and easy. In general use when developers use the word easy is it supposed to mean simple, convenient, done by somebody else, low timeframe, fewer steps, less research, faster learning, something else, or all of the above?