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I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

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Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#61

Post by m000 »

dnautics wrote: post #52
Draiken wrote: post #49

I am always baffled how sad this extreme focus into productivity makes me. If you discovered you were going to die in a year, would you continue to spend all your time being "productive"? I figure almost everyone would shift all their focus on doing things that "really matter". Sadly I believe the world managed to make us feel guilty when we're not doing something that makes someone else rich (majority of jobs). I'm…

Did you read the article? "I work less than I thought I did and that's ok"

This sentence is exactly the problem. Everything is focused around work and productivity. So much, that you have to pat yourself on the back when find out your work throughput was less than what you thought it was.

Why do we read about "I work less than I thought I did and that's ok" and not e.g. "I spent more time with my family than I thought I did, and that's great"?

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#62

Post by duke_core »

Draiken wrote: post #49

I am always baffled how sad this extreme focus into productivity makes me. If you discovered you were going to die in a year, would you continue to spend all your time being "productive"? I figure almost everyone would shift all their focus on doing things that "really matter". Sadly I believe the world managed to make us feel guilty when we're not doing something that makes someone else rich (majority of jobs). I'm…

I can't remember his name, there was a youtuber named Ali Abdal (I think?) whose videos are focused around productivity and they give me the same feeling that you're talking about in your comment. When you're talking about to 'productively' watch tv shows while try to get some work done in the background thats going a bit too far

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#64

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

Draiken wrote: post #49

I am always baffled how sad this extreme focus into productivity makes me. If you discovered you were going to die in a year, would you continue to spend all your time being "productive"? I figure almost everyone would shift all their focus on doing things that "really matter". Sadly I believe the world managed to make us feel guilty when we're not doing something that makes someone else rich (majority of jobs). I'm…

I agree with you if productivity is work, but I also consider my hobbies productive. Netflix and Reddit and HN and the inane parts of the news I consider unproductive. And yet I spend probably at least 12 hours per week on those. It’s a scrolling addiction and (god how hypocritical is it for me to take the time to type this here) it’s good to avoid.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#65

Post by xkeysc0re »

mlady wrote: post #45
ChrisLomont wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this drive to amass data will only lead to human suffering and oppression down the line On a large scale, science (and economics) is a drive to amass data, which has led to vast reductions in human suffering. Amassing data lets one (and mankind) make decisions not on random conjecture or feeling, but on a solid footing, which results in better decisions on how to allocate resources. Not gathering data where it's po…

I think there's a sweet spot somewhere. We're tending towards too much data now with hourly employees working from home but have their screens monitored for constant activity, even if it isn't value-producing.

Exactly. The positivist drive to quantify and accumulate "data points" about everything as though life is just an optimization problem is dangerous and only serves entrenched forces.

Quantification is a means to control. Some things - in my opinion - ought not to be controlled.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#66

Post by chrisfosterelli »

Draiken wrote: post #49

I am always baffled how sad this extreme focus into productivity makes me. If you discovered you were going to die in a year, would you continue to spend all your time being "productive"? I figure almost everyone would shift all their focus on doing things that "really matter". Sadly I believe the world managed to make us feel guilty when we're not doing something that makes someone else rich (majority of jobs). I'm…

From TFA:

> I knew I was spending quite a lot of it on social media, but I wasn't sure how much exactly. I also knew I was working quite a lot and wanted to quantify exactly how much (spoiler alert: not that much). I hoped that keeping track of what I do would help me to identify chunks of time that were being wasted and to turn them into quality time.

Tracking time doesn't inherently have to be to optimize for "making someone else rich"; she specifically did this with the goal of spending more time on things that "really matter".

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#67

Post by throwaway2245 »

Draiken wrote: post #56
dnautics wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? "I work less than I thought I did and that's ok"

I did. But it also mentions procrastination as a -4 point and sleep as a 0. And my sentiment is also from reading some of the comments here. So many people obsessed with productivity. Some have a clear reason to do so, but I fear many do it because of outside pressures, or never even thought about it.

The scores are relative to each other.

I certainly prefer to sleep than to procrastinate, so this matches up with your example.

And, I certainly prefer to do almost any task than procrastinate. Procrastination (by which I understand: wasted effort thinking about being productive without actually doing anything) makes me feel grim. I would have valued that time more doing almost anything else.

If sleeping helps me to avoid procrastination, then this scoring system still encourages sufficient sleep to do that.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#68

Post by appletrotter »

ketanmaheshwari wrote: post #38

Thank you for the post. I did something similar -- I logged the activities on the world's largest supercomputer (that I have access to) every hour throughout the year 2020. I logged information such as: -- Who is logged in (the output of w command) -- What processes are running and the overall system load (top and ps aux) -- What is the state of memory and disk -- What is the state of job scheduler I have the data no…

Not quite the world's largest supercomputer, huh?

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#69

Post by barrucadu »

polote wrote: post #42

Whoaa, amazing, I've been doing the same during the last 5 years, but I use an easier setup, I use an app, so I just have to click on buttons at the end of each activity. > Stay tuned to learn how do different activities influence my mood I only started doing that this year, and I'm pissed off I didn't start doing it earlier, as that's where you can start doing correlation on your life and your activities. If some pe…

How consistent do you manage to be with your mood tracking? During the summer of 2019 I was thinking about doing that, but never got started. Then autumn of 2019 rolled around and my mood shot up dramatically, I didn't realise just how dramatically the heat was affecting my mood.

So if I had started when I had the idea, that would have been the neutral point, and I'd have had ~6 months of good days after that.

Re: I logged my activities at 15-minute intervals for the whole year

#70

Post by Insanity »

duke_core wrote: post #62
Draiken wrote: post #49

I am always baffled how sad this extreme focus into productivity makes me. If you discovered you were going to die in a year, would you continue to spend all your time being "productive"? I figure almost everyone would shift all their focus on doing things that "really matter". Sadly I believe the world managed to make us feel guilty when we're not doing something that makes someone else rich (majority of jobs). I'm…

I can't remember his name, there was a youtuber named Ali Abdal (I think?) whose videos are focused around productivity and they give me the same feeling that you're talking about in your comment. When you're talking about to 'productively' watch tv shows while try to get some work done in the background thats going a bit too far

Yes it's that youtuber (Ali Abdal). He had this video about productively watching TV by watching the netflix shows sped up 2x or something like that.

Similar for listening to audio books etc. Personally quite dislike those kind of ideas as well, takes the joy out of recreation.

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