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Productivity porn

calebschoepp.com

401–410 of 430 posts

Re: Productivity porn

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Indian I loved my afternoon sleep during the holidays. During school days I would come home and sleep for an hour while reading something. I really loved my sleep. When I started work I hated that my sleep was reduced drastically. Sleeping late working on personal projects played havoc on my sleep. Now in WFH I sleep for an hour or more in the evening which would have been wasted commuting. I have seen my cogni…

Once you realize you only work for (aka being bribed by) BigCo to snuff out their competition it pretty much removes the guilt of not working. I used to have gray hair coming in, and after I stopped being a try-hard the color came back. I was looking so old and tired always, now I am looking and feeling spry! Enjoy life and donate all of the bribes you don’t need to people who need it through direct action so they ca…

>Once you realize you only work for (aka being bribed by) BigCo to snuff out their competition it pretty much removes the guilt of not working.

Yes. Exactly. There is no real innovation. All that I see nowadays is corporate drama of passing the blame around, climbing the ladder with politics and all the wrong people put in interesting and important positions. There are a lot of cult like people who take pride in this fake drama and I am definitely not one.

All I want now is to retire with a good enough corpus by coasting so that I have enough to work on my personal projects, eat healthy, sleep well coupled with some sports and exercise.

Re: Productivity porn

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I am. The catch is that I have to do at least a little bit of this if I want to not be homeless. I've settled on the Things app with something that looks vaguely like GTD if you squint: - I have an inbox. Everything I agree to do that I can't do in the next couple of minutes goes in there. "Buy dogfood". "Paint the house". "Do a thing for work". Everything. - I triage the inbox and put starting dates on everyt…

Thing is, without this system, I can't and won't remember to do any of the things I need to. It doesn't matter how important it is to me to make sure I buy an anniversary card for my wife: I'll forget until it's too late - this is exactly the sentence I have repeated over and over again to my wife...a bit scary. I do have a similar approach like you. What I'm f..ing furious about it is, that I had to reach my middle…

Everything I learned in school about taking notes and daily planning was nearly useless to me. I had to re-learn this skills later in life, because the old way of "this is how it's done, period" did me no favors.

For that last bit, I'm pretty good about breaking bigger projects down into smaller pieces. After "paint the living room" lands in my inbox, I'll decompose that into things like "look for nice paint colors", and "ask my wife what kind of curtains she likes". Each of those is easy to do for that quick dopamine hit.

Re: Productivity porn

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death will come for you regardless of your productivity.

For some, productivity equals virtue. A virtuous life is always better than a lazy or vicious life. So you die having lived a better life . And (at least for us catholics AFAIK), a virtuous life leads to heavens.

As a US Catholic, I find much greater value in family time, volunteering, and jus the regular things I do to help people in my community. Work productivity is not on my list of "virtues".

Re: Productivity porn

#404
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many cultures are there that have a midday/afternoon sleep? I only knew of the siësta in Spain..

From my experience, Italians and in the south of France. The French also shut everything down on Sundays. In the middle east I’ve also seen people napping in mosques. The large ones remain nice and cool during the hot summer day. Mind you, it was Ramadan, so that might have changed things. Overall, I expect people in hot climates to sleep through the mid day heat and go back to work later. I for one envy them.

I mean, it makes sense. It's fairly well encoded into the genetics that determine our circadian rhythms. There is a dip in energy levels, corresponding to changed brain waves, that occurs at approximately midday. That 1pm drowsiness is your body just trying to do mammal things.

Re: Productivity porn

#405
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people want to be productive because they want to feel valued by others. But if you have to look to your own value from others, you've already lost, and will continue to lose forever. I think for me its about fear of death.

There’s a book about this called “4000 weeks” (thanks for the correction). Basically, all the popular productivity hacks are nonsense, and just make you busier. You do this because of a fear of death. Accept that you will die soon, so just stick to the important stuff.

Nothing like a strong dose of existential dread to get me through the work day.

Re: Productivity porn

#406

The Jewish people have their Sabbath, as a hispanic person myself, we have our Siesta. I spent over a decade in the tech industry and I'd literally be scoffed at for actually napping in a nap room or pod for 20min. Finally just started doing it in my car. But that's one of my practices that anchors me not only to my culture, but my Creator. It humbles me. And brings me joy. I hope everyone could find what their pract…

Kind of orthogonal to this conversation, but... with increasing temperatures, I find myself wondering at what point more parts of the US might switch to a formal siesta or even nighttime hours. Last summer my area had a month+ of 100+ degree days, and this year it looks like we will have at least several weeks of it. People, especially outdoor workers, simply can't be expected to work in that for a full on day - people would die. So it makes me wonder if we will start to see interesting shifts in the work day as happens in other parts of the country.

Re: Productivity porn

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death will come for you regardless of your productivity.

For some, productivity equals virtue. A virtuous life is always better than a lazy or vicious life. So you die having lived a better life . And (at least for us catholics AFAIK), a virtuous life leads to heavens.

Catholics have far better news than that you get to heaven on the basis of personal productivity. Consider these questions: When and why was toil introduced? Did the prodigal son have riches when he returned to the father to justify himself? Did the Pharisees need to have bread with them? Did the crowd have enough bread? Who provided sufficient bread: the vine or the lost sheep? If virtue is productivity, then why does God say that there is a rest for his people? Did he rest on the seventh day because he was not as virtuous as Pharaoh's taskmasters?

Industriousness is wise, but all is vanity and the fool when he dies goes to the same place as the wise.

Re: Productivity porn

#408

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…

Swap out the financial goals with spiritual goals and that describes the daily routine of a cult member.

Most of them are designed to keep you busy with introspective or pointless busywork so you're too tired to protest or don't notice the things going on around you-- like the leader sleeping with your spouse while robbing you blind.

Re: Productivity porn

#409

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…

> I really don't get any of those "be more productive", book, video, course and so on.

They think that is they eat, sleep and think like Musk or Zuckerberg they'll get the same bank account. They spend time mimicking the by products of their lifestyle

Re: Productivity porn

#410

The Jewish people have their Sabbath, as a hispanic person myself, we have our Siesta. I spent over a decade in the tech industry and I'd literally be scoffed at for actually napping in a nap room or pod for 20min. Finally just started doing it in my car. But that's one of my practices that anchors me not only to my culture, but my Creator. It humbles me. And brings me joy. I hope everyone could find what their pract…

Alain De Botton has a fantastic book about this called "Status Anxiety"[1]. The book gave me a fresh perspective on how to avoid being trapped in the race to prove yourself to others.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Status-Anxiety-Alain-Botton/dp/037572...

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