Productivity Is About Attention Management
nytimes.com
Productivity Is About Attention Management
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Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#2fuck agile
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#3What the author means by "attention management" is, perhaps, the ability to concentrate for a long period of time.
Personally, for work that i love to do, concentration is rewarding.
For mundane, routine work, I usually go on auto pilot, getting work done, but, doing it while my attention is somewhere else.
For mundane work that requires concentration, my output falls off the cliff. Its here that many tips and tricks ought to focus, but dont. And, frankly, its difficult too, to hack this type of work. Its human nature to be bored out and perhaps nothing can change it.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#4[deleted]
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#5> Prioritize the people and projects that matter, and it won’t matter how long anything takes.
This is exactly why I created Pony [0], an email platform that sends and receives messages once a day. The problem for me wasn’t managing my time, but managing my attention, which was really hard with everything coming at me constantly all the time.
I observed that most things aren’t urgent, and further I observed that nearly all communication was improved when I had space and time to handle it, and most importantly, was able to compartmentalize and give it attention.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#6What the author means by "attention management" is, perhaps, the ability to concentrate for a long period of time. Personally, for work that i love to do, concentration is rewarding. For mundane, routine work, I usually go on auto pilot, getting work done, but, doing it while my attention is somewhere else. For mundane work that requires concentration, my output falls off the cliff. Its here that many tips and tricks…
I used to think like you until I met a coworker. He could not code to save his life, nobody in the team liked working with him. Until one day we had a boring data entry task. He could do it for hours at a time, and barely made any mistake. This experience taught me something.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#7What the author means by "attention management" is, perhaps, the ability to concentrate for a long period of time. Personally, for work that i love to do, concentration is rewarding. For mundane, routine work, I usually go on auto pilot, getting work done, but, doing it while my attention is somewhere else. For mundane work that requires concentration, my output falls off the cliff. Its here that many tips and tricks…
I used to think like you until I met a coworker. He could not code to save his life, nobody in the team liked working with him. Until one day we had a boring data entry task. He could do it for hours at a time, and barely made any mistake. This experience taught me something.
What did it teach you? I'm having trouble seeing the relevance.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#8What the author means by "attention management" is, perhaps, the ability to concentrate for a long period of time. Personally, for work that i love to do, concentration is rewarding. For mundane, routine work, I usually go on auto pilot, getting work done, but, doing it while my attention is somewhere else. For mundane work that requires concentration, my output falls off the cliff. Its here that many tips and tricks…
Perhaps but people can develop strategies that work for them. It helps if you can mix the mundane with more engaging work or some procrastination.
This is where time management can be very useful. If possible I prefer short but intense bursts of mundane but high concentration tasks. I've been using timers to help train myself to spend a set amount of time fully concentrating on a task and then reward myself with a break (which could involve more engaging work or if might simply be spending time on HN).
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#9I have never been able to force true concentration. I arrogantly proclaim that I have strong willpower* - I have very little trouble forcing myself to do something I entirely don't want to do, whether it be study, workout, code, whatever.
However, forced concentration completely blocks off my ability to think fluidly, and I memorize very little from reading topics that aren't of interest to me (I am looking at you GCP docs), even if I don't allow my attention to wander at all for more than a second. (Rote memorization still works, but it's very impractical for many topics).
I have lately found that if I force myself to read something I hate for 3+ hours straight, my brain involuntarily starts wanting to know more. But I rarely have 3 hours to just get in the mood.
* Research has shown that people who think they have strong willpower test the worst on willpower, but I am a special objective snowflake.
Re: Productivity Is About Attention Management
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to think like you until I met a coworker. He could not code to save his life, nobody in the team liked working with him. Until one day we had a boring data entry task. He could do it for hours at a time, and barely made any mistake. This experience taught me something.
What did it teach you? I'm having trouble seeing the relevance.
Maybe don't autofire your 0.1Xers?