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The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

annehelen.substack.com

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Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#21

Post by Spooky23 »

pm90 wrote: post #2

I don’t find anything wrong with being addicted to getting things done if the productivity gains are shared amongst the labor force. Specifically, increase in productivity can be used to eg shorten the workweek even further and demand protections against work encroachment on personal life. I see that this is happening with some companies embracing 4 day workweeks, others adopting remote from anywhere etc. We need to…

Great point. A few Starbucks in my area have unionized, and one particularly busy location just started the process.

They’re doing the dickhead corporate thing, closing the store for a day or two at a time, etc. It’s nuts - the management is so emotional they are throwing money away. Habits change; if Starbucks isn’t reliably open, many substitutes exist.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#23

Post by weakfish »

Guthur wrote: post #14

"made possible, at least for white men, by the middle-class security of the post-war period" Typical matriarchy, always men working as a secret cabal. How is it possible to take this stuff seriously with such unsubstantiated nonsense. For me I'll as soon a possible take myself my own and check out. Because we all have fears ,surprise surprise, and my greatest fear is this matriarchal narrative and what it means for m…

What?

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#24

Post by lostcolony »

endisneigh wrote: post #8

I used to slave away hanging dry wall (lol child labor laws), and then worked as a waiter. Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible. Not that they necessarily should be working themselves to death, but with respect to the article, there's a lot of low hanging fruit. Wall St. is a sort of special type of pathology due to the sheer amount of high frequency,…

>> In some ways I actually think it's better if everyone is lazy as it quickly reveals what's important

Agreed. That said, it's quite nice to be the lazy person amongst all the ones trying to look busy. 80/20 rule applies; learning to focus on the 20% that will give you 80% of the value means you can be delivering more than most of your peers, while also not having a hard time managing work/life balance. Everyone else is trying to hit 100%, failing, and not even getting the 80% of value you're capturing due to all the noise.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#25

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

My theory is that the subconscious works so well as a database so that's why every to-do list gets abandoned.

You're better off just trusting your gut and playing things by ear since information, and even your own motivations, change constantly.

I've liked personal wikis a lot more than GTD-like stuff.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#26

Post by pts_ »

endisneigh wrote: post #8

I used to slave away hanging dry wall (lol child labor laws), and then worked as a waiter. Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible. Not that they necessarily should be working themselves to death, but with respect to the article, there's a lot of low hanging fruit. Wall St. is a sort of special type of pathology due to the sheer amount of high frequency,…

In 10 years when climate crisis unfolds being a leech will blow back.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#27

Post by patrck »

orangepurple wrote: post #15
patrck wrote: post #7

> Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break. lol. I run IT. Nobody at my workplace knows what I do. Contrary to TFA, my automation gains accrue to myself and my company. It seems difficult to see this as anything but win-win. I get respite and time to think, and my company g…

It's an incredibly impressive phenomenon considering the Internet has been popular for 20-30 years now and you would think people have a clue.

A couple reasons maybe:

Specialization means everyone's chasing their own frontiers in their companies, which leads to less toe-stepping?

"Everyone knows" IT is complex. So as long as things are working, there's no real impetus for other people in the company to sully their shirtsleeves.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#28

Post by civilized »

JohnBooty wrote: post #16
endisneigh wrote: post #8

I used to slave away hanging dry wall (lol child labor laws), and then worked as a waiter. Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible. Not that they necessarily should be working themselves to death, but with respect to the article, there's a lot of low hanging fruit. Wall St. is a sort of special type of pathology due to the sheer amount of high frequency,…

Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible It's because the whole damn process of developing software in a company bigger than a garage is just a giant mess of productivity-busting bullshit all day, every day. Meetings, alerts, waiting for CI, waiting for builds to complete, whatever. There's no flow. I experience flow at my job maybe once or twice per mont…

Most of that is self-imposed and unnecessary.

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#29

Post by [deleted] »

endisneigh wrote: post #8

I used to slave away hanging dry wall (lol child labor laws), and then worked as a waiter. Now I work in big tech, and let me tell you the amount of people slacking off during work is incredible. Not that they necessarily should be working themselves to death, but with respect to the article, there's a lot of low hanging fruit. Wall St. is a sort of special type of pathology due to the sheer amount of high frequency,…

[deleted]

Re: The diminishing returns of productivity culture (2021)

#30

Post by dredmorbius »

esaym wrote: post #4

>Technology robbed workers’ of what had been highly valued physical knowledge about a job: the precise way to jimmy a stuck gear, the sound a machine makes when something’s about to break. There's an experience that lives rent free in my mind as well. As a teen, I worked at a bait shop that was on the Gulf coast. They sold mostly live shrimp but had other live stuff for bait as well. Salt water was pumped from the ne…

A friend working at a photocopy shop could hear a paper jam from one high-speed copier when taking a break across the street. They'd be in the shop, opening the machine covers, before it came to a complete stop.

Well-running equipment almost always has a characteristic sound and rhythm. Variations from that become quite apparent.

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