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How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity

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81–90 of 129 posts

Re: How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity

#81
It's not quite the same but the woman who comes around every couple of weeks and does my accounts, we both acknowledge is about 80% 'slap based' productivity and 20% her specialized knowledge at this point.

When she comes around I usually 'drive' the computer the whole time, and it's great to have her advice on things like withholding tax rates, but mostly it just makes certain that particular things get done on time where if they didn't happen they would have a tendency to snowball into accounting catastrophe.

Re: How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity

#82
This reminds of of pair programming, or pair everything like they do at Menlo Innovations [1]. I took a tour there recently and it was pretty eye opening. People are now even paying to learn the "Menlo Way"

[1] http://www.menloinnovations.com/our-method/founding-practice...

Re: How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity

#83
post #80
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rescue time never worked for me. It always said I spent almost no time online. Something about my ad blocking config or something was confusing it...

It never worked for me. It told me exactly which sites I was wasting time on. That didn't stop me.

Have you tried LeechBlock?

Re: How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity

#87
I'm actually working on a startup that solves this exact problem but with a twist: we outsource the slapping to India and use a shock-inducing necklace that can be remotely activated through Wifi. This will enable us to bring down costs and bring this service to the masses. So far, our virtual slappers have done an amazing job and the self reported productivity of our beta customers has gone through the roof.

Re: How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity

#88
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It never worked for me. It told me exactly which sites I was wasting time on. That didn't stop me.

Have you tried LeechBlock?

I just added a list of websites to the hosts file, but the thing is - I know how to unlock that stuff in a few seconds (and LeechBlock can be turned off even faster).

I wish I could lock websites between certain hours at the ISP level, and unlocking shouldn't be easy, and should take a few hours.

Re: How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity

#89
post #16
post #5

As a productivity system, this is idiotic. As a blog post that serves as link-bait, it is GENIUS. ...which is to say, I think it excelled at the REAL goal. ;-)

It still irks me that people can tout off success as though it's guaranteed for small experiments such as this without even considering elements such as the Hawthorne effect - 'changed behaviour during the course of a study may be related to the special social situation and social treatment they received'

Or just good ol' fashioned accountability.

Re: How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity

#90
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er... "single founders" as in "only one founder", as opposed to "two founders or more".

Ohhhhh. I thought he meant. Well, you see what I thought he meant. Because of the sculptor and the wife and that stuff.

I believe it was meant to be a pun :)
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