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Productivity Is About Attention Management

nytimes.com

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Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#131

Post by bespoke_engnr »

fma wrote: post #122
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…

I've started an audio book on essentialism. "I can do anything, but not everything" struck out at me.

What's the book? Would you recommend it?

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#132

Post by rootbear »

brandall10 wrote: post #20
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…

Probably going to be controversial but I'll say it anyway - About 10 years ago I had a period of 6 months filled almost entirely with mundane work that required concentration. My gf at the time had a pretty hefty prescription for Vyvanse and well... I was shocked at the difference. I could get done in one morning what would normally take an entire week. And I did it about that often, usually a Monday or Tues dependin…

I was on Vyvanse for a while and it did seem to help, a little, but it had unacceptable side effects for me. Specifically, I started grinding my teeth! When I figured out it was the Vyvanse that caused it, I went off the drug and the grinding stopped. We tried some other drug, I forget which, but it wasn't as effective. I'm glad it worked for you and I wish it had worked better for me. I don't much like my current job and it's a daily struggle to stay focused on it.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#133

Post by perfmode »

gerbilly wrote: post #115
jayalpha wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers." No, they don't. There is only one task in your job, to make your boss happy. Strangely, this is rarely achieved by good job performance but often by social skills or idiotic metrics. "How to manage your boss" is worth a read.

Small suggestion: don't use the term 'boss'. I have a manager, but I don't have a boss.

If your boss is happy, feel free to call them manager. When that manager becomes unhappy with you, you’d better be prepared to deal with a boss.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#134

Post by avgDev »

bndw wrote: post #54
iscrewyou wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was me trying to get the Zonda in one of the Gran Turismo(3?) games. Raced a mustang around the Daytona track sooo many times.

Gran Turismo 2, 200 lap races.

Oof, I remember those days when my cousin and I would switch every few minutes to complete those races.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#135

Post by TeMPOraL »

cgriswald wrote: post #64
war1025 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when I was a kid and raced the same track over and over something like 1000 times on a game to get enough money to buy the fanciest car in the game rather than building my skills enough to do races where I would actually make decent money on each race and only have to do 5 or ten to buy said car.

On one of many playthroughs of the original Phantasy Star, I saved up 15K for the Diamond Armor by killing low level baddies and then breezed through the game until the end game.

Well, you didn't get to "cheat".

When we were kids, my cousin figured out a way to make Fallout 2 playthrough much easier. From the starting location, he would immediately head down to a particular late-game location in which you could acquire a Power Armor (the second-best armor in the game). He avoided getting killed by high-level random encounters by discovering that you could escape almost any of them if you mashed "A" key during loading screen - this would guarantee you started the turn-based combat before the random enemy could spot you, and 99% of the times would let you escape. After reaching the target location he'd acquire[0] the Power Armor, and start a quest chain that let you acquire Advanced Power Armor (the very best armor in the game). After that, the game was much easier.

Ah, videogames were so much more fun when we were kids, and didn't have that much time pressure.

--

[0] - I'm fuzzy on the details here; it probably involved attempting to steal it from the shop and reloading game on failure. I later improved this step by just buying it for money, after exploiting a "repeatedly steal merchandise from a guy and sell it back to him" infinite money generator bug that was available near the starting location.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#136

Post by dnissley »

honzzz wrote: post #109
wisty wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Just speculating, but could it be that your mind is grasping for an explanation, came up with the ego depletion idea, subjected it to a reasonable amount of questioning to ensure that it wasn't completely flimsy, and then you went with it? Kind of a "thinker thinks and prover proves" type mechanism?

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#137

Post by arandr0x »

kieckerjan wrote: post #104
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.

Eh, that is strange. I do feel happy and energized from productive work (even "house work" or "a hard day's work" that's not inherently creative) but I've never felt like an entirely different person after having produced a nice piece of code, or stopped feeling physical pain, things like that. (And I do like feeling "energized" more than "high" in general so I'm definitely not knocking productive work here, but people who try to argue that doing something productive is some kind of transcendental euphoric experience need to stop smoking the ink of their Tim Ferriss books)

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#138

Post by blazespin »

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…

Yeah, but in order to make effective decisions there are tonnes of tiny little tasks that you have to take on in order to do that. The idea that you can just go by gut is ludicrous. There is a glacier of work beneath the water that needs to be done in order to make effective decisions. Solving high class problems without doing your homework is an effective way to leading a project to disaster..

"complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day" these are the people that ruin teams.

Also, the difference between a startup succeeds and one that fails is very simple - execution and productivity. Grand ideas don't solve customer problems. Yes, attention management is important obviously, but that's a part of time management. You also have to grind to solve all the problems that come up.

The whole thing is nonsense wishful thinking that you can just make the hard work disappear.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#139

Post by iscrewyou »

avgDev wrote: post #134
bndw wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gran Turismo 2, 200 lap races.

Oof, I remember those days when my cousin and I would switch every few minutes to complete those races.

Hey! My cousin and I did the same. We still talk and laugh about it to this day.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#140

Post by criddell »

apatters wrote: post #78
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.

I don't have a citation for this, but I read something recently about a study where people who had been introduced to the concept of decision-making fatigue experienced it, while people who weren't aware of it didn't. The mind is a wacky thing, I think we know a lot less about it than we believe. One idea I like which seems to have some real world support is that your mental models make all the difference -- if you b…

I certainly experience mental fatigue. I have a hard time believing that if I didn't know about it, I wouldn't experience it.
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