The 40 point spreadsheet from the Harvard Business Review article sounds like pure parody.
Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
191–200 of 361 posts
Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
#192Re; This particular quote from the article… > "Stop confusing productivity with laziness. While no one likes admitting it, sheer laziness is the No. 1 contributor to lost productivity." I was taught growing up that if it's something you must do anyhow, then true laziness is finding the simplest and most effective way to do a given task quickly and correctly the first time so that you don't have to waste time and effo…
My father runs a business, one day many years ago in his shop he needed help moving a bunch of material. I explained it would be a lot faster to do it a different way, and he commented that would be the lazy way to do it. It wasn’t the first time I’d run into this thinking, though it has stuck with me ever since. I explained this isn’t about exerting less effort, but that for the same effort we get a heck of a lot mo…
The matrix for effort vs. impact is something I find myself drawing in meetings a lot.
Effort
Low High
┌───────────┬───────────┐
I │ │ │
m Low │ Ok │ Bad │
p │ │ │
a ├───────────┼───────────┤
c │ │ │
t High │ Perfect │ Ok │
│ │ │
└───────────┴───────────┘Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
I need to check, are you sarcastic? I have so far avoided Lewis due to an impression (way too old impression to remember where I got it, may be unfounded or not) of the texts being close to christian/religious zealotry?
I'm not trying to guess why you would say that (and by that, I mean the fact that you would avoid writing because it's trying to preach to you), and I do want to say that Lewis is, overall, very close to proselytizing in his writings (generally it's pretty explicitly stated that's what he wants to do). But. Avoiding something because it disagrees with your worldview, or because it is 'too close to [insert literally a…
That said,"Letters From the Earth" by Mark Twain is an excellent companion volume to the Screwtape Letters, taking an opposite position (and from the perspective of a somewhat more exalted demon).
Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
#194The topic is nice, but above all I thoroughly enjoy the writing. I feel like I get a lot more done precisely because I don't like to eat frogs. I sleep until I'm rested. I don't touch my computer until I've had tea on the balcony. I work on what feels right, when it feels right, for as long as it feels right. If the weather is nice, I'll hop on my bicycle and forget about work. But when something sparks my interest,…
When I interviewed for my current job, I had to take psychology test and I'm very skeptical to those kind of tests. The guy that ran the test explained that this wasn't about putting me into a colored box but trying to figure out what I naturally preferred to do in a work situation with the idea being that things that I enjoy are probably things that I'm good at because it takes less energy to perform. I don't know i…
I'd walk immediately. These sort of hiring practices are demeaning and a warning sign that those running the show are blithering idiots.
Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking tests is an important frog. It’s been quite a few years for me, but lately the movement to dethrone tests like SAT made me wonder how disadvantaged kids can distinguish themselves without a quantifier for potential. If it’s essays instead of a math score, then maybe an essay is like this article says, improved messaging makes bad startups look like good ones.
I agree, but taking a single test that's mostly about merit rather than compliance is not really what's being talked about. For what it's worth, my family is not wealthy or educated and I was able to go to a high-quality-but-not-prestigious magnet school in significant part because of my SAT score :)
But the linked article (GP to yours) is about Y-Combinator and yes it is a bit of a different topic than the (better written) posted one about frogs.
It’s been quite a few years, but without the SAT, the only test that would distinguish me from a socio-economically disadvantaged background was a military assessment test.
So when the SAT came under fire after a high-profile cheating scandal in Hollywood, I heard a lot about replacing the test with an essay.
The article about Y-Combinator is about IQ and things that are not IQ. It also has this interesting quote about messaging —- message coaching can obscure the bad candidates among the good ones. I feel replacing the frog of SAT preparation with the possibility of an essay-as-a-service feels punitive to kids from difficult backgrounds.
Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
#196The topic is nice, but above all I thoroughly enjoy the writing. I feel like I get a lot more done precisely because I don't like to eat frogs. I sleep until I'm rested. I don't touch my computer until I've had tea on the balcony. I work on what feels right, when it feels right, for as long as it feels right. If the weather is nice, I'll hop on my bicycle and forget about work. But when something sparks my interest,…
What is your occupation where you get paid to work only on what feels right, only when it feels right, for only as long as it feels right, with leeway to hop on your bicycle and forget about work whenever you want? Cause I am interested in this line of work. At least if it pays enough to live comfortably.
allaboutberlin.com. I'm self-employed, and I have no direct customers. So long as my bills are paid, everything else is extra. I can invest time into more, better content, but I can also mess around with things that don't make money. More often than not, they turn out to do just that. "If you build it, they will come."
Mind you, I still have to work, but there's rarely anything that needs to be done right now, unless I goofed up while fiddling with nginx.
Before that I was a contractor for a year or two. After seeing contracting colleagues disappear for months-long vacations, I wanted in on that.
Before that I was a regular employee in Europe, where work culture is far more relaxed. I had more vacation days as an intern than my parents in the home country ever had. I also became really good at aggressively cutting meetings for me and my team, which gave us more time to experiment without affecting output.
In Germany, you also have the right to reduce your work hours. Coincidentally, that's the article I'm currently working on.
There's a minimum number of frogs that you have to eat. Mine is very low out of sheer luck. However there are different ways to bring most people's number down, starting with don't glorify eating frogs.
Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is your occupation where you get paid to work only on what feels right, only when it feels right, for only as long as it feels right, with leeway to hop on your bicycle and forget about work whenever you want? Cause I am interested in this line of work. At least if it pays enough to live comfortably.
Remote software engineer at a company with good WLB
Intersting. I am also a remote software engineer, but either working "feels right" a lot less for me than for you, and I feel like spending time outside riding my bike a lot less than you, or my employer is a lot less tolerant of taking the day off to ride my bike because work just didn't feel right.
I am curious how many hours a day/week you work, and if you are open about this with your employer...
Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a very uncharitable take. What part of my comment makes you think that I live dispassionately? The whole point is that my work is almost single-handedly defined by passion. When that runs dry, I take a break and do other things. It's easier to do good work with a well-rested mind full of ideas.
I think what people envy is that not everyone get to achieve your set of options. This article is by an academic advisor for students at an elite university. I have a feeling that GP was a post that didn’t need to be made, but to achieve your set of options, a lot of things have to go right. You can’t have kids too young, you can’t take on disabled family members, you can’t make certain career choices because you hav…
I'm admittedly sitting on a winning lottery ticket, no doubt.
But it came out of the many impulses I followed when I should have been eating frogs. Other impulses got me all sorts of connections, career boosts and other perks.
Some frogs you just have to eat, but I don't think that anyone's denying that. The original article is questioning competitive frog-eating. In my experience, refusing to eat those frogs is how you end up finding other ways.
This guy who makes computers put it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw
Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
#199I love and agree with this article, but I do want to defend the Pomodoro method. In brief, if you already don't enjoy what you are doing for work, applying a new time management strategy to that work will not increase your enjoyment. However, I have personally thrived using the Pomodoro method to help keep myself on track and hitting goals for the work I do enjoy. In this light, moreover, I don't think the analogy to a diet makes much sense.
Still, overall an insightful and much-needed statement on one problem with the times we live in. I especially loved this line:
> These students inevitably end up as consultants or bankers or managers at tech companies, industries that richly reward people who are willing to work very hard for no particular reason.
Re: Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs
#200This essay is really hitting home for me (sorry for leaving a few comments in the thread, they are hopefully each contributing), and I think has some resonance with this essay I also just saw today:
> I’m a psychologist – and I believe we’ve been told devastating lies about mental health / by Sanah Ahsan
> To return to the plant analogy – we must look at our conditions. The water might be a universal basic income, the sun safe, affordable housing and easy access to nature and creativity. Food could be loving relationships, community or social support services. The most effective therapy would be transforming the oppressive aspects of society causing our pain. We all need to take whatever support is available to help us survive another day. Life is hard. But if we could transform the soil, access sunlight, nurture our interconnected roots and have room for our leaves to unfurl, wouldn’t life be a little more livable?
— https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/06/psycho...
Compare to from OP:
> I think lots of people are stuck in that first relationship, stuck next to their tiny little pond, skeptical that anything greater exists. But it takes a lot of work to be satisfied with their relationship and their pond, because they don’t get enough love to fill their hearts or enough fish to fill their bellies. So they end up reading articles about how to love things they don’t love that much and how to feel full without eating enough.
> …When they get home at the end of the day and they’re so tired that all they can do is sit motionless and watch TV, they blame themselves, as if it’s their fault that they feel exhausted after racing to meet a deadline so they can avoid being publicly shamed. And that breaks my heart.