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Productivity Is About Attention Management

nytimes.com

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Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#51

Post by iscrewyou »

war1025 wrote: post #44
netwanderer3 wrote: post #28

There'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 subseq…

Reminds me of when I was a kid and raced the same track over and over something like 1000 times on a game to get enough money to buy the fanciest car in the game rather than building my skills enough to do races where I would actually make decent money on each race and only have to do 5 or ten to buy said car.

This was me trying to get the Zonda in one of the Gran Turismo(3?) games. Raced a mustang around the Daytona track sooo many times.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#52

Post by derangedHorse »

Jedi72 wrote: post #13
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #5

> Prioritize the people and projects that matter, and it won’t matter how long anything takes. This is exactly why I created Pony [0], an email platform that sends and receives messages once a day. The problem for me wasn’t managing my time, but managing my attention, which was really hard with everything coming at me constantly all the time. I observed that most things aren’t urgent, and further I observed that near…

Please stop spamming your ads in every half-related HN thread. You are really annoying lots of people.

He did make it somewhat relevant to the article though

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#53

Post by jayalpha »

wtvanhest wrote: post #50
netwanderer3 wrote: post #28

There'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 subseq…

What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers. Surviving and thriving over time requires constant reevaluation.

"What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers."

No, they don't. There is only one task in your job, to make your boss happy. Strangely, this is rarely achieved by good job performance but often by social skills or idiotic metrics. "How to manage your boss" is worth a read.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#54

Post by bndw »

iscrewyou wrote: post #51
war1025 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when I was a kid and raced the same track over and over something like 1000 times on a game to get enough money to buy the fanciest car in the game rather than building my skills enough to do races where I would actually make decent money on each race and only have to do 5 or ten to buy said car.

This was me trying to get the Zonda in one of the Gran Turismo(3?) games. Raced a mustang around the Daytona track sooo many times.

Gran Turismo 2, 200 lap races.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#55

Post by __blockcipher__ »

derangedHorse wrote: post #52
Jedi72 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop spamming your ads in every half-related HN thread. You are really annoying lots of people.

He did make it somewhat relevant to the article though

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=19518470&goto=item%3Fi...

https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=19521163&goto=threads%...

An ad is an ad. He pays lip service to the thread but somehow, all roads lead to Pony.

Clearly not a genuine attempt to contribute, right?

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#56

Post by netwanderer3 »

jayalpha wrote: post #53
wtvanhest wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers. Surviving and thriving over time requires constant reevaluation.

"What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers." No, they don't. There is only one task in your job, to make your boss happy. Strangely, this is rarely achieved by good job performance but often by social skills or idiotic metrics. "How to manage your boss" is worth a read.

This is indeed called managing expectation.

There are various strategies one can "manage" their boss in return so that their expectation always remains at an optimal level, allowing them to easily satisfy their boss or even exceed all their expectations.

Everything can be manipulated, hacked, or "managed" as we professionally call it, as long as things continue to be operated by human. Even the largest corporations are susceptible and WILL succumb to this. Facebook and fake news are real evidences.

Their weaknesses just need to be identified so it can be exploited. External forces can even join together with more resources combined to execute their plans. It's not very difficult to identify weaknesses for many targets today, GREED and PROFIT.

Many corporations today only focus on their quarterly growth reports and would do absolutely anything to satisfy their investors. They don't even pay attention to their own customers, let alone those external forces.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#57

Post by jayalpha »

netwanderer3 wrote: post #56
jayalpha wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers." No, they don't. There is only one task in your job, to make your boss happy. Strangely, this is rarely achieved by good job performance but often by social skills or idiotic metrics. "How to manage your boss" is worth a read.

This is indeed called managing expectation. There are various strategies one can "manage" their boss in return so that their expectation always remains at an optimal level, allowing them to easily satisfy their boss or even exceed all their expectations. Everything can be manipulated, hacked, or "managed" as we professionally call it, as long as things continue to be operated by human. Even the largest corporations a…

Spontaneously two former superiors or mine come to my mind. Both unprofessional on an epic scale, they nearly tanked complete companies. Yet they succeeded in the only metric that counts: They made they superiors happy.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#58

Post by wtvanhest »

jayalpha wrote: post #53
wtvanhest wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers. Surviving and thriving over time requires constant reevaluation.

"What makes it even more complicated is that in a big org, knowing which tasks are important changes over time and with managers and manager's managers." No, they don't. There is only one task in your job, to make your boss happy. Strangely, this is rarely achieved by good job performance but often by social skills or idiotic metrics. "How to manage your boss" is worth a read.

Your boss is the main person to make happy, but they are far from the only person. You also need to help your business partners, your manager's manager, and others.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#59

Post by cpeterso »

netwanderer3 wrote: post #28

There'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 subseq…

For anyone who wants to read more on the difference between productivity and effectiveness you highlighted, I recommend Stephen Covey's classic "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People":

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effec...

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#60

Post by dang »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #5

> Prioritize the people and projects that matter, and it won’t matter how long anything takes. This is exactly why I created Pony [0], an email platform that sends and receives messages once a day. The problem for me wasn’t managing my time, but managing my attention, which was really hard with everything coming at me constantly all the time. I observed that most things aren’t urgent, and further I observed that near…

I emailed you twice asking you not to do this, but perhaps you didn't see the emails. On HN, it's ok to link to one's own stuff occasionally, in particularly relevant contexts. But you've been done this something like a dozen times in the past couple weeks. That's way overdoing it, and it has become a distraction, as users are inevitably complaining about spamming and taking threads further off topic. Please stop doing this.
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