3 ms·

Thorough indictment of productivity porn: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzXQu8ErVNv https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDv

Thorough indictment of productivity porn: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzXQu8ErVNv https://notes.andymatuschak.org/zUMFE66dxeweppDvgbNAb5hukXzX... "People who write extensively about note-writing rarely have a serious context of use Many bloggers and “life-hackers” have made a full-time job of suggesting how you should organize your journal, or how you should most effectively Write about what you read. We should take this advice seriously insofar as those practices have helped the authors achieve meaningful creative work: “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking” But most people who write about note-taking don’t seem particularly accomplished in their own fields, whatever those may be. In fact, most such writers aren’t applying their notes to some exogenous creative problem: their primary creative work is writing about productivity."

sidpatil 6y ago
https://xkcd.com/874/ https://xkcd.com/874/
owenshen24 6y ago
I wrote about something similar for self-help, more broadly here about how good self help is self-defeating: https://mlu.red/55070266310.html https://mlu.red/55070266310.html
praptak 6y ago
Productivity porn has its uses. Getting to write notes is hard, or at least not very gratifying. Getting the perfect pen and notebook makes note taking more appealing, which is good.
- criddell 6y ago
  But there's always a better pen and notebook out there. At some point you have to do the work.
  - praptak 6y ago
    Yes, obviously. If you limit PP to rewarding yourself, short-term, for starting unappealing work, then you should be fine. Otherwise it's just a huge resource sink. I settled on a $1.20 pen model which I really like, a generic notebook and have kept the resolution not to even look at any more stuff (okay, I read about Zettelkasten but resisted the temptation to try it). This sort of works for me. I will keep quiet on how much time I had spent researching various productivity-related crap :)
wenc 6y ago
I suspect a lot of folks who are into note-taking methods have this mindset that if only we knew how to take better notes, we'd be able to reason better, produce better output and become more accomplished. I also suspect we are cerebral types and have rich inner worlds, so it's only natural that we think that more and better analyses will help us understand the world better. Yet, despite the many tools that we have, many of us only hover just a little above mediocrity in our accomplishments. (I'm describing myself in the above paragraph.) Outside of certain fields like academia and writing, I've observed that accomplished people tend to focus more on "doing" (including doing the "wrong" things) rather than constructing a super coherent model of the world. They rely on rough heuristics and feedback loops to learn, rather than careful analysis. I read an article this week "Action Produces Information" [1] that made me think that maybe the more cerebral among us ought to step outside our mental models occasionally and actually try to interact with the gritty world and let reality be our teacher (instead of our models). By interacting with reality, we actually generate new information. Quote: Watch any group of entrepreneurs for a long enough period of time, for instance, and you would notice that the best entrepreneurs aren’t necessarily the best calibrated Bayesian updaters or expected utility calculators. Instead, the best entrepreneurs tend to have a mix of bias-to-action and fast adaptation in response to new information. It seems to me that better note-taking methods are great for sharpening the brain (which is a valuable thing in itself), but a bias toward action/empiricism might be better for sharpening the skills needed to do meaningful things in the world. They're not mutually exclusive, but given a finite amount of time, my intuition tells me that putting more weight on the latter will tend to have a higher payoff. [1] https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/ https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  I also think people get stuck in optimising their process because it’s easy to see, easy to change and makes you feel productive. Versus most creativity which is very woolly and hard to make tangible. Both can be approached by doing and empirically evaluated though. For me at least it’s more about biasing towards tackling the actual problem or challenge in front of you rather than polishing tools. Note taking in particular should be pragmatic and straightforward and I’m amazed at the complexity people can put into it.

sidpatil 6y ago

https://xkcd.com/874/ https://xkcd.com/874/

owenshen24 6y ago

I wrote about something similar for self-help, more broadly here about how good self help is self-defeating: https://mlu.red/55070266310.html https://mlu.red/55070266310.html

praptak 6y ago

Productivity porn has its uses. Getting to write notes is hard, or at least not very gratifying. Getting the perfect pen and notebook makes note taking more appealing, which is good.

criddell 6y ago
But there's always a better pen and notebook out there. At some point you have to do the work.
- praptak 6y ago
  Yes, obviously. If you limit PP to rewarding yourself, short-term, for starting unappealing work, then you should be fine. Otherwise it's just a huge resource sink. I settled on a $1.20 pen model which I really like, a generic notebook and have kept the resolution not to even look at any more stuff (okay, I read about Zettelkasten but resisted the temptation to try it). This sort of works for me. I will keep quiet on how much time I had spent researching various productivity-related crap :)

wenc 6y ago

I suspect a lot of folks who are into note-taking methods have this mindset that if only we knew how to take better notes, we'd be able to reason better, produce better output and become more accomplished. I also suspect we are cerebral types and have rich inner worlds, so it's only natural that we think that more and better analyses will help us understand the world better. Yet, despite the many tools that we have, many of us only hover just a little above mediocrity in our accomplishments. (I'm describing myself in the above paragraph.) Outside of certain fields like academia and writing, I've observed that accomplished people tend to focus more on "doing" (including doing the "wrong" things) rather than constructing a super coherent model of the world. They rely on rough heuristics and feedback loops to learn, rather than careful analysis. I read an article this week "Action Produces Information" [1] that made me think that maybe the more cerebral among us ought to step outside our mental models occasionally and actually try to interact with the gritty world and let reality be our teacher (instead of our models). By interacting with reality, we actually generate new information. Quote: Watch any group of entrepreneurs for a long enough period of time, for instance, and you would notice that the best entrepreneurs aren’t necessarily the best calibrated Bayesian updaters or expected utility calculators. Instead, the best entrepreneurs tend to have a mix of bias-to-action and fast adaptation in response to new information. It seems to me that better note-taking methods are great for sharpening the brain (which is a valuable thing in itself), but a bias toward action/empiricism might be better for sharpening the skills needed to do meaningful things in the world. They're not mutually exclusive, but given a finite amount of time, my intuition tells me that putting more weight on the latter will tend to have a higher payoff. [1] https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/ https://commoncog.com/blog/action-produces-information/

meheleventyone 6y ago
I also think people get stuck in optimising their process because it’s easy to see, easy to change and makes you feel productive. Versus most creativity which is very woolly and hard to make tangible. Both can be approached by doing and empirically evaluated though. For me at least it’s more about biasing towards tackling the actual problem or challenge in front of you rather than polishing tools. Note taking in particular should be pragmatic and straightforward and I’m amazed at the complexity people can put into it.