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Productivity Is About Attention Management

nytimes.com

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Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#91

Post by wisty »

mjburgess wrote: post #61
tylerhou wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is quite similar to the cognitive and decision fatigue principle which indicates that each of us only has a limited pool of cognitive resources and so we must be very selective in choosing what activities we engage in. Watch out — many of the studies which displayed “cognitive fatigue” (I assume you actually mean ego depletion) have not been replicated successfully. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_sci…

The general idea even in a loose, more metaphorical sense, holds however. 'Mental fatigue' is well established, and your volition along with mental faculties generally become harder to exercise the longer they are used without break. The specifics are disputed, but we needn't be so specific for the advise to hold.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story...

> But that story is about to change. A paper now in press, and due to publish next month in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, describes a massive effort to reproduce the main effect that underlies this work. Comprising more than 2,000 subjects tested at two-dozen different labs on several continents, the study found exactly nothing. A zero-effect for ego depletion: No sign that the human will works as it’s been described, or that these hundreds of studies amount to very much at all.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#92

Post by skrebbel »

normalhuman wrote: post #85

My favorite anti-productivity introspections: - Remember that you are going to die. Time flies, have you noticed? Is that status symbol that you are pursuing really that important? Is it ever going to make you happy? - There is more wisdom in one of your cells than in all self-help and management books combined. Maybe you can't focus for a good reason? What could that reason be? - Remember the last time you felt glad…

> - Remember the last time you felt glad to be alive? Was it related to being productive?

Actually, yes. Is that weird? I can't be the only one here who loves their job.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#93

Post by flancian »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #48
cven714 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the exact same problem. When I know what needs to get done, even if it's tedious, it's not so bad to put my nose to the grindstone and work through it. But when I'm not sure how to approach a task, suddenly every distraction in the world is more appealing. You often see the suggestion to break up big tasks into smaller, baby step chunks to avoid this analysis paralysis. Doesn't help when I'm not even sure what…

I struggle with this too, and two things that help me are: 1) Start screen recording software and dictate your thoughts as you go through the research/brainstorming phase. Don't often go back and view the recorded sessions, it's the act of recording and speaking out loud that helps. 2) Comment driven development. Stub out functions just with comments, write deeper comment blocks inside a procedure where you have a ro…

Thanks for this comment -- I'll put the second strategy in effect (the first one perhaps I'll leave for later as I currently work in an open plan office).

I wonder if this "comment driven" strategy has potential for applying NLP+code generation. I'm sure this is a common enough thought but I'm not aware of the research, does anyone here have pointers?

What I mean is: use NLP to extract intent (where feasible), and then offer possible implementations of the intent.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#94

Post by ramblerman »

jatins wrote: post #90
normalhuman wrote: post #85

My favorite anti-productivity introspections: - Remember that you are going to die. Time flies, have you noticed? Is that status symbol that you are pursuing really that important? Is it ever going to make you happy? - There is more wisdom in one of your cells than in all self-help and management books combined. Maybe you can't focus for a good reason? What could that reason be? - Remember the last time you felt glad…

Good in theory, but less than ideal in real world. A lot of getting good deliberate practice even when you don't "feel like" it. like how the 7 year old Djokovic said "Tennis for me is a duty" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdOS0zCsJsg

> The real world...

cites #1 tennis player in the world as an example.

For the vast majority trying to shuffle Jira tickets faster or optimize your vim keybindings for the nth time, they would do better to listen to OP.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#95

Post by kharak »

skrebbel wrote: post #92
normalhuman wrote: post #85

My favorite anti-productivity introspections: - Remember that you are going to die. Time flies, have you noticed? Is that status symbol that you are pursuing really that important? Is it ever going to make you happy? - There is more wisdom in one of your cells than in all self-help and management books combined. Maybe you can't focus for a good reason? What could that reason be? - Remember the last time you felt glad…

> - Remember the last time you felt glad to be alive? Was it related to being productive? Actually, yes. Is that weird? I can't be the only one here who loves their job.

I can't even imagine having that kind of feeling related to my job. Especially not if it's about coding. At least not if it's about typical B2B or B2C software.

What do you do for a living if you don't mind me asking?

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#96

Post by li4ick »

flancian wrote: post #93
ianmcgowan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I struggle with this too, and two things that help me are: 1) Start screen recording software and dictate your thoughts as you go through the research/brainstorming phase. Don't often go back and view the recorded sessions, it's the act of recording and speaking out loud that helps. 2) Comment driven development. Stub out functions just with comments, write deeper comment blocks inside a procedure where you have a ro…

Thanks for this comment -- I'll put the second strategy in effect (the first one perhaps I'll leave for later as I currently work in an open plan office). I wonder if this "comment driven" strategy has potential for applying NLP+code generation. I'm sure this is a common enough thought but I'm not aware of the research, does anyone here have pointers? What I mean is: use NLP to extract intent (where feasible), and th…

Microsoft is investing quite heavily in generating code from requirements. So far, iirc, they're able to generate simple programs no bigger than 10 lines of code. A good start, though: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/learning-sourc...

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#97

Post by stdbrouw »

theyinwhy wrote: post #68

Although interesting, I think the example is a sign of over self improvement. When your only way to do more work is going to the toilet less often you are overbooked big time and there will be no way to get more productive, no matter what angle you look at it. Quite contrary, you will be less effective (!) on the long run. It is a vicious circle.

The author uses the example as a cautionary tale, not as something laudable.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#98

Post by zeta0134 »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #48
cven714 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the exact same problem. When I know what needs to get done, even if it's tedious, it's not so bad to put my nose to the grindstone and work through it. But when I'm not sure how to approach a task, suddenly every distraction in the world is more appealing. You often see the suggestion to break up big tasks into smaller, baby step chunks to avoid this analysis paralysis. Doesn't help when I'm not even sure what…

I struggle with this too, and two things that help me are: 1) Start screen recording software and dictate your thoughts as you go through the research/brainstorming phase. Don't often go back and view the recorded sessions, it's the act of recording and speaking out loud that helps. 2) Comment driven development. Stub out functions just with comments, write deeper comment blocks inside a procedure where you have a ro…

Your advice about comment driven development is similar to how I felt when I first started writing unit tests. I'm not even very good at them yet, but trying to write the tests before the code exists is immensely useful in trying to work out what I want that code to actually look like. Before tests, I would often stub out functions with console logs before writing the body, just to get the high level structure worked out before I got lost in the details.

There's probably a few different methods to do this (some of my friends swear by pseudo code, others have personal white boards) so it might be worth trying a few different approaches to get over your writers block more consistently.

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#99

Post by tome »

netwanderer3 wrote: post #28

There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective. One can fill their days by completing many mindless tasks and consider themselves as productive, but in the end hardly any of those tasks really matters. On the other hand, another person may only complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day but these were critical tasks that could generate much higher values. This subseq…

> There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective.

Indeed: "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." -- Peter Drucker

Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management

#100

Post by amelius »

netwanderer3 wrote: post #28

There's a general misconception between being productive and being effective. One can fill their days by completing many mindless tasks and consider themselves as productive, but in the end hardly any of those tasks really matters. On the other hand, another person may only complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day but these were critical tasks that could generate much higher values. This subseq…

It's a matter of definition. I guess some people define productivity as effectiveness.
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