17 ms·

Embrace slow productivity

314 points by lxm 5y ago

incangold 5y ago
A related thing I wish all businesses would embrace is limiting work in progress. Lean has been around for decades and this lesson still hasn't landed. The key resource is mental energy rather than time worked. I'd accept some trade off between hours worked and the context switching and fire-fighting I do in those hours. An hour spent working at my least professional gig is as exhausting as 5 spent at the most well-run.
systemvoltage 5y ago
I’ve been embracing the opposite and finding success and tremendous happiness in life. I work extremely hard, constantly and at every opportunity. You’d think based on the current zeitgeist that I would be completely mentally messed up but the opposite is true. Without doing useful things with what little time I have on this planet, I feel like it is depressing and would lead me to worst mental health than staying productive. I’ve never heard any sort of optimism from the fucking media. These words are non-existent and potentially characterized as “right-wing” which is so insane to me: hard work, perseverance, determination, ambition, unyielding, disciplined, persistence and strong work-ethics. These are the values my father taught me and I’d rather listen to him than to the stupid media. YMMV.
- chasd00 5y ago
  i've been thinking about this comment since you posted it and am now getting back to it. I guess, at the end of the day, the key is finding what brings you happiness and maximizing it. Obviously, for a lot of people work is not it but for some, seemingly like you, it is. The key is knowing yourself well enough to know what makes you happy and then working to maximize your happiness.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  To me the article seems a lot more focused on specific, concrete issues faced by some workers, and tangible actions and policies to address them. It isn't making a moral case for or against hard work that I can see. Though I do think addressing the conflation of productivity with virtue is necessary to make meaningful change here. Anyway yeah YMMV. I don't really get anything from my work except more money and less time so I'm gonna vary that mileage down as much as I can. I can't really follow you into the media and political scope of this though. I don't reject those values that you associate with... someone associating with... right-wing... something. idk man. This isn't a request for further explanation.
- NotVerstappen 5y ago
  I think most people can thrive in the situation you describe (extreme hard work) as long as they also feel a sense of control. I am at my peak (in productivity and "feeling alive") when 100% of my work hours demand my focus because I have that much to do. When I have a quiet period I get miserable; I can find plenty of my own ideas to work on, but they often feel either futile or wasteful - that part is my own problem. Similarly though, when I have too much to do (ie when I know that working 100% still won't get it done) I become demotivated - after all, it seems that none of these tasks are important enough to get proper scheduling, so why bother sweating over them myself? Second point: working full-on as you describe can apply to non-employment too. The drive towards working fewer hours (for the same standard of living) is just a direct response to growing wealth inequality and general unfairness in society, not a softening or growing laziness.
- throwaway599281 5y ago
  >These words are non-existent and potentially characterized as “right-wing” which is so insane to me: hard work, perseverance, determination, ambition, unyielding, disciplined, persistence and strong work-ethics. >These are the values my father taught me You just summarized Prussianism [0][1], so you're not far from the truth. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussianism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_virtues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_virtues
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  I assume you're young, and this is the right attitude if so. Not that it becomes "wrong" as you age, but many people cannot maintain it, through a combination of burnout, less energy, just becoming jaded, or having other interests and priorities. I'm past middle age and hard work is no longer its own reward for me. Forget a 4-day workweek -- I work about 4 hours a day. Any more than that and it's just going through the motions, there's no additional productivity. I will still occasionally get really into something and find myself still engaged after many hours, but it's rare these days whereas it used to be common. However I do not think I would have liked this as a 25-year-old. At that age I was excited, still learning, and full of energy. A 4 hour workday would have felt like I was just getting started.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    In my experience, it's that I don't want to maintain it. I've seen no real payoff. Master's degree - worthless Working as a tech lead and senior dev - no promotion, I'm still a midlevel Etc You'll only want to work hard if you're not disillusioned.
    - MR4D 5y ago
      If you want a payoff for working hard, become an owner. Also, your boss will always agree with you. ;) EDIT: "become an owner" could be a startup, a contracting firm, joining someone else as an owner, etc.
      - id 5y ago
        Or inherit stock ;)
        MR4D 5y ago
        Ha! Perhaps the easiest way, but you might have to wait a long time for it.
    - id 5y ago
      For employees this is certainly true.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  First paragraph: I feel exactly the same way, but also definitely feel and sympathize with the article's topic sometimes. I don't think the two ideas are as mutually exclusive as they seem. Second paragraph: I think you're letting the world's political bullshit get you a little reactive. Those words are championed more often explicitly by the right than the left, and some media outlets unreasonably demonize some right wing things, but those are two separate concepts. Those words are, by definition, positive words in a neutral context.
  - JetAlone 5y ago
    I think you have a point about the reactionism... A better gambit than pre-emptively complaining about a small difference in political stances on something like work ethics would be to just champion the virtues on their own, and if an actual political ideologue begins to act disparaging about it as being somehow a less positive thing, respond with "Alright, well you and your cohort can enjoy not benefiting from these virtues then".
- sg47 5y ago
  The problem is you are thinking only about yourself which is what right-wingers are frequently accused of. You specifically might be able to work extremely hard, persevere, etc but not everyone can. Work needs to be sustainable especially in the US which does not provide a lot of benefits to workers (healthcare, child care, PTO, etc). Also, you might be able to work extremely hard today but can you do the same 20 years from now or when you are recovering from an illness? I used to work 14+ hours a day but out of the blue got diagnosed with cancer. I still pushed hard during that time but a year after surgery and treatment, I have lost all motivation to work and can barely focus for 4 hours a day.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  > I’ve been embracing the opposite and finding success and tremendous happiness in life. I work extremely hard, constantly and at every opportunity. > YMMV Exactly. I used to be just like you but I changed a few years ago and I couldn't be much happier.
- goda90 5y ago
  People don't generally want to be lazy. They want to feel like their effort matters. And even if you have a job that is important for society to function and improve, your efforts can be poisoned by seeing the vast majority of the value going to those at the top, or by constant verbal abuse and breakdown of your body. In lots of jobs, lots of stress comes from things that don't actually matter, but rather from minutia invented by someone else who doesn't trust you to put in effort. Hard work with tangible results is satisfying. Stressful work with poor pay and physical degradation is not.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    People default to lazy as a self-protection measure after being repeatedly screwed over and not seeing their hard work pay off.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      "lazy" is a moral judgement. You are talking about sound business decisions.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  I'm very curious what your life experience is like on certain axes. Have you chosen your work? Did your father? Likewise, have you had any major unexpected life events (deaths, divorces, illnesses, etc.)? I ask because I've found what you've said to be true in certain cases. Working hard and consistently at something is great when it comes to projects and tasks that I choose and that are mostly mathematical or logical. On the other hand, this mode/method completely fails me when it comes to creative or architect level work. I also caution against holding one worldview as good in all situations. I worked much harder before I got MS, and learning my limits and accepting them was key to preserving my mental health. If you can live such a directed life, it can be very fruitful, but on the other hand, trying to make yourself hustle even though it's a bad idea is a great way to hurt yourself.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    It is similar to exercising for me. If I don’t exercise, I go down the spiral and it becomes really difficult to get back into a good routine again. Not working or doing something useful with my time feels exactly the same. I am really happy and everything is better when I don’t slack, am demotivated or unwilling to put in the effort. Life is fulfilling and tremendously fun when I’m surrounded by motivated people that are basically opposite of the HN culture these days. The people of HN are extremely uninspiring and frankly toxic to my own mental health.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      > basically opposite of the HN culture these days That's because the pendulum has swung. A decade ago, HN was full of optimism because we were at the apex of startup culture and the tech boom. Now that boom has receded, there is still a lot of dumb money (for now), but people are burned out and the tech is uninspiring or toxic. People are just tired. This really became clear to me two years ago, shortly before the pandemic, when there was a long thread on HN arguing against joining a startup, simply because FAANG pays far better- not just because of crazy stock market shenanigans, but because many startups themselves have been captured by leadership that pursue policies that lead to share dilution. The economics have changed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 5y ago
  >hard work, perseverance, determination, ambition, unyielding, disciplined, persistence and strong work-ethics Non-existent? They're hammered on everybody 24/7 by american work ethics and hustler culture - to the point of unhealthiness. And they are also enforced (whether you "find success" or not) at every level, with a cut-throad society and economy...
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    I think you should talk to your local bartender to get some perspective about how good software engineers have it. It’s hard work but I feel truly fortunate. Perspective is a hell of a thing.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >I think you should talk to your local bartender to get some perspective about how good software engineers have it. They still have it comparative worse, work-life balance wise than software engineers in Europe, for example...
- giantg2 5y ago
  How does this relate to the article? I didn't think it was against working hard. It sounded more like we should avoid distractions and context switching. Sort of mental version of "slow is smooth, smooth is fast".
- claudiulodro 5y ago
  I think the key phrase from your philosophy is "useful things". If you have a full plate of things that are satisfying to do, and accomplishing them brings you material benefit, there isn't really a downside to working a ton (assuming you can mentally and physically handle it, and you're not neglecting other more important stuff). If your life is more like a skinner box, where some large percentage of the work is baloney and brings no material gain, this probably isn't an optimum strategy. You'd be wasting a lot of energy on nonsense. I think that's closer to the situation the average person finds themselves in, and their effort would be better spent identifying the part of the work that brings the most results rather than indiscriminately powering through all possible work. "Work smarter not harder" is a saying for a reason. :)
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > finding success and tremendous happiness in life Workaholics can get "high" on dopamine on the endless stream of activity. Until it breaks down. > hard work, perseverance, determination, ambition, unyielding, disciplined, persistence and strong work-ethics This are very empty words as they do not relate to what really motivates a person. You cannot simply order yourself to be determined and hardworking, otherwise burnout and depressions would not exist in the first place.
- wnolens 5y ago
  > YMMV Precisely, different people are different. I was once like you. It felt amazing. But then it stopped feeling amazing, and suddenly I could relate to the other 99% of the world.
nonameiguess 5y ago
Overview for whoever doesn't want to read the article or just react to the headline: The author is a professor of computer science at Georgetown who has authored numerous books on how to do well in school and career by minimizing distraction and increasing focus. He's arguing against the California 32-hour work week bill, which he says will be counterproductive on its own without addressing the core problems of excessive coordination and multitasking that is what he believes is truly burning out knowledge workers more than sheer volume of hours. He is calling this "slow productivity" in honor of a movement from Spain dedicated to cooking instead of eating fast food, which takes longer but is ultimately more enjoyable and rewarding. How on earth this gets interpreted as media damning right wing work ethic is maybe one of the more bizarre things I've seen happen on HackerNews recently.
- bena 5y ago
  Because while I don't believe a strong work ethic is a right wing thing, I do believe that believing a strong work ethic is a right wing thing is a right wing thing. HackerNews has reached the point where it's visible enough that it's being consumed by those with the most time.
- peruvian 5y ago
  Cal Newport is a good writer and worth listening to, but most of his advice applies only to himself. I work 9-5 for a company that uses Slack, email, alerts, etc., like most of HN. I'm not a tenured professor with a lot of clout that can shut himself from the world whenever I please. I've learned from Newport and apply some of his stuff to my own life, of course, but it's been over ten years of listening to him telling us we're doing it wrong, when most of us have no choice.
  - gbjw 5y ago
    To nitpick here: many tenured professors also use Slack, email, alerts etc. There's also often an (implicit) expectation that they can get stuff done in the evenings, on weekends etc. (e.g., paper reviews, grants, references, etc.). So I don't think it's quite as easy for modern-day profs to just 'shut [themselves] from the world'.
giantg2 5y ago
Tell it to my boss So tired of the distractions, non-value adding work, and context switching.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- spacemadness 5y ago
  I’d tell it to your boss but they’d probably put multiple meetings on your calendar to discuss then give you a bunch of “action items” to fix the issue yourself. Sound about right?
  - giantg2 5y ago
    Or fire me
    - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
      If your manager reacts negatively to candid discussion of how they're preventing you from being productive, then you don't want that job anyway. Prolonged work under managers like that is what burns people out. Yeah switching jobs is a pain, but it's peanuts compared to switching careers.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        I don't have a career, just a job. I need the income to support my family.
- elpakal 5y ago
  Maybe sharing some research from GitHub will help? https://github.blog/2021-05-25-octoverse-spotlight-good-day-project/ https://github.blog/2021-05-25-octoverse-spotlight-good-day-... > In our study, going from two to three meetings per day lowered the chances of developers making progress toward their goals from 74% to just 14%. And developers who average just one meeting per day have a 99% chance of knocking out high quality work — it really is about getting focus time and connecting with our colleagues to brainstorm ideas. > With minimal or no interruptions, developers had an 82% chance of having a good day, but when developers were interrupted the majority of the day, their chances of having a good day dropped to just 7%. By minimizing distractions and creating focus time, we not only get work done, we create better and less stressful days for ourselves.
BlueTemplar 5y ago
For me, it's time to embrace procrastination, and read this article as well as all the comments here !
president 5y ago
Not sure if it's an industry-wide trend but in the last decade, I have seen a continuous growth of unmanageable levels of work and expectation of productivity in the various places I've worked in Silicon Valley. This is made worse by inexperienced managers who are now offloading management and project management responsibilities to their direct reports. Maybe it's just the teams/companies that I'm working for but I don't see how people can raise a family and/or have a life these days working in the tech industry. Being able to make work your life has become a competitive advantage.
- kache_ 5y ago
  Create boundaries
- dfxm12 5y ago
  It's certainly not limited to the Valley. Employers of all kinds are putting the squeeze on workers, with productivity up, but not giving us much to show for it, wage-wise [0]. What can you do? Individually, probably not much, but communication is always key to set expectations and prioritize your deliverables. 0 - https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
- dkarl 5y ago
  > This is made worse by inexperienced managers who are now offloading management and project management responsibilities to their direct reports. I thought this was just the currently orthodox management style in startups. Senior people manage themselves, junior people are guided by seniors, projects get managed by the people executing them. Management limits themselves to higher-level strategy. I've seen this from most of the managers I've had in the last, say, 5+ years. I prefer management that keeps in touch with the work that their reports are doing and knows enough to raise concerns, make suggestions, and make decisions when the team can't reach consensus, but I don't think that's how most people see the job of managing software developers right now.
lvl100 5y ago
I don’t care about slow productivity. I care more about FAKE productivity. Talking about people who schedule emails at odd hours or people who are there to cheerlead. That’s basically 80% of white collar workforce.
- kache_ 5y ago
  Welfare for the unproductive high class through government jobs & connections.
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    It's not like government has a monopoly on unproductive workers. I'm sure us corporate folks have all seen slackers and inefficiencies.
    - kache_ 5y ago
      That's the connections portion, you're right. Saw a lot of pretty bad stuff at IBM.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  We fake productivity because there just isn’t enough to do. I can do my job in about 2 hours a day most days. My company and clients still receive the same amount of benefit whether I work 2 or 10 — and actually, probably more out of 2 because I’m not making up work that I’m roping other people into.
  - ejb999 5y ago
    >>I can do my job in about 2 hours a day most days. I often wonder how many people I work with that have 1 or 2 additional full-time jobs that they are just faking busy at. People that are 100% dedicated to the project you are on, but for some reason are never available for meetings or ever deliver anything on time. Just show up once in a while at a meeting, give some song and dance about how busy they are and then disappear for days at a time. One coworker just disappeared for ten days - not a peep for him - shows up on day 11 with nothing new completed, but lots of stories about how hard he is working. Not sure this remote working is going to last for a lot of folks given the abuse I see everyday.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/ELWTr https://archive.is/ELWTr
ramesh31 5y ago
Maybe this is kind of the right place to ask. Does anyone else feel completely unproductive in their career? I have been employed full time as a software developer making six figures for nearly a decade now, and I literally cannot point to a single piece of working software being used today in production that I was responsible for. It seems like every new job hires me to work on some exciting new project that gets canned or dies off within a year or two. Mind you my performance reviews have always been stellar and I have been consistently promoted and given raises at every job I've had. Is this normal? I feel completely useless.
- thewarrior 5y ago
  Yes the discussion of productivity is often totally divorced from any questions of social utility, morality or meaning. "You show me a guy laying around doing nothing all day and I'll show you someone who's not causing any trouble" - Carlin
- jakey_bakey 5y ago
  This is part of the game. Embrace it; the vast majority of jobs produce no real-world value but few pay as well as SWE. At least you aren't part of a democracy-destroying behemoth.
- lowercased 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's "normal", but I've heard similar things from enough folks that I think it's at least "common" amongst 'full time corporate' devs. I work more in the freelance world, and there's usually not quite as much of that sentiment, as there's usually more self-direction, but freelance comes with its own set of problems as well.
- waynesonfire 5y ago
  > I've had. Is this normal? I feel completely useless. This is all by design in my view. You're at an organization that is in maintenance mode, all talent has left and the only folks remain are to keep the lights on. Your one or two year projects are facades to keep the sheep from bailing. Leadership needs to keep new folks coming in and old folks from getting bored but the only real priority is to just keep. the. lights. on. Hence, why you get A+++ reviews for warming a seat and most importantly, answering a pager at 3 AM.
slt2021 5y ago
as you become old, more experienced - you pace of work slows down. it is okay. however young people dont need to slow down, they can learn/work at much faster speed
- ardit33 5y ago
  You can be a lot picker on what you work though, and know better to avoid pitfalls and wasting time. When you are young, you are running like a headless chicken, trying to learn/do everything you can, and usually not have the right filters to see what is more important. In my 20s, learning new things could be overwhelming (there is so much to learn!!), and now it is not, because I avoid the distractions and learn what is important and needed.
- bumby 5y ago
  From the article: The issue in this evolution is not how many hours you’re now asked to work but the volume of work you’re assigned at any one time...The central goal of Slow Productivity is to keep an individual worker’s volume at a sustainable level. I wonder: is the expectation that young people work at a more frenetic pace part of the reason anxiety and depression trend up from adolescence until mid-adulthood?[1] If so, maybe we should rethink the idea that young people should be working at a faster speed. [1] "A slight trend for an increase in the severity of both anxiety and depression from adolescence to middle adulthood, and then a slight decline in older adulthood was found." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31190198/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31190198/
- pcmoney 5y ago
  That is false. As you get older your pace of work slows but its because much fewer motions are wasted. A good engineer should be like a strong swimmer with no wasted or frantic effort. Smooth, controlled, powerful. In large orgs or complex domains this can really only be accomplished with experience.
- Groxx 5y ago
  Honestly, most (decent) older programmers I've worked with are dramatically more productive than most (decent) younger programmers I've worked with. Both in terms of functioning systems and in terms of lines of code. They waste less time writing unnecessary duplicates. They waste less time writing, fixing, and troubleshooting bugs. Their code tends to work when it goes out the door, rather than requiring multiple round trips. And when they want to brute force something, they break out a small code generator / write a small tool and blow past multiple younger eng-years worth in terms of LoC... and that's before accounting for them having written the tens of thousands of lines of foundational code that the others are working within. --- edit: since the parent is more focused on pace than productivity... it applies to pace too. they're often spending far more (too much) time in meetings and mentorship and whatnot comparatively, so day-to-day pace can seem slower, but if they get a chance to focus they tend to be miles faster in every single way. Hundreds+ of working lines of code in a day is totally reasonable if that's what the problem calls for. It's why you see older engs disappearing for a week and building git. Or unix. Far from small projects by literally any measure.
honkycat 5y ago
Really glad I read this. I quite like my current job, but this really resonated: > By volume, I’m referring to the total number of obligations that you’re committed to complete—from answering a minor question to finishing a major project. As this volume increases past a certain threshold, the weight of these efforts can become unbearably stressful. I have this happening to me RIGHT NOW. I am on 4 different projects, PLUS I am expected to on-board a new engineer onto our team. The thing is: I also have a ton of meetings I am forced to attend. I'm sinking! I'm going to have to work late for at least a week! It is stressful for no reason!
- waynesonfire 5y ago
  > I'm going to have to work late for at least a week! That's one option. Another is just get less done. Cowards get pushed until the brink of collapse. Your only duty is to communicate to leadership that less is going to get done and it's their job to then adjust priorities and/or higher more staff.
  - bhandziuk 5y ago
    There's no sense in calling them a coward
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  > I'm going to have to work late for at least a week! Don't work for free. Stick to your contracted hours, and if there aren't enough hours in the day to complete everything you're expected to, that's a failure of your manager(s), not yourself.
- SamuelAdams 5y ago
  Feel free to turn down meeting invites. If you really don’t need to be there, or the meeting could be an email, simply say so. If people have a problem with you not attending some meetings, discuss with your manager.
  - bumby 5y ago
    I think there are some people who plan meetings because they don't know how to really be productive. So a meeting becomes a bad proxy for productivity. I always try to turn those down. A few clues: - People tend to use the meeting to 'collaborate' on work that should have already been done. E.g., filling in spreadsheets, drafting emails etc. - If a standing meeting seems to bring up the same issues over and over without any movement towards resolution - If you tend to be a fly-on-the-wall and don't have much input to the discussion, it might be better to just not attend ask for meeting notes instead - If there's no clear agenda or action items, or it seems to devolve into discussions that should be one-on-one
jimmyvalmer 5y ago
Agree: a 32-hour week is not nearly enough time to write software. Agree: interspersed talking and coding for eight hours pales in yield to coding for 4 hours with no talking. The problem is clients and their wranglers need the talking to justify their existence. And without clients, there's no money.
wnolens 5y ago
Main idea: we should be tasked with less volume of work. And the author suggests that since less volume -> less stress -> higher efficacy, there won't actually be a drop in net productivity. He's not necessarily wrong, however I can't help but think he's missing the meta we're all playing within: profit is the motive (not human flourishing). It's profitable to drastically overwork people, such that you cull the bottom 10% and get fresh blood in the revolving door. While that costs money as opposed to retaining, it makes more to push the other 90%. Several bosses have explicitly told me they intentionally set an unrealistically aggressive delivery date because of the phenomenon of people taking as much as time as they're given. So push hard, inevitably fall short, make some cuts at the very end, ship it, profit. This is the behavioral model which has produced so many successful businesses. Imagine "slow productivity" in a startup? They'd fail. Now imagine no startups.
- NewEntryHN 5y ago
  > Several bosses have explicitly told me they intentionally set an unrealistically aggressive delivery date because of the phenomenon of people taking as much as time as they're given. That's because even the "non-aggressive, realistic delivery dates" are actually an under-estimation of the amount of work. Practically all deadlines are too soon, and how much you allow to stress out employees parametrizes how much too soon.
  - daniel-cussen 5y ago
    Hmm well certainly in education the deadlines are realistic. But it's because they've done the same task before.
    - quickthrower2 5y ago
      That's the key. In software if you want good estimates, get developers to build the same app again and again, throwing away the source code each time.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  It's profitable to drastically overwork people, such that you cull the bottom 10% and get fresh blood in the revolving door. Indeed, supermarkets, hospitals, meat packing plants and other key parts of production have run on this. The covid crisis has meant that door has stopped being as willing to revolve. But still nothing has changed 'cause this society runs on profits and these places, using this strategy, wind-up being the key profit centers.
yawnxyz 5y ago
I've been embracing this for a long time! That's why I feel like I haven't made any progress at all, and despite having done a ton, our startup is just "stuck" compared all the sky high valuations elsewhere. On one hand I don't want to get completely burnt out, but on the other hand, it feels like I'm not treading water hard/fast enough to even survive, let alone thrive
ChanningAllen 5y ago
> A natural fear is that by reducing the amount of work each employee tackles at any given time, it might reduce the total amount of work an organization is able to complete, making it less competitive. This fear is unfounded. As argued, when an individual’s work volume increases, so does the accompanying overhead and stress, reducing both the time remaining to actually execute the tasks and the quality of the results. This is a central pillar of Newport's argument, and it doesn't hold water. Anyone who has actually built and managed knowledge work teams knows that a "heavy burden" of work from the perspective of one employee might be "child's play" to another employee. Perhaps this is less true with blue-collar jobs, but it's emphatically true with knowledge work. Hell, it's even true with the same employee across time. (Coding work that would have overwhelmed me as a junior developer would bore me to tears today.) If we're strictly talking about optimizing for market competitiveness, the onus is on Newport to explain how lowering the work burden for employees who can't sustainably do N units of work per week is a better idea than simply replacing those employees with others who can do N units/week.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  They are proposing that the amount of work on a worker's plate at any one point in time should be reduced so they aren't always stressing about their backlog. They are not proposing that workers have less to do overall (otherwise, their claim of "increased productivity" is incoherent). The action from management would then be to organize the queuing and distribution of tasks and projects to shield workers from the administrative burden of recording an prioritizing it as it's launched at them via email or Slack. This is pretty basic work that I expect a manager to do.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - djur 5y ago
    Managers are generally pretty terrible at doing that without significant input from their reports, though. So you end up with small teams that managers can effectively do that work for... but then you end up with armies of lower-level managers who must then be managed by legions of mid-level managers, and so on. Controlling the flow of work to "producers" has a high organizational cost in bureaucracy.] IMO the problem isn't "a lot of responsibilities", it's "a lot of things to worry about without the autonomy/authority necessary to resolve those worries". Big orgs tend to have more to worry about while also reducing autonomy and concentrating authority.
MarkLowenstein 5y ago
Look at this like playing Tetris. If you're at the bottom on a fresh screen, you can lay out nice layers and drop that vertical in for four-liners at a pretty regular pace. Optimal results, and you can handle the less-convenient pieces and unfortunate sequences predictably. Get in the middle ground, though, and it gets stressful to keep it under control. You make mistakes which worsen the problem. Once you're stacked near the top there's not much that can save you. So it is with the time you allow for scheduled activities. You want quality and predictability? Slow down.
- andrei_says_ 5y ago
  I really like this comparison - it conveys the feeling of urgency and overwhelm without dramatizing. Will be using it. Thank you.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- aseerdbnarng 5y ago
  Excellent summary!
- marcos100 5y ago
  I like your analogy, but how do you find the perfect balance? I mean, you can play tetris at level 1 forever, but it is not ideal for productivity (unless you are really at level 1). You have to reach the level that you are comfortable enough with the speed of the falling pieces. Is it experience? You have to review the tasks periodically? You use some kind of metric? Sometimes I think I'm too slow, and sometimes I'm too overwhelmed and I only acknowledge it after some non-trivial time passes (or, at least, that is my perception).
  - jgtrosh 5y ago
    Well in the classic Tetris community, this used to be the central aspect to pay attention to during plays: how conservative (burning often to play low) vs how aggressive (building high to maximise Tetris rate) people play. This is traditionally impacted by the score difference: you play dangerously to catch up to your opponent. This probably translates to a useful productivity metaphor. But in recent years there's been an escalation in agressivity, mostly due to hypertappers. This probably translates to the modern wide spread of hero coders; the analogy continues with hypertappers getting their hands burned out young. The real interesting change in classic Tetris is with rolling (distributing the load on 4 fingers), which allows people to play even higher and more dangerous but without destroying their hands. I don't really know what metaphor this brings us though.
godelski 5y ago
> “It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either ‘lost time’ or a class privilege.” At Ford’s own admission, however, the five-day workweek was also instituted in order to increase productivity: Though workers’ time on the job had decreased, they were expected to expend more effort while they were there. [0] It is kinda interesting because it seems we're coming full circle to this. I'm not sure why it also doesn't make sense to many. Our economy is highly dependent upon consumerism. That's exactly why economics trickles up but also why it is important that the lower classes have wages for luxury items. Because capital must flow in a capitalist market. People won't exercise their capital if they don't have the wages or the time. Ford discussed how the shortened workweek increased productivity and led to more people buying his cars. We often revere him for this and it is a frequent talking point. Something every American knows when they learned about the Labor Movement in school. So why is this idea so difficult to combat? We have plenty of historical evidence. We have current evidence suggesting that we can continue to push the bar down and maintain a functioning economy. So what gives? We see articles like this at least once a month and many seem on board. So who is going to be Ford? It'll have to come from a big company. Google? Facebook? Amazon? Netflix? Microsoft? I'm sure many of you could benefit from the PR (especially FB). Who's going to pull the trigger first and set things in motion? [0] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-workers-get-40-hour-week https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-wor...
smitty1e 5y ago
"Slow is smooth and smooth is quick"--US Army widsom against rushing matters.
jimmyvalmer 5y ago
Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work. Office Space, 1999
SLWW 5y ago
If you can reduce the amount of switching costs you go through in a days work, that will by itself greatly improve your efficiency.
ineedasername 5y ago
A natural fear is that by reducing the amount of work each employee tackles at any given time, it might reduce the total amount of work an organization is able to complete, making it less competitive. This fear is unfounded. As argued, when an individual’s work volume increases, so does the accompanying overhead and stress, reducing both the time remaining to actually execute the tasks and the quality of the results. The real question is whether these conditions produce a 20% reduction in productivity that would equate to the productivity of a 4-day work week. I'm not convinced, and have not come across compelling studies that quantify productivity increased of a 4-day work week. In particular, my own anecdotal experience where my organization works 4-days a week during the Summer is increased stress due to fewer hours to complete a set of tasks that do not decrease with the the decreased office time. I instead often find myself feeling nervous about tasks unfinished and often end up putting in time during the 3 non-work days. Alternatively the author implies that simply assigning less work could be the answer, but to address that and related issues: I am not saying that a 4-day work week shouldn't be considered, but I am skeptical that it could be implemented without increasing employee headcount accordingly. That complicates things then as increased salary costs impact product prices-- a regressive increase that impacts lower paid workers more than others. So increased wages could also be necessary, but that (hopefully to a lesser extent) feeds back into those same increased labor costs. Working out these issues is a package deal.
thenerdhead 5y ago
Here's the thing. Work in progress limits have been around forever. If you ever wanted to learn about kanban on a Saturday afternoon, you'd come by the term of "WIP limits" and a reasonable number like 3 at a given time. I think the author is jumping the gun a bit based on their previous work "A World Without Email" in which he hints at the "hyperactive hive mind" being an entity in which everyone is fighting for each other's attention unknowingly. This article somewhat assumes that because we're part of this hive mind, we don't actually get time to actually work deeply on one thing at a time and thus "slow productivity" is the solution so we can actually complete things. > The autonomy that defines the professional lives of those who toil in front of computer screens has led us into a trap of excessive work volume. We cannot escape this trap by expanding the weekend. We must ultimately brace ourselves for the larger challenge of slowing down the pace of the workday itself. Want to know the secret to these things? Read books. Seriously, some of the best books on this topic are by the very author of this article. Read High Output Management, The Effective Executive, Deep Work, Four Thousand Weeks, Thinking in Systems, An Elegant Puzzle, etc. These books should empower you to take back control over your work life balance and hold others to a higher standard. Most of the time the "hyperactive hive mind" is simply your line manager and some middle manager's todo list sitting in your inbox because you're the one who can actually do anything about it. Yes, the very same boss who always changes your priorities last minute is surprise just serving their selfish needs through you. How about flipping the script instead? You should give your boss a list of your priorities and tell them to not bother you until they are done. You should hold your boss accountable for the time they steal from you every week to discuss or talk about something that isn't one of those things. And ultimately, you should be in control of what you want to work on. You only live for so long, might as well be on things you actually believe in and can make an impact with, not some nonsense pushed down from the top or your boss's big breakthrough idea that everyone knows will flop. Ever since I did this, I've been happier, healthier, and more impactful at work. Setting boundaries is fucking hard, but necessary to get anything done at a big company. The IC has the ultimate power. Don't be a doormat.
amznbyebyebye 5y ago
I have friends who burned out at AWS after a stressful launch. Believe it or not the effects are still there a whole year later. Many are just doing the bare minimum required to stay alive. My conclusion is there is a constant optimal pace which maximizes total work produced.. mind you there are probably other ways to mode effort as a function of time which maximizes total work done over a fixed time interval.. for example there could be a short amount of high intensity work but then you burn out and don’t get anything done for the next six months. The net output may be the same, of course the toll on physical and mental health may not be optimal
- depressionalt 5y ago
  Is this unique to amazon? I've read other stories like this and, anecdotally, I know a guy who worked at amazon for a couple years and was burned out by the experience and didnt work for at least 6 years.
  - amznbyebyebye 5y ago
    Yeah it’s commonplace throughout amazon
nicbou 5y ago
Since I went self-employed, my workload dramatically reduced. One of the most important benefits is that I can follow impulses. There's always time and energy to explore ideas, clean up my work or build something else. Likewise, there's always time to use good weather, so my work schedule tends to work around it. It leads me to work on what feels right. It's a bit like planning a road trip. You need plenty of buffer space for unexpected detours good and bad. There are always unexpected opportunities (and issues) along the way. You can't predict those by looking at a map.

314 points by lxm 5y ago

A related thing I wish all businesses would embrace is limiting work in progress. Lean has been around for decades and this lesson still hasn't landed. The key resource is mental energy rather than time worked. I'd accept some trade off between hours worked and the context switching and fire-fighting I do in those hours. An hour spent working at my least professional gig is as exhausting as 5 spent at the most well-run.

systemvoltage 5y ago

I’ve been embracing the opposite and finding success and tremendous happiness in life. I work extremely hard, constantly and at every opportunity. You’d think based on the current zeitgeist that I would be completely mentally messed up but the opposite is true. Without doing useful things with what little time I have on this planet, I feel like it is depressing and would lead me to worst mental health than staying productive. I’ve never heard any sort of optimism from the fucking media. These words are non-existent and potentially characterized as “right-wing” which is so insane to me: hard work, perseverance, determination, ambition, unyielding, disciplined, persistence and strong work-ethics. These are the values my father taught me and I’d rather listen to him than to the stupid media. YMMV.

chasd00 5y ago
i've been thinking about this comment since you posted it and am now getting back to it. I guess, at the end of the day, the key is finding what brings you happiness and maximizing it. Obviously, for a lot of people work is not it but for some, seemingly like you, it is. The key is knowing yourself well enough to know what makes you happy and then working to maximize your happiness.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
To me the article seems a lot more focused on specific, concrete issues faced by some workers, and tangible actions and policies to address them. It isn't making a moral case for or against hard work that I can see. Though I do think addressing the conflation of productivity with virtue is necessary to make meaningful change here. Anyway yeah YMMV. I don't really get anything from my work except more money and less time so I'm gonna vary that mileage down as much as I can. I can't really follow you into the media and political scope of this though. I don't reject those values that you associate with... someone associating with... right-wing... something. idk man. This isn't a request for further explanation.
NotVerstappen 5y ago
I think most people can thrive in the situation you describe (extreme hard work) as long as they also feel a sense of control. I am at my peak (in productivity and "feeling alive") when 100% of my work hours demand my focus because I have that much to do. When I have a quiet period I get miserable; I can find plenty of my own ideas to work on, but they often feel either futile or wasteful - that part is my own problem. Similarly though, when I have too much to do (ie when I know that working 100% still won't get it done) I become demotivated - after all, it seems that none of these tasks are important enough to get proper scheduling, so why bother sweating over them myself? Second point: working full-on as you describe can apply to non-employment too. The drive towards working fewer hours (for the same standard of living) is just a direct response to growing wealth inequality and general unfairness in society, not a softening or growing laziness.
throwaway599281 5y ago
>These words are non-existent and potentially characterized as “right-wing” which is so insane to me: hard work, perseverance, determination, ambition, unyielding, disciplined, persistence and strong work-ethics. >These are the values my father taught me You just summarized Prussianism [0][1], so you're not far from the truth. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussianism [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_virtues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_virtues
throwawayboise 5y ago
I assume you're young, and this is the right attitude if so. Not that it becomes "wrong" as you age, but many people cannot maintain it, through a combination of burnout, less energy, just becoming jaded, or having other interests and priorities. I'm past middle age and hard work is no longer its own reward for me. Forget a 4-day workweek -- I work about 4 hours a day. Any more than that and it's just going through the motions, there's no additional productivity. I will still occasionally get really into something and find myself still engaged after many hours, but it's rare these days whereas it used to be common. However I do not think I would have liked this as a 25-year-old. At that age I was excited, still learning, and full of energy. A 4 hour workday would have felt like I was just getting started.
- giantg2 5y ago
  In my experience, it's that I don't want to maintain it. I've seen no real payoff. Master's degree - worthless Working as a tech lead and senior dev - no promotion, I'm still a midlevel Etc You'll only want to work hard if you're not disillusioned.
  - MR4D 5y ago
    If you want a payoff for working hard, become an owner. Also, your boss will always agree with you. ;) EDIT: "become an owner" could be a startup, a contracting firm, joining someone else as an owner, etc.
    - id 5y ago
      Or inherit stock ;)
      - MR4D 5y ago
        Ha! Perhaps the easiest way, but you might have to wait a long time for it.
  - id 5y ago
    For employees this is certainly true.
happytoexplain 5y ago
First paragraph: I feel exactly the same way, but also definitely feel and sympathize with the article's topic sometimes. I don't think the two ideas are as mutually exclusive as they seem. Second paragraph: I think you're letting the world's political bullshit get you a little reactive. Those words are championed more often explicitly by the right than the left, and some media outlets unreasonably demonize some right wing things, but those are two separate concepts. Those words are, by definition, positive words in a neutral context.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  I think you have a point about the reactionism... A better gambit than pre-emptively complaining about a small difference in political stances on something like work ethics would be to just champion the virtues on their own, and if an actual political ideologue begins to act disparaging about it as being somehow a less positive thing, respond with "Alright, well you and your cohort can enjoy not benefiting from these virtues then".
sg47 5y ago
The problem is you are thinking only about yourself which is what right-wingers are frequently accused of. You specifically might be able to work extremely hard, persevere, etc but not everyone can. Work needs to be sustainable especially in the US which does not provide a lot of benefits to workers (healthcare, child care, PTO, etc). Also, you might be able to work extremely hard today but can you do the same 20 years from now or when you are recovering from an illness? I used to work 14+ hours a day but out of the blue got diagnosed with cancer. I still pushed hard during that time but a year after surgery and treatment, I have lost all motivation to work and can barely focus for 4 hours a day.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> I’ve been embracing the opposite and finding success and tremendous happiness in life. I work extremely hard, constantly and at every opportunity. > YMMV Exactly. I used to be just like you but I changed a few years ago and I couldn't be much happier.
goda90 5y ago
People don't generally want to be lazy. They want to feel like their effort matters. And even if you have a job that is important for society to function and improve, your efforts can be poisoned by seeing the vast majority of the value going to those at the top, or by constant verbal abuse and breakdown of your body. In lots of jobs, lots of stress comes from things that don't actually matter, but rather from minutia invented by someone else who doesn't trust you to put in effort. Hard work with tangible results is satisfying. Stressful work with poor pay and physical degradation is not.
- giantg2 5y ago
  People default to lazy as a self-protection measure after being repeatedly screwed over and not seeing their hard work pay off.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    "lazy" is a moral judgement. You are talking about sound business decisions.
Mezzie 5y ago
I'm very curious what your life experience is like on certain axes. Have you chosen your work? Did your father? Likewise, have you had any major unexpected life events (deaths, divorces, illnesses, etc.)? I ask because I've found what you've said to be true in certain cases. Working hard and consistently at something is great when it comes to projects and tasks that I choose and that are mostly mathematical or logical. On the other hand, this mode/method completely fails me when it comes to creative or architect level work. I also caution against holding one worldview as good in all situations. I worked much harder before I got MS, and learning my limits and accepting them was key to preserving my mental health. If you can live such a directed life, it can be very fruitful, but on the other hand, trying to make yourself hustle even though it's a bad idea is a great way to hurt yourself.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  It is similar to exercising for me. If I don’t exercise, I go down the spiral and it becomes really difficult to get back into a good routine again. Not working or doing something useful with my time feels exactly the same. I am really happy and everything is better when I don’t slack, am demotivated or unwilling to put in the effort. Life is fulfilling and tremendously fun when I’m surrounded by motivated people that are basically opposite of the HN culture these days. The people of HN are extremely uninspiring and frankly toxic to my own mental health.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    > basically opposite of the HN culture these days That's because the pendulum has swung. A decade ago, HN was full of optimism because we were at the apex of startup culture and the tech boom. Now that boom has receded, there is still a lot of dumb money (for now), but people are burned out and the tech is uninspiring or toxic. People are just tired. This really became clear to me two years ago, shortly before the pandemic, when there was a long thread on HN arguing against joining a startup, simply because FAANG pays far better- not just because of crazy stock market shenanigans, but because many startups themselves have been captured by leadership that pursue policies that lead to share dilution. The economics have changed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 5y ago
>hard work, perseverance, determination, ambition, unyielding, disciplined, persistence and strong work-ethics Non-existent? They're hammered on everybody 24/7 by american work ethics and hustler culture - to the point of unhealthiness. And they are also enforced (whether you "find success" or not) at every level, with a cut-throad society and economy...
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I think you should talk to your local bartender to get some perspective about how good software engineers have it. It’s hard work but I feel truly fortunate. Perspective is a hell of a thing.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >I think you should talk to your local bartender to get some perspective about how good software engineers have it. They still have it comparative worse, work-life balance wise than software engineers in Europe, for example...
giantg2 5y ago
How does this relate to the article? I didn't think it was against working hard. It sounded more like we should avoid distractions and context switching. Sort of mental version of "slow is smooth, smooth is fast".
claudiulodro 5y ago
I think the key phrase from your philosophy is "useful things". If you have a full plate of things that are satisfying to do, and accomplishing them brings you material benefit, there isn't really a downside to working a ton (assuming you can mentally and physically handle it, and you're not neglecting other more important stuff). If your life is more like a skinner box, where some large percentage of the work is baloney and brings no material gain, this probably isn't an optimum strategy. You'd be wasting a lot of energy on nonsense. I think that's closer to the situation the average person finds themselves in, and their effort would be better spent identifying the part of the work that brings the most results rather than indiscriminately powering through all possible work. "Work smarter not harder" is a saying for a reason. :)
goodpoint 5y ago
> finding success and tremendous happiness in life Workaholics can get "high" on dopamine on the endless stream of activity. Until it breaks down. > hard work, perseverance, determination, ambition, unyielding, disciplined, persistence and strong work-ethics This are very empty words as they do not relate to what really motivates a person. You cannot simply order yourself to be determined and hardworking, otherwise burnout and depressions would not exist in the first place.
wnolens 5y ago
> YMMV Precisely, different people are different. I was once like you. It felt amazing. But then it stopped feeling amazing, and suddenly I could relate to the other 99% of the world.

nonameiguess 5y ago

Overview for whoever doesn't want to read the article or just react to the headline: The author is a professor of computer science at Georgetown who has authored numerous books on how to do well in school and career by minimizing distraction and increasing focus. He's arguing against the California 32-hour work week bill, which he says will be counterproductive on its own without addressing the core problems of excessive coordination and multitasking that is what he believes is truly burning out knowledge workers more than sheer volume of hours. He is calling this "slow productivity" in honor of a movement from Spain dedicated to cooking instead of eating fast food, which takes longer but is ultimately more enjoyable and rewarding. How on earth this gets interpreted as media damning right wing work ethic is maybe one of the more bizarre things I've seen happen on HackerNews recently.

bena 5y ago
Because while I don't believe a strong work ethic is a right wing thing, I do believe that believing a strong work ethic is a right wing thing is a right wing thing. HackerNews has reached the point where it's visible enough that it's being consumed by those with the most time.
peruvian 5y ago
Cal Newport is a good writer and worth listening to, but most of his advice applies only to himself. I work 9-5 for a company that uses Slack, email, alerts, etc., like most of HN. I'm not a tenured professor with a lot of clout that can shut himself from the world whenever I please. I've learned from Newport and apply some of his stuff to my own life, of course, but it's been over ten years of listening to him telling us we're doing it wrong, when most of us have no choice.
- gbjw 5y ago
  To nitpick here: many tenured professors also use Slack, email, alerts etc. There's also often an (implicit) expectation that they can get stuff done in the evenings, on weekends etc. (e.g., paper reviews, grants, references, etc.). So I don't think it's quite as easy for modern-day profs to just 'shut [themselves] from the world'.

giantg2 5y ago

Tell it to my boss So tired of the distractions, non-value adding work, and context switching.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
spacemadness 5y ago
I’d tell it to your boss but they’d probably put multiple meetings on your calendar to discuss then give you a bunch of “action items” to fix the issue yourself. Sound about right?
- giantg2 5y ago
  Or fire me
  - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
    If your manager reacts negatively to candid discussion of how they're preventing you from being productive, then you don't want that job anyway. Prolonged work under managers like that is what burns people out. Yeah switching jobs is a pain, but it's peanuts compared to switching careers.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      I don't have a career, just a job. I need the income to support my family.
elpakal 5y ago
Maybe sharing some research from GitHub will help? https://github.blog/2021-05-25-octoverse-spotlight-good-day-project/ https://github.blog/2021-05-25-octoverse-spotlight-good-day-... > In our study, going from two to three meetings per day lowered the chances of developers making progress toward their goals from 74% to just 14%. And developers who average just one meeting per day have a 99% chance of knocking out high quality work — it really is about getting focus time and connecting with our colleagues to brainstorm ideas. > With minimal or no interruptions, developers had an 82% chance of having a good day, but when developers were interrupted the majority of the day, their chances of having a good day dropped to just 7%. By minimizing distractions and creating focus time, we not only get work done, we create better and less stressful days for ourselves.

BlueTemplar 5y ago

For me, it's time to embrace procrastination, and read this article as well as all the comments here !

president 5y ago

Not sure if it's an industry-wide trend but in the last decade, I have seen a continuous growth of unmanageable levels of work and expectation of productivity in the various places I've worked in Silicon Valley. This is made worse by inexperienced managers who are now offloading management and project management responsibilities to their direct reports. Maybe it's just the teams/companies that I'm working for but I don't see how people can raise a family and/or have a life these days working in the tech industry. Being able to make work your life has become a competitive advantage.

kache_ 5y ago
Create boundaries
dfxm12 5y ago
It's certainly not limited to the Valley. Employers of all kinds are putting the squeeze on workers, with productivity up, but not giving us much to show for it, wage-wise [0]. What can you do? Individually, probably not much, but communication is always key to set expectations and prioritize your deliverables. 0 - https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
dkarl 5y ago
> This is made worse by inexperienced managers who are now offloading management and project management responsibilities to their direct reports. I thought this was just the currently orthodox management style in startups. Senior people manage themselves, junior people are guided by seniors, projects get managed by the people executing them. Management limits themselves to higher-level strategy. I've seen this from most of the managers I've had in the last, say, 5+ years. I prefer management that keeps in touch with the work that their reports are doing and knows enough to raise concerns, make suggestions, and make decisions when the team can't reach consensus, but I don't think that's how most people see the job of managing software developers right now.

lvl100 5y ago

I don’t care about slow productivity. I care more about FAKE productivity. Talking about people who schedule emails at odd hours or people who are there to cheerlead. That’s basically 80% of white collar workforce.

kache_ 5y ago
Welfare for the unproductive high class through government jobs & connections.
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  It's not like government has a monopoly on unproductive workers. I'm sure us corporate folks have all seen slackers and inefficiencies.
  - kache_ 5y ago
    That's the connections portion, you're right. Saw a lot of pretty bad stuff at IBM.
wayoutthere 5y ago
We fake productivity because there just isn’t enough to do. I can do my job in about 2 hours a day most days. My company and clients still receive the same amount of benefit whether I work 2 or 10 — and actually, probably more out of 2 because I’m not making up work that I’m roping other people into.
- ejb999 5y ago
  >>I can do my job in about 2 hours a day most days. I often wonder how many people I work with that have 1 or 2 additional full-time jobs that they are just faking busy at. People that are 100% dedicated to the project you are on, but for some reason are never available for meetings or ever deliver anything on time. Just show up once in a while at a meeting, give some song and dance about how busy they are and then disappear for days at a time. One coworker just disappeared for ten days - not a peep for him - shows up on day 11 with nothing new completed, but lots of stories about how hard he is working. Not sure this remote working is going to last for a lot of folks given the abuse I see everyday.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/ELWTr https://archive.is/ELWTr

ramesh31 5y ago

Maybe this is kind of the right place to ask. Does anyone else feel completely unproductive in their career? I have been employed full time as a software developer making six figures for nearly a decade now, and I literally cannot point to a single piece of working software being used today in production that I was responsible for. It seems like every new job hires me to work on some exciting new project that gets canned or dies off within a year or two. Mind you my performance reviews have always been stellar and I have been consistently promoted and given raises at every job I've had. Is this normal? I feel completely useless.

thewarrior 5y ago
Yes the discussion of productivity is often totally divorced from any questions of social utility, morality or meaning. "You show me a guy laying around doing nothing all day and I'll show you someone who's not causing any trouble" - Carlin
jakey_bakey 5y ago
This is part of the game. Embrace it; the vast majority of jobs produce no real-world value but few pay as well as SWE. At least you aren't part of a democracy-destroying behemoth.
lowercased 5y ago
I'm not sure it's "normal", but I've heard similar things from enough folks that I think it's at least "common" amongst 'full time corporate' devs. I work more in the freelance world, and there's usually not quite as much of that sentiment, as there's usually more self-direction, but freelance comes with its own set of problems as well.
waynesonfire 5y ago
> I've had. Is this normal? I feel completely useless. This is all by design in my view. You're at an organization that is in maintenance mode, all talent has left and the only folks remain are to keep the lights on. Your one or two year projects are facades to keep the sheep from bailing. Leadership needs to keep new folks coming in and old folks from getting bored but the only real priority is to just keep. the. lights. on. Hence, why you get A+++ reviews for warming a seat and most importantly, answering a pager at 3 AM.

slt2021 5y ago

as you become old, more experienced - you pace of work slows down. it is okay. however young people dont need to slow down, they can learn/work at much faster speed

ardit33 5y ago
You can be a lot picker on what you work though, and know better to avoid pitfalls and wasting time. When you are young, you are running like a headless chicken, trying to learn/do everything you can, and usually not have the right filters to see what is more important. In my 20s, learning new things could be overwhelming (there is so much to learn!!), and now it is not, because I avoid the distractions and learn what is important and needed.
bumby 5y ago
From the article: The issue in this evolution is not how many hours you’re now asked to work but the volume of work you’re assigned at any one time...The central goal of Slow Productivity is to keep an individual worker’s volume at a sustainable level. I wonder: is the expectation that young people work at a more frenetic pace part of the reason anxiety and depression trend up from adolescence until mid-adulthood?[1] If so, maybe we should rethink the idea that young people should be working at a faster speed. [1] "A slight trend for an increase in the severity of both anxiety and depression from adolescence to middle adulthood, and then a slight decline in older adulthood was found." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31190198/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31190198/
pcmoney 5y ago
That is false. As you get older your pace of work slows but its because much fewer motions are wasted. A good engineer should be like a strong swimmer with no wasted or frantic effort. Smooth, controlled, powerful. In large orgs or complex domains this can really only be accomplished with experience.
Groxx 5y ago
Honestly, most (decent) older programmers I've worked with are dramatically more productive than most (decent) younger programmers I've worked with. Both in terms of functioning systems and in terms of lines of code. They waste less time writing unnecessary duplicates. They waste less time writing, fixing, and troubleshooting bugs. Their code tends to work when it goes out the door, rather than requiring multiple round trips. And when they want to brute force something, they break out a small code generator / write a small tool and blow past multiple younger eng-years worth in terms of LoC... and that's before accounting for them having written the tens of thousands of lines of foundational code that the others are working within. --- edit: since the parent is more focused on pace than productivity... it applies to pace too. they're often spending far more (too much) time in meetings and mentorship and whatnot comparatively, so day-to-day pace can seem slower, but if they get a chance to focus they tend to be miles faster in every single way. Hundreds+ of working lines of code in a day is totally reasonable if that's what the problem calls for. It's why you see older engs disappearing for a week and building git. Or unix. Far from small projects by literally any measure.

honkycat 5y ago

Really glad I read this. I quite like my current job, but this really resonated: > By volume, I’m referring to the total number of obligations that you’re committed to complete—from answering a minor question to finishing a major project. As this volume increases past a certain threshold, the weight of these efforts can become unbearably stressful. I have this happening to me RIGHT NOW. I am on 4 different projects, PLUS I am expected to on-board a new engineer onto our team. The thing is: I also have a ton of meetings I am forced to attend. I'm sinking! I'm going to have to work late for at least a week! It is stressful for no reason!

waynesonfire 5y ago
> I'm going to have to work late for at least a week! That's one option. Another is just get less done. Cowards get pushed until the brink of collapse. Your only duty is to communicate to leadership that less is going to get done and it's their job to then adjust priorities and/or higher more staff.
- bhandziuk 5y ago
  There's no sense in calling them a coward
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
> I'm going to have to work late for at least a week! Don't work for free. Stick to your contracted hours, and if there aren't enough hours in the day to complete everything you're expected to, that's a failure of your manager(s), not yourself.
SamuelAdams 5y ago
Feel free to turn down meeting invites. If you really don’t need to be there, or the meeting could be an email, simply say so. If people have a problem with you not attending some meetings, discuss with your manager.
- bumby 5y ago
  I think there are some people who plan meetings because they don't know how to really be productive. So a meeting becomes a bad proxy for productivity. I always try to turn those down. A few clues: - People tend to use the meeting to 'collaborate' on work that should have already been done. E.g., filling in spreadsheets, drafting emails etc. - If a standing meeting seems to bring up the same issues over and over without any movement towards resolution - If you tend to be a fly-on-the-wall and don't have much input to the discussion, it might be better to just not attend ask for meeting notes instead - If there's no clear agenda or action items, or it seems to devolve into discussions that should be one-on-one

jimmyvalmer 5y ago

Agree: a 32-hour week is not nearly enough time to write software. Agree: interspersed talking and coding for eight hours pales in yield to coding for 4 hours with no talking. The problem is clients and their wranglers need the talking to justify their existence. And without clients, there's no money.

wnolens 5y ago

Main idea: we should be tasked with less volume of work. And the author suggests that since less volume -> less stress -> higher efficacy, there won't actually be a drop in net productivity. He's not necessarily wrong, however I can't help but think he's missing the meta we're all playing within: profit is the motive (not human flourishing). It's profitable to drastically overwork people, such that you cull the bottom 10% and get fresh blood in the revolving door. While that costs money as opposed to retaining, it makes more to push the other 90%. Several bosses have explicitly told me they intentionally set an unrealistically aggressive delivery date because of the phenomenon of people taking as much as time as they're given. So push hard, inevitably fall short, make some cuts at the very end, ship it, profit. This is the behavioral model which has produced so many successful businesses. Imagine "slow productivity" in a startup? They'd fail. Now imagine no startups.

NewEntryHN 5y ago
> Several bosses have explicitly told me they intentionally set an unrealistically aggressive delivery date because of the phenomenon of people taking as much as time as they're given. That's because even the "non-aggressive, realistic delivery dates" are actually an under-estimation of the amount of work. Practically all deadlines are too soon, and how much you allow to stress out employees parametrizes how much too soon.
- daniel-cussen 5y ago
  Hmm well certainly in education the deadlines are realistic. But it's because they've done the same task before.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    That's the key. In software if you want good estimates, get developers to build the same app again and again, throwing away the source code each time.
joe_the_user 5y ago
It's profitable to drastically overwork people, such that you cull the bottom 10% and get fresh blood in the revolving door. Indeed, supermarkets, hospitals, meat packing plants and other key parts of production have run on this. The covid crisis has meant that door has stopped being as willing to revolve. But still nothing has changed 'cause this society runs on profits and these places, using this strategy, wind-up being the key profit centers.

yawnxyz 5y ago

I've been embracing this for a long time! That's why I feel like I haven't made any progress at all, and despite having done a ton, our startup is just "stuck" compared all the sky high valuations elsewhere. On one hand I don't want to get completely burnt out, but on the other hand, it feels like I'm not treading water hard/fast enough to even survive, let alone thrive

ChanningAllen 5y ago

> A natural fear is that by reducing the amount of work each employee tackles at any given time, it might reduce the total amount of work an organization is able to complete, making it less competitive. This fear is unfounded. As argued, when an individual’s work volume increases, so does the accompanying overhead and stress, reducing both the time remaining to actually execute the tasks and the quality of the results. This is a central pillar of Newport's argument, and it doesn't hold water. Anyone who has actually built and managed knowledge work teams knows that a "heavy burden" of work from the perspective of one employee might be "child's play" to another employee. Perhaps this is less true with blue-collar jobs, but it's emphatically true with knowledge work. Hell, it's even true with the same employee across time. (Coding work that would have overwhelmed me as a junior developer would bore me to tears today.) If we're strictly talking about optimizing for market competitiveness, the onus is on Newport to explain how lowering the work burden for employees who can't sustainably do N units of work per week is a better idea than simply replacing those employees with others who can do N units/week.

DangitBobby 5y ago
They are proposing that the amount of work on a worker's plate at any one point in time should be reduced so they aren't always stressing about their backlog. They are not proposing that workers have less to do overall (otherwise, their claim of "increased productivity" is incoherent). The action from management would then be to organize the queuing and distribution of tasks and projects to shield workers from the administrative burden of recording an prioritizing it as it's launched at them via email or Slack. This is pretty basic work that I expect a manager to do.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- djur 5y ago
  Managers are generally pretty terrible at doing that without significant input from their reports, though. So you end up with small teams that managers can effectively do that work for... but then you end up with armies of lower-level managers who must then be managed by legions of mid-level managers, and so on. Controlling the flow of work to "producers" has a high organizational cost in bureaucracy.] IMO the problem isn't "a lot of responsibilities", it's "a lot of things to worry about without the autonomy/authority necessary to resolve those worries". Big orgs tend to have more to worry about while also reducing autonomy and concentrating authority.

MarkLowenstein 5y ago

Look at this like playing Tetris. If you're at the bottom on a fresh screen, you can lay out nice layers and drop that vertical in for four-liners at a pretty regular pace. Optimal results, and you can handle the less-convenient pieces and unfortunate sequences predictably. Get in the middle ground, though, and it gets stressful to keep it under control. You make mistakes which worsen the problem. Once you're stacked near the top there's not much that can save you. So it is with the time you allow for scheduled activities. You want quality and predictability? Slow down.

andrei_says_ 5y ago
I really like this comparison - it conveys the feeling of urgency and overwhelm without dramatizing. Will be using it. Thank you.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
aseerdbnarng 5y ago
Excellent summary!
marcos100 5y ago
I like your analogy, but how do you find the perfect balance? I mean, you can play tetris at level 1 forever, but it is not ideal for productivity (unless you are really at level 1). You have to reach the level that you are comfortable enough with the speed of the falling pieces. Is it experience? You have to review the tasks periodically? You use some kind of metric? Sometimes I think I'm too slow, and sometimes I'm too overwhelmed and I only acknowledge it after some non-trivial time passes (or, at least, that is my perception).
- jgtrosh 5y ago
  Well in the classic Tetris community, this used to be the central aspect to pay attention to during plays: how conservative (burning often to play low) vs how aggressive (building high to maximise Tetris rate) people play. This is traditionally impacted by the score difference: you play dangerously to catch up to your opponent. This probably translates to a useful productivity metaphor. But in recent years there's been an escalation in agressivity, mostly due to hypertappers. This probably translates to the modern wide spread of hero coders; the analogy continues with hypertappers getting their hands burned out young. The real interesting change in classic Tetris is with rolling (distributing the load on 4 fingers), which allows people to play even higher and more dangerous but without destroying their hands. I don't really know what metaphor this brings us though.

godelski 5y ago

> “It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either ‘lost time’ or a class privilege.” At Ford’s own admission, however, the five-day workweek was also instituted in order to increase productivity: Though workers’ time on the job had decreased, they were expected to expend more effort while they were there. [0] It is kinda interesting because it seems we're coming full circle to this. I'm not sure why it also doesn't make sense to many. Our economy is highly dependent upon consumerism. That's exactly why economics trickles up but also why it is important that the lower classes have wages for luxury items. Because capital must flow in a capitalist market. People won't exercise their capital if they don't have the wages or the time. Ford discussed how the shortened workweek increased productivity and led to more people buying his cars. We often revere him for this and it is a frequent talking point. Something every American knows when they learned about the Labor Movement in school. So why is this idea so difficult to combat? We have plenty of historical evidence. We have current evidence suggesting that we can continue to push the bar down and maintain a functioning economy. So what gives? We see articles like this at least once a month and many seem on board. So who is going to be Ford? It'll have to come from a big company. Google? Facebook? Amazon? Netflix? Microsoft? I'm sure many of you could benefit from the PR (especially FB). Who's going to pull the trigger first and set things in motion? [0] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-workers-get-40-hour-week https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-wor...

smitty1e 5y ago

"Slow is smooth and smooth is quick"--US Army widsom against rushing matters.

jimmyvalmer 5y ago

Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work. Office Space, 1999

SLWW 5y ago

If you can reduce the amount of switching costs you go through in a days work, that will by itself greatly improve your efficiency.

ineedasername 5y ago

A natural fear is that by reducing the amount of work each employee tackles at any given time, it might reduce the total amount of work an organization is able to complete, making it less competitive. This fear is unfounded. As argued, when an individual’s work volume increases, so does the accompanying overhead and stress, reducing both the time remaining to actually execute the tasks and the quality of the results. The real question is whether these conditions produce a 20% reduction in productivity that would equate to the productivity of a 4-day work week. I'm not convinced, and have not come across compelling studies that quantify productivity increased of a 4-day work week. In particular, my own anecdotal experience where my organization works 4-days a week during the Summer is increased stress due to fewer hours to complete a set of tasks that do not decrease with the the decreased office time. I instead often find myself feeling nervous about tasks unfinished and often end up putting in time during the 3 non-work days. Alternatively the author implies that simply assigning less work could be the answer, but to address that and related issues: I am not saying that a 4-day work week shouldn't be considered, but I am skeptical that it could be implemented without increasing employee headcount accordingly. That complicates things then as increased salary costs impact product prices-- a regressive increase that impacts lower paid workers more than others. So increased wages could also be necessary, but that (hopefully to a lesser extent) feeds back into those same increased labor costs. Working out these issues is a package deal.

thenerdhead 5y ago

Here's the thing. Work in progress limits have been around forever. If you ever wanted to learn about kanban on a Saturday afternoon, you'd come by the term of "WIP limits" and a reasonable number like 3 at a given time. I think the author is jumping the gun a bit based on their previous work "A World Without Email" in which he hints at the "hyperactive hive mind" being an entity in which everyone is fighting for each other's attention unknowingly. This article somewhat assumes that because we're part of this hive mind, we don't actually get time to actually work deeply on one thing at a time and thus "slow productivity" is the solution so we can actually complete things. > The autonomy that defines the professional lives of those who toil in front of computer screens has led us into a trap of excessive work volume. We cannot escape this trap by expanding the weekend. We must ultimately brace ourselves for the larger challenge of slowing down the pace of the workday itself. Want to know the secret to these things? Read books. Seriously, some of the best books on this topic are by the very author of this article. Read High Output Management, The Effective Executive, Deep Work, Four Thousand Weeks, Thinking in Systems, An Elegant Puzzle, etc. These books should empower you to take back control over your work life balance and hold others to a higher standard. Most of the time the "hyperactive hive mind" is simply your line manager and some middle manager's todo list sitting in your inbox because you're the one who can actually do anything about it. Yes, the very same boss who always changes your priorities last minute is surprise just serving their selfish needs through you. How about flipping the script instead? You should give your boss a list of your priorities and tell them to not bother you until they are done. You should hold your boss accountable for the time they steal from you every week to discuss or talk about something that isn't one of those things. And ultimately, you should be in control of what you want to work on. You only live for so long, might as well be on things you actually believe in and can make an impact with, not some nonsense pushed down from the top or your boss's big breakthrough idea that everyone knows will flop. Ever since I did this, I've been happier, healthier, and more impactful at work. Setting boundaries is fucking hard, but necessary to get anything done at a big company. The IC has the ultimate power. Don't be a doormat.

amznbyebyebye 5y ago

I have friends who burned out at AWS after a stressful launch. Believe it or not the effects are still there a whole year later. Many are just doing the bare minimum required to stay alive. My conclusion is there is a constant optimal pace which maximizes total work produced.. mind you there are probably other ways to mode effort as a function of time which maximizes total work done over a fixed time interval.. for example there could be a short amount of high intensity work but then you burn out and don’t get anything done for the next six months. The net output may be the same, of course the toll on physical and mental health may not be optimal

depressionalt 5y ago
Is this unique to amazon? I've read other stories like this and, anecdotally, I know a guy who worked at amazon for a couple years and was burned out by the experience and didnt work for at least 6 years.
- amznbyebyebye 5y ago
  Yeah it’s commonplace throughout amazon

nicbou 5y ago

Since I went self-employed, my workload dramatically reduced. One of the most important benefits is that I can follow impulses. There's always time and energy to explore ideas, clean up my work or build something else. Likewise, there's always time to use good weather, so my work schedule tends to work around it. It leads me to work on what feels right. It's a bit like planning a road trip. You need plenty of buffer space for unexpected detours good and bad. There are always unexpected opportunities (and issues) along the way. You can't predict those by looking at a map.