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>> For the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessed with improving my productivity. I was skeptical about the article from this first sentence. Productive people har
by cryptica 7y ago
>> For the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessed with improving my productivity.
I was skeptical about the article from this first sentence. Productive people hardly ever think about productivity and especially don't have much interest in writing articles about it. This is because productive people (in the sense of value-production; not value-capturing) are not focused on optimizing processes, instead they're focused on following the shortest possible path to reach their goal; processes are not needed; they evolve naturally to fit a purpose and don't need to be 'designed' explicitly.
If you're a founder or CEO, then you do need to think about processes, because you're not a value producer, you're a value capturer. Processes are your bread and butter; they're a tool to keep you in your position; so thinking about productivity and preaching about it is the shortest path for you to maintain control and increase your influence.
They should make a new word, "captitivity" to differentiate productivity in the sense of creating value efficiently versus productivity in the sense of capturing money efficiently.
- phodge 7y agoI'm not convinced. Often the productive "hard worker" persona tends to push through tedious manual tasks, where the unproductive "lazy" persona gets bored and looks for better ways to do things.
- cryptica 7y agoThe lazy persona risks not understanding the problem well enough to come up with useful solutions. You need repeated exposure to the problem in order to see patterns and to find a good solution. I agree that it's good to take a step back from time to time but IMO it doesn't make sense to think about productivity in a generic way (e.g. in terms of time management). Even the author admits that "getting in the flow" is important. The flow is everything. My point is that you should make your entire life about "the flow".
- afarrell 7y ago> Productive people hardly ever think about productivity Non-diabetics hardly ever think about systems to manage their blood sugar. Non-asthematics hardly ever think about systems to manage particulate matter in the air. Non-ADHDers hardly ever think about meticulous systems to manage their attention.