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What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity
- roland35 5y agoI keep finding that the more complicated the setup I use for productivity, the less I go back to it whenever there is a hiccup. Simple methods survive long term. Currently my wife and I use a shared google doc, and while it is far from perfect, it ends up working well for us since it works on our phones and computers, is easy to bookmark, and the interface never changes.
- resonious 5y agoI feel the same way about my dev environment. I'm a Linux user with a propensity for customization, but my preferred bashrcs and vimrcs have converged on something small enough to write up from memory. It's a lot of fun to have a hugely customized ultra-productive setup, but as soon as you find yourself on somebody else's system, a server, a container, or whatever, it's not so fun anymore. The less setup you need in order to be comfortable, the easier it is to be comfortable!
- doubled112 5y agoI think I've fallen into this trap before, and ended up with a small set of features that degrade well if I don't have them. Something like fish shell will never work for me. Not every machine is mine. So I tried Zsh. It turns out that better tab completion, syntax highlighting and suggestions does speed me up, but I don't feel lost when the machine has a default bash install. The hours I've spent customizing just to decide it's too much and undoing half of it is baffling. At least I had fun doing it, or that's what I tell myself.
- SkyPuncher 5y agoI'll fallen back to a Todoist board (any Kanban board will work) with 4 columns. * Now * Today * Next Week * The future Anything more complex is a waste of time as it assumes I can predict how and why I need to work on something.
- mojuba 5y agoI feel like individual productivity is a pretty much solved problem and comes down to picking your tools. Whether it's one out of a million 3rd party Todo/Note taking apps, or just whatever is available in your OS, is a matter of taste. If you want to be productive you will find your way and most importantly, just don't get too obsessed about not being at maximum productivity. Group productivity and collaboration, however, is a problem with square root complexity (if not worse) of the number of collaborators. It is not a solved problem at all. I hate all the existing ways and tools for sharing, working on something together, planning, scheduling, all the Asanas, Trellos and Jiras of the world. They all feel somehow wrong and counter-productive for any more or less non-trivial collaboration. I think we all know there's a golden opportunity here, just not clear yet what a better collab tool should be like for 2021 and onward.
- tomaskafka 5y agoI feel like individual productivity is a pretty much solved problem and comes down to sitting on your ass and doing the actual work (yes, I sometimes have trouble doing that, but in the end 'just sit down and start doing it' is the best advice to listen to).
- omarhaneef 5y agoDepends on what you mean by "solved" If by "solved" you mean we have a theory, then perhaps. But truly solved would include how to get yourself to do it.
- stadium 5y agoFor me the harder problem with productivity is often picking the right work to do, and balancing that with analysis paralysis.
- Matticus_Rex 5y agoThe GTD method got me past this problem. Don't get overly complicated with it -- just do the basics, and add/subtract as you see fit. Changed my life.
- matagus 5y agoSounds like Cal Newport's Time Blocking method taken to an extreme (because it suggests to block time for everything): https://www.timeblockplanner.com/ https://www.timeblockplanner.com/
- hiddencache 5y agoI had a colleague who would block out almost his entire calendar as a defensive strategy against being given new tasks. He even tried it once with his wife to avoid clearing out the garage. That tactic he only tried once, though, for obvious reasons.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- webmaven 5y agoObligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/874/ https://xkcd.com/874/
- jpmattia 5y agoObligatory link to The Ultimate Productivity Blog: https://productiveblog.tumblr.com/ https://productiveblog.tumblr.com/
- eigenschwarz 5y agoIME the single greatest yes simplest productivity tip that can be applied in almost any situation or context: "If it's not a definite yes, then it's a no." Everything else I've found is noise.
- hvs 5y agoMy greatest "productivity" improvement over the years is exactly this. Learning how to tell others (and myself) diplomatically "no". I used to take on, and create for myself, endless projects to "work on" and felt like I never accomplished anything. Paring down to the most important and fulfilling projects (and not trying to be everything to everybody) has improved things significantly.
- lhorie 5y agoI noticed myself doing this more and more, but not in the context of personal productivity, but rather in the context of "how can I help you help yourself". The gist is usually "can we solve this in some way that doesn't involve me coding a full blown technical solution". A lot of times, a workable solution is as simple as "just write 2 paragraphs about it in the docs" (and then mindlessly copying+pasting the link to it in chat until people get the message to just go RTFM). Or spending an hour doing a brain dump of the problem/solution space and letting them go off and do the work themselves.
- Graffur 5y agoAlso works well for purchases
- Brajeshwar 5y agoI believe you will like TimeStrip - https://timestripe.com/ https://timestripe.com/ (no relations).
- cseleborg 5y agoI'm at a stage in my life where I have a true love/hate relationship with productivity. I have a business, a job, two young children and there's this thing going on in the world that makes everything kind of strange and our of our control. Every time I read an article like this one, and this one isn't particularly good, if I may add, I feel like saying, yes, right, you go ahead and try that calendar blocking thing with two children at home generating an almost infinite amount of entropy in all four dimensions. And do tell me how that willpower thing is working out for you, that thing about just cranking on with the most important goals every day, when your nights are most unreliable, and you're just generally exhausted all the time. But I keep clicking those links anyway, secretly hoping that one day, I'll crack the mystery of productivity for stressed-out parents... But since we're on the topic, I'll share what I think is the secret now: the less you try to accomplish, the more you'll accomplish. Super-laser-focus is the only thing that works for me. That, and being kind to myself when I have unproductive days, which is almost every day.
- bamboozled 5y agoThat, and being kind to myself when I have unproductive days, which is almost every day. I suffer from Insomnia, I have for many years, I'm up at 1am after a day which I let me discipline slide. I didn't feel as productive as I should've been today, So you know what I did? I worked till 8:30pm. I punished myself. I broke my new golden rule of getting off the computer by 6pm, which was working so well for me. Then what happened? I didn't have any wind down time, then I couldn't sleep and now I'm up stressed about everything I probably won't get done tomorrow because I'll be too tired to focus on complex tasks, it's now a compound fracture, a cluster bomb of issues. I think you're 100% right. Just walk away while you still can, retreat, then come out on the attack the next day feeling better. I wish I'd taken my own advice.
- cseleborg 5y agoThanks for sharing. I think everyone here will recognize themselves, at least occasionally, in what you just wrote.
- 5y ago
- dotcommand 5y agoWriting about productivity seems like a nice racket. What's with the excessive productivity propaganda the past few years. Is that what humans are? What humans exist to be/do? Be products that produce as much as possible? So much time/resources/etc wasted to be more productivity. What's the end goal here?
- gnulinux 5y agoThe end goal is value. And value changes from community to community. I don't get this skepticism against productivity. It really doesn't have to be work stuff. After work I play piano, chess etc and any improvement done to these are "productive" too because I'm increasing my value to my community by making music, playing chess etc. It's infinitesimally tiny, but there is an objective difference between that and e.g. sleep which is an activity we're bound to do that is not productive. Not all of this stuff needs to be corporate propaganda, take what works for you.
- 13415 5y agoI'd agree if only less people confused productivity with work / time efficiency and then get annoyed when the quality declines. As an old German proverb says, Gut Ding will Weile haben, which roughly means good things take time.
- dotcommand 5y ago> The end goal is value. And value changes from community to community. From one overstated and meaningless self-help word to another. Is that what a human exists to do? Provide "value" to the community? > After work I play piano, chess etc and any improvement done to these are "productive" too because I'm increasing my value to my community by making music, playing chess etc. How does that provide value to the "community"? Did you ask anyone if you playing the piano or chess provided value to them? Funny, I play the piano, chess, etc for my own personal enjoyment. Didn't realize I had to play it for the community 's benefit. What else do I owe the community? So as I can better attune my productivity?
- 5y ago
- legrande 5y agoThat's the thing about productivity - it's a very meta word since the human brain works non-stop since birth (some even say that before being born, the brain is still working). Dossing about, loafing, or idling are not the work of the devil, they are necessary to getting things done since we need to pause and reflect, and conjure up ideas typically in silence. My favorite phrase regarding this matter is as follows: "Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time".
- kirubakaran 5y agoIf you want to try time-blocking: https://crushentropy.com/ https://crushentropy.com/ It's like markdown for planning.
- haps 5y agoThat looks great! I would love to use this offline.
- rchaud 5y ago"Productivity" has been fully productized to the extent that there are paid tools built around methodologies like bullet journaling, lists, zettelkasten, spaced repetition, pomodoro timers, stoicism etc. The end result of which is an ocean of SEO blogspam written by the the purveyors of such tools, reducing the signal-to-noise ratio the well below the threshold of usability. I find that in my 30s, the solution for productivity woes is much the same as the ancient wisdom of my parents' computer-free generation: (i) ensure decent nutrition and sleep (ii) step away from the screens periodically (iii) spend time outdoors (iv) review your goals at the start of each day (v) perfection is rarely necessary
- cratermoon 5y agoPart of the problem is how ideas and techniques that are at best tangential to productivity have been dragged into the field and rebranded. The big ones that come to mind immediately are things that are about relaxation and entertainment have now become "productivity enhancers" or some such garbage, and must be planned and scheduled alongside actual tasks.
- 50 5y ago"If your ideology is focused around production or productivity or work then you’ve already failed."
- rkhassen9 5y agoThis title, reminds me of the backstory of ALL the productivity "gurus." They say they read everything and tried everything so you can take it from them. The only thing is...what they got good at was getting you to pay them to teach you about productivity! Ironically, I got this by reading everything about productivity. Not a joke...back in the 80's, I read every book on the subject because I really wanted to know. And have been a bit of a productivity addict ever since. But now, getting the long view, I wish I had just learned more about who I really am, what matters to me, and just used the energy to live my own life. Recently, a guy passed away in our little town. I thought to myself that he was a rare thing, just himself, not to shaped by some idea of what he should be. Taking to him was like sitting near a stream, or a warm campfire. Somehow so nourishing. Would like to see more of that in the world.
- tuatoru 5y agoOh. Disappointing. Since it was in Bloomberg, I thought the article might be about productivity, dollars of GDP produced per unit of effort. An update to Chad Syverson's 2011 survey article, What Determines Productivity, perhaps. Instead it's part of the victim-blaming industry of "if you're not frantically busy, you're wasting your life".
- mbrodersen 5y agoI pity people who worship “productivity” without asking deep questions about what the ultimate value of the increased “productivity” is. The amount of stress and health problems produced by people worshipping productivity is jaw dropping.