Ironic to see this post on HN, the place where I go to procrastinate
Productivity Is About Attention Management
21–30 of 192 posts
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#22For most of technical works i do, concentration only happens AFTER i figure out what i need to do to solve the problem. Else most of the time, the "researching phase" is the most daunting task.
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 to do yet.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#23I’ve found a lot of benefit from taking Piracetam or Noopept in the mornings with a daily coffee. I feel hyper-focused in a way that I don’t usually feel with just coffee alone.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#24What the author means by "attention management" is, perhaps, the ability to concentrate for a long period of time. Personally, for work that i love to do, concentration is rewarding. For mundane, routine work, I usually go on auto pilot, getting work done, but, doing it while my attention is somewhere else. For mundane work that requires concentration, my output falls off the cliff. Its here that many tips and tricks…
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…
Yeah, people feel uneasy with this. It seems that amphetamines work for pretty much everyone at the right dose, and they have very few side effects. I've had a prescription for about 15 years and while I don't take it daily, it's incredibly helpful sometimes.
It's a problem if everyone does it, but that hasn't really stopped me. It's unclear if I'm a rational actor, a bad person, or both.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#25As someone who's often asked about my productivity (and who also often feels unproductive anyway), I think this quote from the article gets at the heart of the issue:
>A better option is attention management: Prioritize the people and projects that matter, and it won’t matter how long anything takes.
Progress is persistence + time. Nonzero values of both will lead to results. If you spend 1% of your time on a project which requires a hundred hours of work, it'll be complete in a little over a year. I don't shy away from projects which I know will take years to complete, and as a result they eventually get completed :)
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#26For most of technical works i do, concentration only happens AFTER i figure out what i need to do to solve the problem. Else most of the time, the "researching phase" is the most daunting task.
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…
From my experience, try having enough projects in your belt that at least one of them has something actionable to do, and work on that while you ruminate on the other problem for a few days/weeks/months. Don't worry about getting anything done soon, prefer getting them done correctly and pick something else up when you get stuck. Also, don't forget that "staring into space for an hour while you think about a problem" is also a valid form of working.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to think like you until I met a coworker. He could not code to save his life, nobody in the team liked working with him. Until one day we had a boring data entry task. He could do it for hours at a time, and barely made any mistake. This experience taught me something.
What did it teach you? I'm having trouble seeing the relevance.
People have their competencies which may not often be evident.
I do still think that, in the hyper competitive corporate world today, such kinds of people will get shafted regularly until they realize themselves what their great skills are and build on them.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#28There'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 subsequently makes the person more effective than their peers.
The output values must be weight in determining if one is really productive. Effectiveness triumphs mindless productivity.
This is quite similar to the cognitive and decision fatigue principle which indicates that each of us only has a limited pool of cognitive resources and so we must be very selective in choosing what activities we engage in.
To remain highly effective, not just being productive, particularly for a project manager, it's imperative to spend time only on tasks that require critical decisions to be made, and to delegate the rest. When you take on more tasks than you can handle, like some are misunderstanding this may help them appear as productive, it will undoubtedly affect the quality of each of your decisions and the project will suffer.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#29This article was a fun read as it playfully poked holes in some conventional wisdom but I'm not sure I'm left with coherent advice. Deep work doesn't matter? Working in 15 minute bursts is ok? Save rewarding work for after routine? Or maybe match it to my circadian rhythms? Work on what I love? Have a maker schedule? Maybe the best takeaway is that there isn't really a single coherent ruleset for productivity...
The human mind is an amazing and complicated thing. I think we’re only beginning to scratch at the surface of truly unlocking its abilities. Seems like a lot of these “rules” are simply cargo cult like remedies.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#30What the author means by "attention management" is, perhaps, the ability to concentrate for a long period of time. Personally, for work that i love to do, concentration is rewarding. For mundane, routine work, I usually go on auto pilot, getting work done, but, doing it while my attention is somewhere else. For mundane work that requires concentration, my output falls off the cliff. Its here that many tips and tricks…
I used to think like you until I met a coworker. He could not code to save his life, nobody in the team liked working with him. Until one day we had a boring data entry task. He could do it for hours at a time, and barely made any mistake. This experience taught me something.
To each his own I guess. Maybe that person is most comfortable in a semi- auto pilot mode. I have noticed that some people are very much averse to prolonged thinking / problem solving / creative work. These are the kinds of people, who, if stuck in a problem, go to their friends and family for advise and solve their problems. They usually have a lot of people / socializing / networking skills.
I myself am an introvert and love to sit by myself and think of solutions for problems, be it work / life related. I am very bad at networking and usually go to a very very small set of people to discuss any problems I am facing, that I am unable to solve myself.