6 ms·

Um. "I don't keep a calendar" means "I consider my time more important than yours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience." I would love to do that, but everyone

Um. "I don't keep a calendar" means "I consider my time more important than yours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience." I would love to do that, but everyone else in the world would rightly understand it that way and would treat it as a refusal to do core elements of my job. A: "Let's schedule a committee meeting." B: "I don't keep a calendar." A: "So what you're saying is everyone else on the committee has to find time just for you? Fuck you, do your job." Arnold Schwarzenegger could get away with that crap because he's a fabulously wealthy A-list movie star. The rest of us, not so much.

blastbeat 8y ago
Fully agree. Also the rest of the article has questionable advice. I doubt the helpfulness of later lists and anti todo lists. Not answering the phone or pretending to be incompetent sounds like an idiotic idea too.
- operakadabra 8y ago
  Nobody is promising that every suggestion will work for you. Try everything until you find something that does work.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >I doubt the helpfulness of later lists and anti todo lists. Before I break down some of the advice, keep in mind that he is talking about productivity. There are some jobs where his advice will not work. But I contend those jobs are designed in a way that necessarily limit your productivity. As an example, SW developers complain about context switching. I assure you, there are jobs where context switching is more or less necessary. I wouldn't criticize Marc's advice because it won't work for that kind of a job. I'd point out that the job is fundamentally one where productivity is limited. Getting to the details: Later lists are essentially Someday/Maybe in GTD, so it's not a radical concept. Personally, I've treated it as a dumping ground of things just to get them out of my head. If I'm not going to do it any time soon, I want it somewhere that is not my head. Now I've never found the contents of the list useful. It's usually so huge that it's not worth my time to go back to it. As for Anti-Todo list, it's a psychological hack, so I'm not sure how you can say it is useful or not. It's strictly not a productivity technique. If it eases your mind, it works. Otherwise not. I'm not anti-phone as he is, but if I substitute phone calls with texting and IM's, I fully agree. They are usually productivity sinks. I've found phones to be good for things where one cannot reasonably wait. Obviously, this is not going to work for projects that require continual, quick decisions. I think he is merely self selecting: He does only projects where phone calls are not as important. As for strategic incompetence, he makes the criterion clear: >Of course, this assumes that there are other things that are more important at which you are competent. Look around your workplace. In mine, this is what more senior people do all the time. They have more important work to do, and they'll first try to convince managers the annoying work they're being asked to do is not a good use of their time (takes time away from more important work). 70+% of the time, this is enough. When it isn't, it's not unusual to see them do a poor job, at which time managers assign the work to a more junior person. It does work, as long as their is a junior person who can do the work. Limiting email time is effective. Whenever I've interviewed, I've asked whether I can do the job if I check email only three times a day. In reality, I check it a lot more often. But I've been burned by having a job where too much work was done over email with an expectation to respond quickly (e.g. within an hour). Having to drop all your work several times a day to answer lots of questions is not good for productivity.
coldtea 8y ago
>Um. "I don't keep a calendar" means "I consider my time more important than yours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience." I would love to do that, but everyone else in the world would rightly understand it that way and would treat it as a refusal to do core elements of my job. The advice is for free persons, not for us salaried workers. (Not to mention that TFA already covers this: "I'm totally serious. If you pull it off -- and in many structured jobs, you simply can't" and again later: "Clearly this only works if you can get away with it. If you have a structured job, a structured job environment, or you're a CEO, it will be hard to pull off."). See also: https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person-4145a1802bf6 https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person...
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  So basically it's for the already affluent. "If you're rich and have no obligations only work when you want to" doesn't seem that novel. It's productivity when there's little value on said productivity.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    You don't have to be affluent. You can be e.g. a freelancer graphic designer making at most 50-60K a year and do that. Or have a small company and do that. Or be a farmer and do that. But the conclusion seems wrong "It's productivity when there's little value on said productivity." -- the productivity of the affluent has even more value (at least monetarily) than the productivity of some office worker.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      You can be a designer whose willing to burn bridges and don't need to pay a mortgage, but yeah, you could be someone who doesn't need stuff. I'd love to see a farmer put off feeding the animals or not keep a schedule. "I'll just harvest the crops next month." >Want to spend all day writing a research report? Do it! >Want to spend all day coding? Do it! >Want to spend all day at the cafe down the street reading a book on personal productivity? Do it! These are not things someone who needs to work for a living can do, picking and choosing activities at their leisure. Regarding "little value on said productivity", I meant value to the individual, not to society as a whole. If you can afford to squander opportunities clearly whatever you're producing isn't as vital to you as for others who need the productivity to continue be able to afford to live.
operakadabra 8y ago
Good point, but actually, to you, your time is more important than everyone else's. You need to put yourself first. When the oxygen mask falls from the ceiling of the airplane you're instructed to put yours on before helping others. You're not going to be helping anyone if you pass out. And by the way, both you and Arnold Schwarzenegger are human beings and able to have some of the same experiences. Putting yourself down is not helpful.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Arnold Schwarzenegger can afford to lose a job, and his personal productivity can't make or break his ability to pay this month's mortgage. You have to be willing to work with people, and you have to work with more powerful people on their terms.
  - glitchc 8y ago
    Hmmm.. Are you secretly hoping that these powerful people will raise you to their level someday? Give you a just reward for your serfdom?
    - lazyasciiart 8y ago
      Where did that come from?
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      No, I'm saying if my boss tells me to be at a meeting everyday at 10 and I'm not there for 2 weeks I'm probably going to get fired.
      - glitchc 8y ago
        Punctuality is overrated in general, and especially in software. Most meetings are a waste of time because no decision is made in them.
        8y ago
0x262d 8y ago
difficult to believe the article isn't satire
muzani 8y ago
I think the idea here is to minimize scheduling. Take note that this advice comes from a top VC; meetings are his bread and butter. Not committing to a schedule greatly cuts down on the number of meetings. Most meetings are unnecessary, a huge cost to productivity. He also doesn't advice avoiding them, more like if it's important and high priority enough, everyone can agree to do one now. It cuts out the fat of scheduling an important meeting 3 days later because a bunch of execs had 3 days of not so important meetings already scheduled. Also one part of how Andreessen-Horowitz operates is that they absolutely cut out the wait time for founders trying to meet them. This is a part of that efficiency. They have to leave the rest of their hours open.
- paultopia 8y ago
  Hmm. It seems to me, but I'm not sure so please correct me, that a top VC is someone to whom others mostly come as supplicants, and hence can demand scheduling on his convenience rather than theirs.
  - muzani 8y ago
    To be a top VC, the VC has to land the top deals (Uber, Airbnb, etc). They land top deals by being attractive to top founders. The best startups often move very rapidly, having 10% week on week growth and such. Every hour is valuable to them. Partners are fined $10 for every minute they are late to a meeting, which gives an idea of how strongly they hold to the principle.
meuk 8y ago
That's like the first point he makes: I'm totally serious. If you pull it off -- and in many structured jobs, you simply can't -- this simple tip alone can make a huge difference in productivity.
- paultopia 8y ago
  "Structured job" apparently means "job," though. Frankly, anyone who doesn't have a so-called "structured job" or any obligations to anyone else entitled to demand some of their time is probably rich enough already that they don't need "productivity advice."

blastbeat 8y ago

Fully agree. Also the rest of the article has questionable advice. I doubt the helpfulness of later lists and anti todo lists. Not answering the phone or pretending to be incompetent sounds like an idiotic idea too.

operakadabra 8y ago
Nobody is promising that every suggestion will work for you. Try everything until you find something that does work.
BeetleB 8y ago
>I doubt the helpfulness of later lists and anti todo lists. Before I break down some of the advice, keep in mind that he is talking about productivity. There are some jobs where his advice will not work. But I contend those jobs are designed in a way that necessarily limit your productivity. As an example, SW developers complain about context switching. I assure you, there are jobs where context switching is more or less necessary. I wouldn't criticize Marc's advice because it won't work for that kind of a job. I'd point out that the job is fundamentally one where productivity is limited. Getting to the details: Later lists are essentially Someday/Maybe in GTD, so it's not a radical concept. Personally, I've treated it as a dumping ground of things just to get them out of my head. If I'm not going to do it any time soon, I want it somewhere that is not my head. Now I've never found the contents of the list useful. It's usually so huge that it's not worth my time to go back to it. As for Anti-Todo list, it's a psychological hack, so I'm not sure how you can say it is useful or not. It's strictly not a productivity technique. If it eases your mind, it works. Otherwise not. I'm not anti-phone as he is, but if I substitute phone calls with texting and IM's, I fully agree. They are usually productivity sinks. I've found phones to be good for things where one cannot reasonably wait. Obviously, this is not going to work for projects that require continual, quick decisions. I think he is merely self selecting: He does only projects where phone calls are not as important. As for strategic incompetence, he makes the criterion clear: >Of course, this assumes that there are other things that are more important at which you are competent. Look around your workplace. In mine, this is what more senior people do all the time. They have more important work to do, and they'll first try to convince managers the annoying work they're being asked to do is not a good use of their time (takes time away from more important work). 70+% of the time, this is enough. When it isn't, it's not unusual to see them do a poor job, at which time managers assign the work to a more junior person. It does work, as long as their is a junior person who can do the work. Limiting email time is effective. Whenever I've interviewed, I've asked whether I can do the job if I check email only three times a day. In reality, I check it a lot more often. But I've been burned by having a job where too much work was done over email with an expectation to respond quickly (e.g. within an hour). Having to drop all your work several times a day to answer lots of questions is not good for productivity.

coldtea 8y ago

>Um. "I don't keep a calendar" means "I consider my time more important than yours, so we'll meet at my sole convenience." I would love to do that, but everyone else in the world would rightly understand it that way and would treat it as a refusal to do core elements of my job. The advice is for free persons, not for us salaried workers. (Not to mention that TFA already covers this: "I'm totally serious. If you pull it off -- and in many structured jobs, you simply can't" and again later: "Clearly this only works if you can get away with it. If you have a structured job, a structured job environment, or you're a CEO, it will be hard to pull off."). See also: https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person-4145a1802bf6 https://medium.com/incerto/how-to-legally-own-another-person...

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
So basically it's for the already affluent. "If you're rich and have no obligations only work when you want to" doesn't seem that novel. It's productivity when there's little value on said productivity.
- coldtea 8y ago
  You don't have to be affluent. You can be e.g. a freelancer graphic designer making at most 50-60K a year and do that. Or have a small company and do that. Or be a farmer and do that. But the conclusion seems wrong "It's productivity when there's little value on said productivity." -- the productivity of the affluent has even more value (at least monetarily) than the productivity of some office worker.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    You can be a designer whose willing to burn bridges and don't need to pay a mortgage, but yeah, you could be someone who doesn't need stuff. I'd love to see a farmer put off feeding the animals or not keep a schedule. "I'll just harvest the crops next month." >Want to spend all day writing a research report? Do it! >Want to spend all day coding? Do it! >Want to spend all day at the cafe down the street reading a book on personal productivity? Do it! These are not things someone who needs to work for a living can do, picking and choosing activities at their leisure. Regarding "little value on said productivity", I meant value to the individual, not to society as a whole. If you can afford to squander opportunities clearly whatever you're producing isn't as vital to you as for others who need the productivity to continue be able to afford to live.

operakadabra 8y ago

Good point, but actually, to you, your time is more important than everyone else's. You need to put yourself first. When the oxygen mask falls from the ceiling of the airplane you're instructed to put yours on before helping others. You're not going to be helping anyone if you pass out. And by the way, both you and Arnold Schwarzenegger are human beings and able to have some of the same experiences. Putting yourself down is not helpful.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
Arnold Schwarzenegger can afford to lose a job, and his personal productivity can't make or break his ability to pay this month's mortgage. You have to be willing to work with people, and you have to work with more powerful people on their terms.
- glitchc 8y ago
  Hmmm.. Are you secretly hoping that these powerful people will raise you to their level someday? Give you a just reward for your serfdom?
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    Where did that come from?
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    No, I'm saying if my boss tells me to be at a meeting everyday at 10 and I'm not there for 2 weeks I'm probably going to get fired.
    - glitchc 8y ago
      Punctuality is overrated in general, and especially in software. Most meetings are a waste of time because no decision is made in them.
      - 8y ago

0x262d 8y ago

difficult to believe the article isn't satire

muzani 8y ago

I think the idea here is to minimize scheduling. Take note that this advice comes from a top VC; meetings are his bread and butter. Not committing to a schedule greatly cuts down on the number of meetings. Most meetings are unnecessary, a huge cost to productivity. He also doesn't advice avoiding them, more like if it's important and high priority enough, everyone can agree to do one now. It cuts out the fat of scheduling an important meeting 3 days later because a bunch of execs had 3 days of not so important meetings already scheduled. Also one part of how Andreessen-Horowitz operates is that they absolutely cut out the wait time for founders trying to meet them. This is a part of that efficiency. They have to leave the rest of their hours open.

paultopia 8y ago
Hmm. It seems to me, but I'm not sure so please correct me, that a top VC is someone to whom others mostly come as supplicants, and hence can demand scheduling on his convenience rather than theirs.
- muzani 8y ago
  To be a top VC, the VC has to land the top deals (Uber, Airbnb, etc). They land top deals by being attractive to top founders. The best startups often move very rapidly, having 10% week on week growth and such. Every hour is valuable to them. Partners are fined $10 for every minute they are late to a meeting, which gives an idea of how strongly they hold to the principle.

meuk 8y ago

That's like the first point he makes: I'm totally serious. If you pull it off -- and in many structured jobs, you simply can't -- this simple tip alone can make a huge difference in productivity.

paultopia 8y ago
"Structured job" apparently means "job," though. Frankly, anyone who doesn't have a so-called "structured job" or any obligations to anyone else entitled to demand some of their time is probably rich enough already that they don't need "productivity advice."