71–80 of 430 posts
Darn, this is completely true. I feel like such a techie when I scroll HN and hoard links for later perusal. In fact I feel so much better than I did about the same time spent on FB or Reddit. But I'm still not putting that time into constructive pursuits.
what helped me is having a filing system I can trust and tinker with, check out linkding on github
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…
Being more productive rarely leads to a happy and fulfilled life. It’s often precisely those moments in life when I’m on my least productive, that I look back on as if I really lived. Of course, be mindful of your time, but learn how to use it wisely, rather than optimizing for “productivity” as observed by others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Especially in IT nothing will get you further than being smartly lazy. One day I'll finish my "self-help" book which is all about doing as little as possible and leaving everything until the last minute in case it resolves itself. Unfortunately, I listen to my own advise and will probably never finish the book.
The JIT Productivity Method. You'll have it written just as soon as someone goes to read it.
Where's the line? Watching self-help content is described in the article as productivity porn. What about reading a self-help book? A (let's say good quality) non-fiction book? A scientific paper? A text book? Taking a class? Working on a project that is likely to fail? Writing code? Writing an article? Writing a book? > When I look for solutions to this problem I only come up with half-baked ideas and more questions…
I think the easy rule of thumb is “do you ever actually do the thing you read about?”
Am I a manufacturer? Do I make oil paintings? Do I direct movies? Am I an elected officiel? No. I’m in tech, doing programming and sysadmin things. I’m a small cog in the whole scheme of things. Still interesting to read about what’s going on in other fields. Nothing wrong with that IMHO.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Especially in IT nothing will get you further than being smartly lazy. One day I'll finish my "self-help" book which is all about doing as little as possible and leaving everything until the last minute in case it resolves itself. Unfortunately, I listen to my own advise and will probably never finish the book.
The JIT Productivity Method. You'll have it written just as soon as someone goes to read it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was disheartened when I read about all these successful people and their lofty advice. I was more disheartened when I realized their advice is just the random stuff they happened to do that on their path to success, and that equivalent advice of the myriad failures that complement them would never be heard (and that both were of approximately equal value). Despite how in the overmind the notion of "correlation is n…
I like to read self-help. I think it can actually change your life. The problem is finding actual good self-help. Most stuff is garbage or dives too deep into a specific topic. One of my favorite authors is Orison Swett Marden ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orison_Swett_Marden ) who writes well-rounded self-help and founded a magazine ironically called "Success". There's also Samuel Smiles who wrote the original tit…
The Tao Te Ching with the adjonction of its commentaries is a book on Confucian moral and ethic. The Meditations is a journal and also mostly a book about ethics. I think linking them to modern self-help books is somewhat disingenuous.
I deeply believe that if people actually stopped reading self-help books and read books about ethics instead the world would definitely be a far better place. “How to live a life worth living?” is after all a far more interesting question than “How to do the most of your life?”.
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…
Boss is stepping outside of brand new BMW - good morning Joe, you see that brand new BMW, if you keep working hard and make more hours I will get new one next year!
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…
Reminds me of this awesome video - The Hustle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
People who built real things generally do so because they have the will to do it, not because they have 500 pages of investment advice collected on Notion.