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The Frustration with Productivity Culture

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Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#91

Post by shantnutiwari »

korax_nyx wrote: post #90
shantnutiwari wrote: post #77

Reading a great book-- 4000 weeks by Oliver Burkeman. He makes the great point that no matter how productive we get, we will never feel satisfied, as there will always be more to do. Instead, we need to start focusing on things that actually matter. The title 4000 weeks is the average lifespan of a human-- and Oliver make the point we get stuck in the race to be more productive, and forget to enjoy life, which is usu…

+1. I'm reading it too, great book, very recommended and necessary. His old writing on The Guardian: This column will change your life, never failed to made me think.

Yes, Oliver Burkeman is on my list of "Read or buy anything he writes"

His book "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking" is one my favourite books

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#92

Post by killtimeatwork »

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…

> seems that's how you climb in the Western world these days.

Or perhaps - used to climb. Property prices can't rise sharply forever. Not if you want real people to buy them too, not just the speculators. Real people have real limits on what they can afford, and, if priced out, you're just left with speculators and a speculative bubble, which won't go on forever.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#93

Post by ladyattis »

I think the problem is that people keep using industrial/factory models of productivity to figure out if non-industrial workers are productive (have you upsold X amount of times at the drive-thru, have you done Y commits to the repo, etc). These attempts to produce meaningful enumeration of work ultimately misses the point of what the work is about. In software development, we're largely tasked with either solving a novel scenario or automating drudgery (usually the latter but the former does happen). In either case the metric that should be used is how little work your users/clients have to do to benefit from your product. If your user/clients have to do more work to make sure their use of the app is reliable then you have problems and you should track that. But you can't track it with arbitrary measurements of commits per developer or how many weeks it takes to fix the problem (it could be multiple problems). At best, you can measure how reliable your developers are at solving those problems. How fast beyond a certain point doesn't matter (usually the time frame of your biggest clients).

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#94

Post by killtimeatwork »

jh0486 wrote: post #28
gandalfgeek wrote: post #19

The problem with "productivity gurus" is that not one of them actually has any accomplishments in an actual specialized domain (other than marketing their stuff). Conversely, as I look at all the accomplished people around me, they've quietly built a mountain of expertise and achievement with cobbled systems held together by spit and glue that a productivity hustler would scoff at.

I can't say that I agree with this. There are the productivity "influencers" who say a lot of things but don't actually live it. There is a high correlation between being a productivity based person and being successful. Most of the leaders you admire are highly productive people and employ practices to increase their productivity, they're just too busy to soapbox about it.

> Most of the leaders you admire

Perhaps you admire them. I don't, and I suspect a lot of the anti-productivity people don't as well.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#95

Post by timruffles »

gandalfgeek wrote: post #19

The problem with "productivity gurus" is that not one of them actually has any accomplishments in an actual specialized domain (other than marketing their stuff). Conversely, as I look at all the accomplished people around me, they've quietly built a mountain of expertise and achievement with cobbled systems held together by spit and glue that a productivity hustler would scoff at.

Cal Newport is a tenured theoretical computer science professor. Seems like an accomplishment in an actual specialized domain to me!

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#96

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#97

Post by adrhead »

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…

There's more than to it than the productivity culture. The different underlying factors that a lot of people are hiding away because they can't seem to express it impact how they perform.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#98

Post by SyzygistSix »

uselesscynicism wrote: post #10
jh0486 wrote: post #9

It's easy to have the wrong mindset around productivity. If an individual thinks that doing more always leads to better results, they're going to have a bad time. I use productivity as a tool to have __more__ personal time and reduce stress. I really think about what I'm doing and what impact it has on my day. From what I've seen, working in large corporate environments, is that people make their own productivity pri…

> There are plenty of less stressful work environments in technology that will pay someone a decent salary and will be much less demanding. There are?! Could you list some examples? I would take a pay cut for fewer responsibilities if I could stay in tech and if it didn't pay like thirty grand, which is what you will make in support. How do I transition from a high stress high pay software engineer to a medium pay lo…

I don't think working support is less stress, just less pay. And I think many people think working 40 hours a week counts as a good or decent work/life balance, which is frankly absurd, even if one is working from home or has no commute. A 5X8 work week is still essentially living to work. Unfortunately it is often the minimum one can get away with.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#99

Post by SyzygistSix »

mellavora wrote: post #70
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…

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.

Or reducing work hours in response.

Re: The Frustration with Productivity Culture

#100

Post by SyzygistSix »

shantnutiwari wrote: post #77

Reading a great book-- 4000 weeks by Oliver Burkeman. He makes the great point that no matter how productive we get, we will never feel satisfied, as there will always be more to do. Instead, we need to start focusing on things that actually matter. The title 4000 weeks is the average lifespan of a human-- and Oliver make the point we get stuck in the race to be more productive, and forget to enjoy life, which is usu…

We don't forget to enjoy life; employment is offered on the basis of work 40 (or more) hours a week or you don't work at all. Working less hours for less money is rarely, if ever, a choice professionals get to make.

The benefits of productivity have not gone to workers at all, even professional workers. In fact, it has been the opposite, with even high value workers being squeezed for more hours.

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