The Productivity Mirage • Hacker News Board

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#161

Post by nine_k » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

loveparade wrote: post #101

embedding-shape wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Constant context switching takes the joy out of work and prevents you from getting into a flow state. I hope someone figures out the solution. Don't do that if it bothers you? My best experience for "agent produces good code following good design" essentially been to always work with one agent, at most two, but in the same project. And while the agent works, I continue taking my notes of what I'm doing, what's next…

> And while the agent works, I continue taking my notes of what I'm doing, what's next, what the design/architecture needs to evolve to do and so on. That is still context switching for me. I do the same. While the agent works, which may be 10 minutes, I start planning follow up tasks, etc. But then eventually I still need to come back to the original task to review the agents work. I don't switch across projects usu…

> sit there for 10 minutes doing nothing

Try that. Some of the best ideas get born during the "idle time".

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#162

Post by blizdiddy » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:42 AM UTC

amazingamazing wrote: post #7

blizdiddy wrote: post #3

It sucks how much of the world is built by people who glorify putting in 6 days and 4 nights a week, then put that effort towards stuff like Facebook. It’s so uncool to be critical thinking at all with these types. Accept the mission statement at face value and get paid.

as opposed to posting comments on forums in the evening for free? at least facebook groups is impactful one way or another.

Yeah dude. If he spent more time complaining on forums instead of lobbying against regulation meant to protect children from his own abusive platform, the world would be better. Take your puritan work ethic and shove it.

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#163

Post by t43562 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

If I have bash and vim, find, less and grep I'm 90% good. If ripgrep and fdfind are installed I'm very happy.

One usually doesn't have to fall back from these too often because so many machines have them and its the fallback that I find so tiresome - having to get some other muscle memory going for a tool I haven't used in a while.

Level 2 would be strace - because it's so incredibly useful when trying to find out why something isn't working as you might expect.

I don't claim to be highly productive though - just old. Productivity for me comes from making up my mind what to do and being able to visualise it. Usually there's a massive period of unproductivity before every brief bit of decent work. If I was more decisive then people might know my name :-) but I'm obscure like most of us I presume.

Re: The Productivity Mirage

#164

Post by Ibrain » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

Hey guys! I got tired of spending hours organizing my To-Do lists, so I built an app that does it for you. It features an AI coach where you just dump your tasks, and it organizes your entire day based on your goals (it even "vetoes" tasks if you try to overload yourself). It’s iOS only right now. I’d love for you to try it out and let me know if it helps you! Here is the link: https://apps.apple.com/app/veto/id6762629170