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Productivity porn

calebschoepp.com

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Re: Productivity porn

#181

Post by pugets »

notsapiensatall wrote: post #99
jjice wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New pick ups are pretty expensive, at least from my perspective. A baseline F150 starts at 40k-ish. A decked out one could run you near double that I believe. Compare to a baseline Civic at around 23k.

Wow. People are really paying $80k for an F-150? Every time I think I can't get any more cynical, life throws a curveball like that.

I worked with a guy who spent $55k on a new truck. We were both making $18 an hour. He was in his early 20s living with his parents.

That was in 2017… I wonder if he’s still paying it off.

Re: Productivity porn

#182

Post by biztos »

One of the original, and most effective, competition hacks is to convince people that you sleep less than they do.

When someone tells you they sleep 5 hours a night then run two miles and take a 15-minute cold shower then start their work day, 85% of the time they are lying, 10% of the time you will have already noticed the effects of chronic sleep deprivation, and 5% of the time it's drugs.

But this has been a surefire way to put your competitors on the back foot for hundreds, probably thousands of years.

Re: Productivity porn

#183

Post by throw149102 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #61
LordHeini wrote: post #31

I really don't get any of those "be more productive", book, video, course and so on. Every single person I know just wastes their time with that. Usualy they work long hours and still don't get much done. But hey, they have Zettelkasten with things the never read. A to do list with stuff they never do. And they go out in the morning at 5 for jogging, while gulping down a liter of coffe or energy drinks which results…

Being more productive rarely leads to a happy and fulfilled life. It’s often precisely those moments in life when I’m on my least productive, that I look back on as if I really lived. Of course, be mindful of your time, but learn how to use it wisely, rather than optimizing for “productivity” as observed by others.

I think we might just have different definitions of productive. To me, writing code or reading a paper can be productive, but so can a conversation with my dad or a nice meal out. Basically I see "Productivity" and replace it with "Productivity towards producing more personal utility" where that utility can be anything - happiness, relaxation, actual goods and services, etc.

Furthermore, I think putting on the hat of "productivity" can sometimes reveal unusual things. Like how a conversation with a friend is just repeating the same old dreary boring stuff, and if you put a little effort in you can have a more "productive" conversation.

Re: Productivity porn

#184

Post by omginternets »

Trasmatta wrote: post #52
Yajirobe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this awesome video - The Hustle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

The videos on that channel are so good that they're painful to watch, when you realize how closely it matches the life you're living. This one is my favorite (or "least favorite" depending on how hard it hits on any given day): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYvhC_RdIwQ I feel like the people doing that channel could write a very effective modern Office Space.

The last minute of him stammering on the zoom call makes me want to hide under the bed.

Re: Productivity porn

#185

Post by ravenstine »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #105
TrackerFF wrote: post #32

Hustle and grind. Create 7 streams of income. Work 18 hour days - anything less and you're a loser destined for mediocrity. Read 5 books a week. Start trading stocks and crypto. Take cold showers, hit the gym. Optimize your schedule, log every minute spent. Ditch your loser friends and only hang out with likeminded - success breeds success. Sigma grindset. Moon or bust. If you're not worth $1 million liquid before 30…

I get that this is satire but could you expand on why people who want to be healthy + productive "have it wrong" (which I feel your satirical comment alludes to?) You're "taking the piss" at people who value working hard/long hours, reading, trying to be successful financially, taking care of their health/fitness, cutting ties with loser friends (drug addicts? bums?)

Not who you're replying to, but the problem I see with productivity porn is that it completely ignores the luck involved in success. We all have agency, but some people will work more hours and take more ice baths than everyone else and still end up poor and irrelevant. Some people are better off realizing they don't have "it" and taking a more relaxed approach to life.

Re: Productivity porn

#186

Post by jbjbjbjb »

personjerry wrote: post #141

I think for content like this there's a scale between mostly "feel good" fluff (i.e. Gary V stuff, imo) to mostly "useful" stuff (i.e. Atomic Habits, imo). But everything has a mixture of actionability and story-based fluff thrown in there entertainment/inspirational value. In my opinion, the fluff gets you through the drier parts of the reads. But what you decide to actually take out of the book and action on - that…

That’s an interesting distinction. I think the in-between is the worst. At least with Gary V you know you’re getting energy and motivation. Another YouTube video skimming over lessons from Atomic Habits for the hundredth time is the mindless faux learning to avoid.

Re: Productivity porn

#187

Post by MuffinFlavored »

Retric wrote: post #173
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people who push these values on social media care way more about the image of being a "successful person" than actually doing what it takes to achieve success (which rarely involves bragging about how hard you work on social media). Devil's advocate but you can measurably tell if you are financially successful (from working hard/long hours) and our healthy fitness wise (from going to the gym/eating clean/going…

It's really tempting to assuming the things you think are important are what actually result in success. Nobody sees all the possible lives they could have had. Daily jogging seems like a healthy choice when you wheren’t hit by a car etc etc. Add in all the actual lying and it's easy to get an incredibly distorted view of reality.

Avoiding jogging (in lieu of gaining obesity/any various degree of issues that come from lack of exercise) in fear of getting hit by a car seems irrational, wouldn't you agree?

You should strive for "perfect". If "perfect" is healthy and healthy means go for a run (with risks), you have to weigh it against the alternative (don't run, be unhealthy).

Re: Productivity porn

#188

Post by CSMastermind »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #140
CSMastermind wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people who push these values on social media care way more about the image of being a "successful person" than actually doing what it takes to achieve success (which rarely involves bragging about how hard you work on social media). They're at best untrustworthy sources and at worst snakeoil salesmen. Speaking of the latter there's a special brand of cognitive dissonance being shown here. If there were some sure…

> Some people who push these values on social media care way more about the image of being a "successful person" than actually doing what it takes to achieve success (which rarely involves bragging about how hard you work on social media). Devil's advocate but you can measurably tell if you are financially successful (from working hard/long hours) and our healthy fitness wise (from going to the gym/eating clean/going…

I think time helps shape perspectives here.

It can be really hard to tell someone's career or life trajectory in the moment or even in 1, 2, or 5 years.

I'm 35 now so I have the benefit of hindsight looking back on the decisions different people my age have made and while I'd be the first to caution against potential bias in data I can say definitively that the people who were into FIRE or grindset or whatever before those terms even existed have ended up markedly worse off by their own definition of success than people who took more traditional routes.

There are exceptions, I know one person who made millions on cryptocurrency for example. But he's the one exception to the rule I can think of.

The rest ended up no better off than their peers who weren't out there posting every motivational quote on social media or eliminating their social lives to write and ebook about credit card reward points.

So was it worth it? I doubt it. The ROI seems to be negligible or even negative to me.

It turns out there was no shortcut to wealth and happiness after all.

Re: Productivity porn

#189

Post by Arisaka1 »

This is 100% me if you substitute social media browsing with distro hopping and text editor tinkering. Now I understand why redditors decided to call that subreddit "unixporn".

My solution: Stick with Fedora and Visual Studio Code, because I've spent at least 100 hours in the past month checking out Neovim, getting my first init.lua to work, messing around with configurations, making telescope work, make telescope look good. Then switched to Arch, try bspwm, Gnome, KDE, fonts.

Meanwhile, my fellow junior colleague is flexing all over me his Docker knowledge, his experience in unit testing and CI/CD, and generally things people actually pay you for.

Re: Productivity porn

#190

Post by austinjp »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #144
eptcyka wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valuing hard work, reading and trying to be financially successful is something completely unrelated to trying to do 18 hour work days, skimming several books a day, and running the hamster wheel off the peg and into the frying pan. Hard work is often what is required to be successful, but just mindlessly toiling away is not the key ingredient to success. Also, what good is a friend who wouldn't come to your aid in t…

> Valuing hard work, reading and trying to be financially successful is something completely unrelated to trying to do 18 hour work days Are you trying to say "it's easy to be financially successful by working 8 hours a day instead of 18 hours"? like... it's "overstated" that people think they need to "work more/work harder" to become successful?

Define "successful".
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