Productivity Is About Attention Management • Hacker News Board

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#171

Post by Zeebrommer » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

Pimpus wrote: post #88

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've always focused on being efficient, not productive. I want to get my work done as fast as possible so I can return to enjoying life.

I've been wondering whether framing it like that (work vs life) is making things worse. I do it myself too, but what if those 8+ hours a day could actually also be leisure? Coworkers with young kids actually joke about coming to work to relax.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#172

Post by fma » Mon, Apr 01, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

bespoke_engnr wrote: post #131

fma wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

I'm only through the first chapter. Might be a good read, but harder to implement. So far it's, you gotta say no to things that aren't important. How often has your boss asked you to do unimportant things, and would you be able to say no to any of them? Maybe try to push it off to someone else... But to say no would be harder.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#173

Post by atemerev » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

GunlogAlm wrote: post #113

atemerev wrote: post #70

As a person with diagnosed adult ADD, this is one thing I cannot do — manage attention. Medication and meditation help a little, but I probably will never reach the productive capabilities of a regular person. Sigh.

I'm in the same boat; diagnosed with ADHD-PI (UK, so we don't use the term 'ADD') as an adult. I've improved vastly thanks to medication and good routines but it remains a constant effort, and improvement is a continual process. The book Taking Charge of Adult ADHD by Russell Barkley helped me significantly.

Just bought and read the book.

For me, it was fantastically depressing: basically it says: “OK, so you have ADHD. Sucks to be you. Go through this huge laundry list of these and those things to do, don’t forget to take your medication, find a mentor — assuming anybody would want to deal with you, and who could blame them? — and if you are extremely lucky, and with heavy effort, maybe you can become half a normal man or woman who runs through all of this effortlessly, which you’ll never be. What a burden to society!”

All of this is true perhaps, but now I just want to die.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#174

Post by brandall10 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

rootbear wrote: post #132

brandall10 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 jo…

It worked for me specifically in that context, but I didn't have a desire to do much with it in ensuing years as it seemed to have a deleterious effect on my creative capacity (important for work I do like) + did have a negative impact on my ability to sleep and made me really hyper.

The grinding happened for me too but didn't bother me much, I just chewed gum. Could see how doing that on a daily basis would be a drag.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#175

Post by quickthrower2 » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 1:53 AM UTC

dlivingston wrote: post #166

quickthrower2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe don't autofire your 0.1Xers?

What's a 0.1Xer?

Amazingly it's hard to find a good link on this topic.

Anyway it's from some study years ago that the most productive people are 10 times more productive than the least productive people. These are called 10x-ers (assuming they exist).

0.1xer is a play on that to talk to the least productive people in a team.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#176

Post by meowface » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:36 AM UTC

ianmcgowan wrote: post #48

cven714 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the exact same problem. When I know what needs to get done, even if it's tedious, it's not so bad to put my nose to the grindstone and work through it. But when I'm not sure how to approach a task, suddenly every distraction in the world is more appealing. You often see the suggestion to break up big tasks into smaller, baby step chunks to avoid this analysis paralysis. Doesn't help when I'm not even sure what…

I struggle with this too, and two things that help me are: 1) Start screen recording software and dictate your thoughts as you go through the research/brainstorming phase. Don't often go back and view the recorded sessions, it's the act of recording and speaking out loud that helps. 2) Comment driven development. Stub out functions just with comments, write deeper comment blocks inside a procedure where you have a ro…

That second approach has been crucial for me when I start large projects. I usually use a mix of comments, pseudocode, and semi-correct actual code, then go back and fill everything in one-by-one.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#177

Post by kumarvvr » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 2:54 AM UTC

Bekwnn wrote: post #167

kumarvvr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting. Are you in a digital creative field or traditional creative field?

Games development as a programmer. Lots of writing new code. Parents were artists and I very nearly majored in English. There's a lot of lessons I took from traditionally creative fields.

Great to know. Have a hobby game project lined up this year, using Unreal. Creative work is such a rush.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#178

Post by dmitryminkovsky » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 3:45 AM UTC

tsjq wrote: post #79

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I considered that but at the same time I would like incremental feedback at this point. But maybe I should do a Show HN. I don’t want to bother people. Should we do a Show HN?

yes, please do a Show HN.

I will wait a while but thanks for the feedback.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#179

Post by honzzz » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 5:55 AM UTC

losteric wrote: post #152

honzzz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have chosen a poor example and formulated my question in a misleading way. I do not work physically and I am more likely to lack willpower when I am mentally tired even when it is related to other things than physical exercise - for example I am trying to reduce my sugar intake and I am more likely to just give up eat some chocolate after a tiring (mentally) day. That is what I thought was the kind of obvious thing - that when people are mentally tired they tend to just watch a movie instead of originally planned language learning. This is what's disputed?

I am asking because either I do not understand the ego depletion concept or something that seemed really obvious to me is disputed, which would surprise me.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#180

Post by michalu » Tue, Apr 02, 2019, 8:13 AM UTC

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…

Indeed, and we should all keep what you say in mind. But in order to be effective you first need to be productive. A lot of people struggle with focus, motivation and energy to do things.