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Productivity Is About Attention Management

nytimes.com

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Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#101

Post by pelario »

kharak wrote: post #95
skrebbel wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Remember the last time you felt glad to be alive? Was it related to being productive? Actually, yes. Is that weird? I can't be the only one here who loves their job.

I can't even imagine having that kind of feeling related to my job. Especially not if it's about coding. At least not if it's about typical B2B or B2C software. What do you do for a living if you don't mind me asking?

Not OP, but being a researcher in CS is a job that gives me that feeling (not always of course, but often enough)

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#102

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #100
netwanderer3 wrote: post #28

There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective. One can fill their days by completing many mindless tasks and consider themselves as productive, but in the end hardly any of those tasks really matters. On the other hand, another person may only complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day but these were critical tasks that could generate much higher values. This subseq…

It's a matter of definition. I guess some people define productivity as effectiveness.

[deleted]

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#103

Post by empath75 »

netwanderer3 wrote: post #28

There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective. One can fill their days by completing many mindless tasks and consider themselves as productive, but in the end hardly any of those tasks really matters. On the other hand, another person may only complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day but these were critical tasks that could generate much higher values. This subseq…

At work they’re doing some half-assed metrics based on scrum story points, which is fine, I do about as many as anyone else, but it doesn’t really capture that the entire project we’re working on was almost entirely my idea and that a lot of the backlog that everyone is working from was generated by my ideas. I spend 80% of my day reading and thinking and maybe 20% coding at best. I used to think that if I spent more time coding I’d be more productive, but I don’t think I could spend more time coding and still produce anything worth while. I enjoy coding 2-3 hours a day. I absolutely hate coding 7-8 hours a day. I do better work when I’m enjoying it.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#104

Post by kieckerjan »

normalhuman wrote: post #85

My favorite anti-productivity introspections: - Remember that you are going to die. Time flies, have you noticed? Is that status symbol that you are pursuing really that important? Is it ever going to make you happy? - There is more wisdom in one of your cells than in all self-help and management books combined. Maybe you can't focus for a good reason? What could that reason be? - Remember the last time you felt glad…

I can feel intensely alive and happy after having produced something, be it a nice piece of code, a short story that people might want to read or a meal that my friends enjoy. There are other surefire ways I can trigger happiness in myself (sex, drugs, exercise, to name some) but the resulting "high" feels more artificial to me.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#105

Post by empath75 »

marcv81 wrote: post #6
kumarvvr wrote: post #3

What the author means by "attention management" is, perhaps, the ability to concentrate for a long period of time. Personally, for work that i love to do, concentration is rewarding. For mundane, routine work, I usually go on auto pilot, getting work done, but, doing it while my attention is somewhere else. For mundane work that requires concentration, my output falls off the cliff. Its here that many tips and tricks…

I used to think like you until I met a coworker. He could not code to save his life, nobody in the team liked working with him. Until one day we had a boring data entry task. He could do it for hours at a time, and barely made any mistake. This experience taught me something.

I literally learned how to code to get out of a single boring data entry task.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#106

Post by mjburgess »

wisty wrote: post #91
mjburgess wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general idea even in a loose, more metaphorical sense, holds however. 'Mental fatigue' is well established, and your volition along with mental faculties generally become harder to exercise the longer they are used without break. The specifics are disputed, but we needn't be so specific for the advise to hold.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story... > But that story is about to change. A paper now in press, and due to publish next month in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, describes a massive effort to reproduce the main effect that underlies this work. Comprising more than 2,000 subjects tested at two-dozen different labs on several continents, the study found exactly nothing. A ze…

Ego depletion is one hypothesized aspect of metal fatigue -- no one is doubting mental fatigue.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#107

Post by chiefalchemist »

netwanderer3 wrote: post #28

There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective. One can fill their days by completing many mindless tasks and consider themselves as productive, but in the end hardly any of those tasks really matters. On the other hand, another person may only complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day but these were critical tasks that could generate much higher values. This subseq…

> "There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective."

Put another way: Focus / attention doesn't help if you're putting such energy into the wrong things.

It starts with problem identification.

The Five Why is always a great tool. Here's a tongue in cheek site it threw together a couple years ago to help :)

http://5xy.co/

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#108

Post by trifidpaw »

netwanderer3 wrote: post #28

There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective. One can fill their days by completing many mindless tasks and consider themselves as productive, but in the end hardly any of those tasks really matters. On the other hand, another person may only complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day but these were critical tasks that could generate much higher values. This subseq…

From my own experience, (so take it with a pinch of salt!) the difference can be a constant loop of reflection and evaluation - is this the most effective thing to do now? And taking time to actually evaluate why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#109

Post by honzzz »

wisty wrote: post #91
mjburgess wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The general idea even in a loose, more metaphorical sense, holds however. 'Mental fatigue' is well established, and your volition along with mental faculties generally become harder to exercise the longer they are used without break. The specifics are disputed, but we needn't be so specific for the advise to hold.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story... > But that story is about to change. A paper now in press, and due to publish next month in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, describes a massive effort to reproduce the main effect that underlies this work. Comprising more than 2,000 subjects tested at two-dozen different labs on several continents, the study found exactly nothing. A ze…

Could you please clarify this for me? I assume that I did not understand the concept of ego depletion before but how is this related to the banal observation of real-life things... like when I do not have the willpower to follow my exercise routine after a really hard day at work or feel unable to focus when I am tired... this would not be "ego depletion" or "cognitive fatigue"? To be honest, those things seemed so obvious and "common knowledge" to me that I did not understand why even invent special terms - what am I missing?

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#110

Post by iLemming »

tighter_wires wrote: post #83
iLemming wrote: post #73

I've tried many different things and I finally have a solution that (I think) works for me: It's Emacs' Org-mode in combination with Org-pomodoro - First, using org-capture I would create an org heading with a description of the problem. If there's a Jira ticket I would attach the ticket number (I have a trivial elisp function that converts a regular number into a complete jira-ticket link) - Then I would start a Pom…

Do you ever find that Pomodoro doesn't leave enough uninterrupted time on your task? When you're knee deep do you ever just skip your breaks?

Sometimes that happens. I try not to skip breaks, they are important part of pomodoro. But Emacs ain't my dad - if I feel like skipping a break or taking one before the end of the current cycle - I just do it. There are days when I simply can't maintain discipline of concentrating focus and taking breaks within intervals then I simply don't use org-pomodoro. I would clock-in on a task and work until I'm tired. I'm not a contractor, I don't need to report my "billable hours" yet clocking in helps me to maintain focus on the task and keep notes. There's a way in Emacs to attach a note onto currently clocked-in task without having to navigate to it.
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