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Productivity Is About Attention Management

nytimes.com

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Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#151

Post by ohaideredevs »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #135
cgriswald wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mash…

Here is what you do: 1. Max theft or whatever and small arms (whatever it's called) 2. Walk down to the trading post. 3. Attempt to steal the Bozar rifle. Reload until you succeed.

Not sure how you could get power armor early.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#152

Post by losteric »

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…

Endurance is not disputed. We understand the bottlenecks of physical endurance, but mental bottlenecks are is still poorly understood. That study rejected the ego depletion hypothesis for mental fatigue.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#153

Post by loco5niner »

adamisom wrote: post #125
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 imperative to spend time only on tasks that require critical decisions to be made, and to delegate the rest. Nobody ever points out the privilege in this statement. Someone has to be the unfortunate grunt getting delegated to, instead of delegating. If a delegator depends on the grunt, can we really attribute super high productivity to the delegator but not to the grunt? That certainly seems to be implicit when…

Honestly though, you have to climb the ranks somehow. For someone, that delegation is their "break" into the work they want to do.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#154

Post by fwip »

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 are many tasks that are both relatively mindless and important.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#155

Post by brootstrap »

trifidpaw wrote: post #108
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.

I do this twice a day at work, if weather is nice i will take a 10 min walk to reset myself. I like to close out all my fuckin tabs, take stock of WTF happened in the first hours of work, then refocus path. A 10 min walk helps refresh things. Typically go out after about 1.5 to 2 hours of time at the desk.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#156

Post by fwip »

zikzak wrote: post #45
ehead wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my solution, but it feels like there should be a better way. I have replaced 'staring into space thinking' with taking a walk outside my office.

Unless you are rich enough to have chosen it, or maybe a prisoner, you always have more than one thing to do. Laundry, groceries, complex engineering, it all needs to be done. I think our minds evolved to track all these things and, probably in a time sensitive way more than projected future value, to prioritize them. For this reason, I think having multiple projects is the natural state as the mind is optimized for…

It's hard to do laundry or grocery shopping while you're at work.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#157

Post by graeme »

adamisom wrote: post #125
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 imperative to spend time only on tasks that require critical decisions to be made, and to delegate the rest. Nobody ever points out the privilege in this statement. Someone has to be the unfortunate grunt getting delegated to, instead of delegating. If a delegator depends on the grunt, can we really attribute super high productivity to the delegator but not to the grunt? That certainly seems to be implicit when…

You don’t have to rise that high to delegate. If you’re working on your own, you can hire good contractors who charge $10-$15 an hour. Barring that, systems work can also be a form of delegation: building a system to automate low value tasks is a way of not doing them.

Alao no one ever completes all the tasks they have. So deciding which are the most necessary to do is crucial.

The people who delegate and eliminate well at these low stages are more likely to progress to more delegation. Yes, some people still have no ability to do any of that, but I doubt it applies to most people on this forum.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#158

Post by dalex00 »

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…

Just use the term efficiency because than effort and impact covered.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#159

Post by tmaly »

On the idea that we need motivation, I have been practicing the concept of mini habits to overcome the barriers that the brain puts up when using motivation.

https://tysonmaly.com/books/how-to-make-habits-the-easy-way/

I think keeping a few key concepts like Parkinson's law and Pareto's law as well as thinking about what is actually going to move the needle helps.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#160

Post by TeMPOraL »

ohaideredevs wrote: post #151
TeMPOraL wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mash…

Here is what you do: 1. Max theft or whatever and small arms (whatever it's called) 2. Walk down to the trading post. 3. Attempt to steal the Bozar rifle. Reload until you succeed. Not sure how you could get power armor early.

> Not sure how you could get power armor early.

In San Francisco. It was (AFAIR) in the lower left corner of the map. Like I described, you could get there easily straight from starting location, if your "A" mashing skill was good enough.

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