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Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

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Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#61

Post by MRD85 »

ticmasta wrote: post #56
asark wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parenting time tends to take over most of the hours that would have been work-time, on weekends. At least until your kids are old enough that they don't want anything to do with you anymore (or so I hear). With kids it's usually possible to do something either productive or fun alongside the whole kid-taking-care-of thing. It's just very hard to do anything you like that is productive or fun. You gotta roll with the…

This is very true in my experience. I covet and zealously guard the hours between 8pm and my bedtime and/or ~6am and when the kids wake up. It is very hard to do deep intellectual work when you have kids around, but easy to get more rote tasks completed.

It's a big part of the reason I do a lot of jobs with my kids. I teach them how to cook, we grocery shop and I discuss how adults purchase things, I fold the laundry in front of TV with them, etc. My 4-year-old son has shown a lot of interest in my tools lately and last week he helped me repair a cupboard. My deep intellectual work is after a nights rest when I wake at 4am (I go to bed at same time as my children, ~8pm).

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#62

Post by dragonwriter »

glitchc wrote: post #59
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying if my boss tells me to be at a meeting everyday at 10 and I'm not there for 2 weeks I'm probably going to get fired.

Punctuality is overrated in general, and especially in software. Most meetings are a waste of time because no decision is made in them.

> Most meetings are a waste of time because no decision is made in them.

Most meetings are a waste of time, true.

No decisions are made in most meetings, also true.

But the former is not caused by the latter; making decisions isn't the only productive reason to have a meeting.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#63

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

glitchc wrote: post #59
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying if my boss tells me to be at a meeting everyday at 10 and I'm not there for 2 weeks I'm probably going to get fired.

Punctuality is overrated in general, and especially in software. Most meetings are a waste of time because no decision is made in them.

Wearing pants are overrated in general and a waste of time as well, but I'd be in trouble for forgetting them when going into the office as well.

One day we may need to call a meeting that no one thinks is worth their attention. There's plenty of hoops that one must work through in one's day to day that we just have to put up if we want to keep the business moving.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#64

Post by coldtea »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #27
coldtea wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Um. "I don't keep a calendar" means "I consider my time more important than yours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience." I would love to do that, but everyone else in the world would rightly understand it that way and would treat it as a refusal to do core elements of my job. The advice is for free persons, not for us salaried workers. (Not to mention that TFA already covers this: "I'm totally serious. If you pull…

So basically it's for the already affluent. "If you're rich and have no obligations only work when you want to" doesn't seem that novel. It's productivity when there's little value on said productivity.

You don't have to be affluent. You can be e.g. a freelancer graphic designer making at most 50-60K a year and do that. Or have a small company and do that. Or be a farmer and do that.

But the conclusion seems wrong "It's productivity when there's little value on said productivity." -- the productivity of the affluent has even more value (at least monetarily) than the productivity of some office worker.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#65

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

coldtea wrote: post #64
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically it's for the already affluent. "If you're rich and have no obligations only work when you want to" doesn't seem that novel. It's productivity when there's little value on said productivity.

You don't have to be affluent. You can be e.g. a freelancer graphic designer making at most 50-60K a year and do that. Or have a small company and do that. Or be a farmer and do that. But the conclusion seems wrong "It's productivity when there's little value on said productivity." -- the productivity of the affluent has even more value (at least monetarily) than the productivity of some office worker.

You can be a designer whose willing to burn bridges and don't need to pay a mortgage, but yeah, you could be someone who doesn't need stuff. I'd love to see a farmer put off feeding the animals or not keep a schedule. "I'll just harvest the crops next month."

>Want to spend all day writing a research report? Do it!

>Want to spend all day coding? Do it!

>Want to spend all day at the cafe down the street reading a book on personal productivity? Do it!

These are not things someone who needs to work for a living can do, picking and choosing activities at their leisure.

Regarding "little value on said productivity", I meant value to the individual, not to society as a whole. If you can afford to squander opportunities clearly whatever you're producing isn't as vital to you as for others who need the productivity to continue be able to afford to live.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#66

Post by muzani »

paultopia wrote: post #48
muzani wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea here is to minimize scheduling. Take note that this advice comes from a top VC; meetings are his bread and butter. Not committing to a schedule greatly cuts down on the number of meetings. Most meetings are unnecessary, a huge cost to productivity. He also doesn't advice avoiding them, more like if it's important and high priority enough, everyone can agree to do one now. It cuts out the fat of sched…

Hmm. It seems to me, but I'm not sure so please correct me, that a top VC is someone to whom others mostly come as supplicants, and hence can demand scheduling on his convenience rather than theirs.

To be a top VC, the VC has to land the top deals (Uber, Airbnb, etc). They land top deals by being attractive to top founders. The best startups often move very rapidly, having 10% week on week growth and such. Every hour is valuable to them. Partners are fined $10 for every minute they are late to a meeting, which gives an idea of how strongly they hold to the principle.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#67

Post by coldtea »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #65
coldtea wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to be affluent. You can be e.g. a freelancer graphic designer making at most 50-60K a year and do that. Or have a small company and do that. Or be a farmer and do that. But the conclusion seems wrong "It's productivity when there's little value on said productivity." -- the productivity of the affluent has even more value (at least monetarily) than the productivity of some office worker.

You can be a designer whose willing to burn bridges and don't need to pay a mortgage, but yeah, you could be someone who doesn't need stuff. I'd love to see a farmer put off feeding the animals or not keep a schedule. "I'll just harvest the crops next month." >Want to spend all day writing a research report? Do it! >Want to spend all day coding? Do it! >Want to spend all day at the cafe down the street reading a book…

>These are not things someone who needs to work for a living can do, picking and choosing activities at their leisure.

It's not what someone who needs to work on somebody else's spec can do.

A writer living off his books, for example, even if they make just 50K/year, can shape their days however they want.

Or, to return to the freelancer, if you have a specialty, and people can to you, you can be picky about what jobs you do and when.

I know people that are like that and they are by no means rich.

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#68

Post by kmarc »

lordfoom wrote: post #9
tosh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ymmv but often typing isn’t the bottleneck, thinking is (typing faster != more nor better output)

But not having to think about typing reduces your cognitive load. Touch typing as a coder isn't about speed, it's about freeing your mind from having to think about your fingers.

TBH for me touch typing wasn't as big of help as learning vim inside out.

And I see the same clumsy slowness when others touch type in front of me

Re: Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity (2007)

#69

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

coldtea wrote: post #67
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be a designer whose willing to burn bridges and don't need to pay a mortgage, but yeah, you could be someone who doesn't need stuff. I'd love to see a farmer put off feeding the animals or not keep a schedule. "I'll just harvest the crops next month." >Want to spend all day writing a research report? Do it! >Want to spend all day coding? Do it! >Want to spend all day at the cafe down the street reading a book…

> These are not things someone who needs to work for a living can do, picking and choosing activities at their leisure. It's not what someone who needs to work on somebody else's spec can do. A writer living off his books, for example, even if they make just 50K/year, can shape their days however they want. Or, to return to the freelancer, if you have a specialty, and people can to you, you can be picky about what jo…

Do novelist never attend meetings by their publisher? Same with freelancers - can you just blow off your client and commit to nothing?
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