The Frustration with Productivity Culture • Hacker News Board

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#61

Post by amatic » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 7:36 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

>Yet he also made contributions larger than anyone will ever do by filling up note-taking apps and tracking how much time they spent on their breakfast with a stopwatch.

Maybe not the best example. Apparently, Newton took loads of notes, and also created handwritten indexes and contents lists, alphabetical, by topic.

https://www.inc.com/ilan-mochari/how-isaac-newton-remembered...

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#62

Post by timdaub » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 7:50 AM UTC

> Much of the professional self-improvement literature that is often hastily summarized as being about “productivity” really is not, in the sense that it focusses less on increasing your output above all else and more on nuanced goals, such as reducing stress through better organization, making smarter decisions about your time, being a good leader, or producing higher-quality results.

The author's book "Deep Work" was a great lecture for me and though it used the term "productivity", I think its message lays elsewhere:

Cal deliberately talks for pages about the idea of working less but prioritizing deep work. It's true that this is ultimately a "productivity" hack. Still, practicing this idea myself, I'd say I have more time of my day now "not having to be productive".

I used to work shallowly for 8 hours a day. Since a year or so, I spend mostly 4 hours in the office. My "products" haven't suffered. They've become better, and so have I.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#63

Post by axelroze » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 8:07 AM UTC

danjac wrote: post #56

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

Of extended family and friends, the ones with the most personal wealth by retirement got there not by being more creative, or inventive, or productive, or by studying and acquiring skills and knowledge, or starting and growing a business, but by inheriting, buying, renting and flipping properties at the right time. I don't know much about macroeconomics or economics in general, but it seems that's how you climb in th…

It's the problem of diminishing returns.

If one is at rock bottom then working hard and being productive can get them to middle class lifestyle. It works. Helped billions of people in the past few decades.

But starting from middle class and working hard won't make riches. Think of it physically. A hardworking person can build a house compared to a drunkard who will be homeless. Yet the same hard working person can't build million houses and get insanely wealthy.

To get truly materially rich (millions+ usd, servants, yachts, etc) one usually needs to be evil and screw over other people. Productivity, in the sense of a machine making houses in the millions, would make the inventor fairly rich. But this is the exception rather than the rule. Most riches are arrived at immorally as parent comment mentions.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#64

Post by imgabe » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 8:37 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

If we're going to have a civilization, we can't just have Newtons. We still need to grow food, build houses, take out the trash, and do all the mundane stuff that's necessary to sustain life. That requires some "bureaucratizition" of human action. The only reason Newton was able to do what he did was because he had a position where other people took care of fixing the leak in the roof and preparing the meals.

Newton can come up with the laws of motion, but he can't build a space shuttle by himself. Nobody could. It requires some organization and coordination and, yes, some menial, boring tasks.

Maybe one day we'll get robots to do all of that, but we aren't there yet.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#65

Post by robertlagrant » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 8:52 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

> Yet he also made contributions larger than anyone will ever do by filling up note-taking apps and tracking how much time they spent on their breakfast with a stopwatch.

This worked because he was independently wealthy, and lots of people at the time couldn't do that and made all the goods and services he paid for so he could spend his time doing what he did. That still is the case today.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#66

Post by robertlagrant » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:00 AM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #37

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

“Newton was a genius, yet the man spent most of his life doing alchemy, trying to forecast the future with the help of the bible, and chasing dragons in the Swiss Alps, put simply, he was batshit insane” I generally agree with your comment but this sentence doesn’t do justice to Newton. During his time alchemy, predicting things from the Bible were generally accepted. If Newton had published papers about his successe…

Exactly! In 200 years it'll be "why did they try all that cold fusion creation when you can just go to the dollar store and buy a self-contained gateway to an exploding sun to charge your Tesla for the next 1000 years?"

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#67

Post by robertlagrant » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:05 AM UTC

RandomLensman wrote: post #59

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

New efficiency is easy, new effectiveness is not. So everyone focuses on the former with a lot of cookie cutter type recipes (management, their consultants, ...). And Efficiency progress is so nicely measurable while it happens. Effectiveness you only see once you have it and not in a new organisation design.

Good point.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#68

Post by robertlagrant » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:12 AM UTC

aj7 wrote: post #54

throwawaylinux wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic rationalism, globalism, etc have always justified that by saying the net productivity in society has increased, so the technician can be taken care of (or at worst, is collateral damage in service of the greater good). The problem is they don't account for other damage caused by that. People get a sense of purpose from work, many would actually rather work than get a welfare check. Communities are built arou…

It’s more than that. Because of advances in technology and science, “productivity” will always increase. But to whom go the spoils? And when will we take responsibility for the losers?

Not necessarily - it could be that a lot of effort goes into (for example) how products look, and how polished they are, to increase products' relative positions in their markets, instead of prioritising absolute increases in productivity for mankind.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#69

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

levinb wrote: post #17

Barrin92 wrote: post #16

The problem with the entire productivity culture is just how industrialized, bureaucratic and formulaic it is. You read the piece by Newport and there is Henry Ford, the assembly line, 'knowledge work', growth, and so on. Words that don't show up once: freedom, exploration, curiosity, creativity (that does show up once in quotes technically). Everything that makes life interesting is discontinuous and surprising and…

>tracking how much time they spent on their breakfast with a stopwatch Masterfully stated. One of the primary problems with this culture, and the general culture of quantified self/everything, is that the data doesn’t inform or change actual actions. Most quantification is proffered as a solution by the Anxiety Alleviation Industrial Complex. I’d argue a significant portion of consumer SaaS is just that.

That line reminded me of the Pajama Game (1954): https://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/pajamagamethe/thinkofthet...

    At breakfast time, I grab a bowl.
    And in the bowl I drop an egg, and add some juice.
    A poor excuse for what I crave.
    And then I add some oatmeal too
    and it comes out tasting just like glue,
    But think of the time I save.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#70

Post by mellavora » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 9:39 AM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #43

aj7 wrote: post #29

It is absurd to tie productivity to workers. An example suffices. A technician running a pair of horizontal machining centers accomplishes the finish machining of eighty automobile engine blocks in an eight hour shift. Now, he’s replaced by a robot and automatic gauging. There are two fundamental problems. In the technician reference frame, his productivity has suddenly and discontinuously fallen to zero, as he sits…

Economic rationalism, globalism, etc have always justified that by saying the net productivity in society has increased, so the technician can be taken care of (or at worst, is collateral damage in service of the greater good). The problem is they don't account for other damage caused by that. People get a sense of purpose from work, many would actually rather work than get a welfare check. Communities are built arou…

and the assumption that there is some kind of UBI to make sure that the technician is taken care of.

We've been a bit slow about adding that ingredient into the formula.