27 ms·
Productivity porn
- pacarvalho 4y ago"Productivity porn is anything that after having been consumed makes you feel like you were productive when in reality you didn’t actually do anything." - Interesting definition.
- jarett-lee 4y agoI recently watched a video that this article reminded me of: I Watch Your Videos But Never Change My Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj5lA7FfUkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj5lA7FfUkI The premise is that there's a viewer that watches a bunch of self-improvement videos, but never enacts any of the suggestions. The presenter's argument is that change happens when you understand and digest the suggestions you've been given and it naturally comes to mind. In order to digest the changes, you need to avoid chain consuming content, reflect on what you read or watched, and to be patient. The analogy that really stuck with me is you don't read the textbook over and over again to learn, you read the textbook and quiz yourself. Similarly, to change yourself, you don't read informational articles one after another, you need to sit down and think about what you read at least once right after you read it and ideally multiple times until it's ingrained in your brain. After the concept is ingrained in your brain, then you can start taking the advice. In some cases you can just start doing things differently, but often it's hard because you're not clear on what you need to do differently, you fail, then you become demotivated.
- satisfice 4y agoI don’t get it, Caleb. By your reckoning, the fact the I read your blog post means I’m wasting my time. Instead of doing I did reading. I deny the existence of “productivity porn.” It’s a made up idea. I read for clues to improve my work and life. This is not empty stimulation, this is living an examined life.
- bribri 4y agoIt's a healthy balance. Watching Ali Abdaal and dissing all productivity techniques is like watching a Crossfitter and dissing all forms of physical exercise. Yes, some people take exercise too far, but most people do nothing and that's a much bigger problem. I see him as trying to push the envelope and give you a wide range of ideas. I don't try to copy everything he does, but he puts out a lot of ideas and usually some idea will stick. I do believe there's always a better way of doing something. I especially believe in the productivity techniques to increase self reflection and "leverage" like the "daily highlight" and "five minute journal". It doesn't matter how productive you are if you haven't sorted out your priorities.
- bribri 4y ago> Productivity porn is anything that after having been consumed makes you feel like you were productive when in reality you didn’t actually do anything. I disagree with the line of thinking that all research which isn't immediately useful is unproductive. It just needs to be limited. Set a time limit of 30 minutes per day for researching and improving your meta process. Those articles on AI you read on hackernews might be planting the seeds for your next career change. It's impossible to know ahead of time. I think the ideal breakdown is 20% research, 70% action and 10% reflection.
- zotronix 4y agoCould not agree more. That is the core idea behind the power of novelty search and open-endedness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLi0eIdyQU4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLi0eIdyQU4
- snowpiercer 4y agoYes ,you are correct
- radu_floricica 4y agoThere's an old joke I love. "Why do elephants have red eyes? So they can better hide in cherry trees." "But I've never heard of an elephant climbing a tree!" "See how well they hide?" It's a bit stereotypical by now to hear about influencers preaching 4am wakeup times. But the truth is that some of that stuff works. And more importantly, the general attitude of trying to improve your daily process sure as hell works. It took me well over a decade to move from very struggling freelancer to actually feeling ok with the work I put in, and I've definitely not stopped improving.
- bribri 4y agoThe attitude of dissing people trying to improve themselves is depressing.
- iovrthoughtthis 4y agoit's just the pendulum of opinion swinging the world needs yin and yang we've had a good few years of self improvement being seen as good and noble. now for the return to mean it will over swing the other way and productivity will return to the table in a different but similar form like everything, this too shall pass
- penguin_booze 4y agoCigarette packets carry grotesque images of disease caused by prolonged use of the product. Likewise, I think social media apps should be forced to periodically display warnings like, "This app is designed to make you feel inadequate, addicted, and lonely. Please don't think its real - that's how we make our living".
- WA 4y agoBanner blindness is real. You'll ignore this message after it was shown three times.
- wawjgreen 4y agoi object to normalizing the word "porn" for non-porn related activities. this is number one bullshit.
- wawjgreen 4y ago
- CRConrad 4y agoWhat "P-word"; productivity? Oh, now I see: Porn? You say that as if (you're trying to convince yourself) it weren't something usual.
- wawjgreen 4y agoit may be usual for you, sadly, but it is not objectively usual--in an objectively neutral world, innocence reigns.
- CRConrad 4y agoLanguage changes. "Porn" used to mean sexual titillation only; now it's increasingly coming to mean just titillation of any kind. (As, IIRC, mentioned in TFA. Now go swoon over the expansion of the letter F there.)
- izalutski 4y agoA lot of the problem is gone after realising that productivity has little to do with efficiency and almost everything with prioritisation / focus. As soon as you become aware of your "attention flow" (what your attention span is spent on, like cash flow) it becomes hard to justify reading stuff like that.
- thejackgoode 4y ago"We need to go deeper". Many people substitute lack of meaning with "productivity". Reason being that you cannot be truly productive long-term if you don't have a why. Therefore, people copy attributes and behaviour patterns of productive individuals, but meaning is not possible to copy, so all of it is a sweatfest.
- praptak 4y agoI admit this is not central to the article but I take issue with the authors statement that the incentives of our digital world "might *even* lead to radicalization". Put this way it suggests that radicalization is unquestionably evil, which I vehemently disagree with. Women have voting rights because some other women embraced radicalization and this is just one example.
- samuell 4y agoI always thought Solomon summarized it most succinctly, in the latter part of this passage: "The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one shepherd. Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them. Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body." Ecclesiastes 12:10-12 :)
- SanderNL 4y agoInterestingly, this post itself is exactly what the author denounces. A lot of words that don't accomplish anything. Not dissing the post, it's excellent. Just pointing out.
- boopmaster 4y agoThe recent episode _What we do in the Shadows_ : “Go Flip Yourself” has the gang watching a version of property brothers while their house is falling apart around them. I thought it was part of the subtext, at least… unproductive watching others do what you need to do. I’ve experienced this firsthand when asking my partner if maybe we can think about picking up… so yeah, the TV remote was picked up so Marie Condo [sp?] videos could light up the TV… and instead of just picking up, it’s a watch party of someone else picking up :( I hate productivity-tube for this! /end rant
- lynguist 4y agoThe name is horrible. This is the reward you seek for accomplishing something. It’s the ticking of a to-do item, except the items are kind of useless, they just want to be ticked. This is the same as smoking a cigarette, getting a quick fix, taking the phone with you to the toilet, watching TV at night instead of sleeping, just to finish an internal to-do because you feel like you didn’t accomplish it yet. The solution I have to it is to exit the house without a phone, and to have something to do. Without the phone you can’t give yourself the quick to-do fixes and you’re more present. And when you have something to do, you don’t want to give yourself the quick fixes.
- catchclose8919 4y agomeh, strive for CLARITY instead: figure out what really needs most to be done, understand more about what you're doing, do less but have a larger impact!
- shannifin 4y agoThis seems related to another issue I've been thinking about lately: how to effectively measure productivity. I've been working on an MVP for a startup for a lot longer than I'd like. I've done a lot of work, but have gone down so many dead ends or potential "tarpits" that I feel unproductive, because the dead ends result in nothing useful... except learning why they're dead ends. But how do I judge the most useful (and therefore "productive") thing to do before I do it, since something may become a dead end? I don't know.
- badkarma1963 4y agoThis is unfair. Current events and hacker news type articles can offer inspiration.
- Oarch 4y agoYou've discovered the motivational industrial complex. I think this nicely sums up the content of many magazines.
- goatcode 4y agoI was disheartened when I read about all these successful people and their lofty advice. I was more disheartened when I realized their advice is just the random stuff they happened to do that on their path to success, and that equivalent advice of the myriad failures that complement them would never be heard (and that both were of approximately equal value). Despite how in the overmind the notion of "correlation is not causation," this snake oil is surprisingly only beginning to go out of fashion.
- heavyset_go 4y agoMost of the "advice" is just stuff some ghostwriters came up with that sound good and fit into whatever image those people want to publicly project.
- prometheus76 4y agoGoes back to Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. That book really started the "self-improvement" movement.
- thenerdhead 4y agoI like to read self-help. I think it can actually change your life. The problem is finding actual good self-help. Most stuff is garbage or dives too deep into a specific topic. One of my favorite authors is Orison Swett Marden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orison_Swett_Marden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orison_Swett_Marden) who writes well-rounded self-help and founded a magazine ironically called "Success". There's also Samuel Smiles who wrote the original title called "Self-Help". If you go back in time far enough, you will come to the conclusion that most self-help stems back to certain influences at the time. You can go as far back as to the tao te ching, meditations, or even the bible. Not much of this stuff changes, but is repackaged with modern examples of successful people into bestsellers.
- bckr 4y agoDarn, this is completely true. I feel like such a techie when I scroll HN and hoard links for later perusal. In fact I feel so much better than I did about the same time spent on FB or Reddit. But I'm still not putting that time into constructive pursuits.
- alexalx666 4y agowhat helped me is having a filing system I can trust and tinker with, check out linkding on github
- amelius 4y agoPerhaps we should write down the things we really learned from reading HN, so we can decide later if it was worth the time.
- petecooper 4y agoadds to Safari reading list, later files to `to read` bookmarks
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoI think it’s equally unhealthy to be obsessed with being productive 100% of the time.
- triplechill 4y agoAgreed, the trick is finding the balance. Personally still figuring how to do that.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y agoCool! Added this to my Notion board!
- thenerdhead 4y agoWhile this term gets overused, I think what we're really saying is that we're addicted to success. Or the idea that we will be successful if we are overly productive. If you watch many of the people on social media who are "productivity gurus", you will notice that their philosophy of how to stay productive will shift as the content gets stale and they need something more novel to talk about with their growing audience. Many of them are just like you and me and cover the latest bestseller book or popular tweet that has merit to it, but then gets discarded after we realize it doesn't work in our lives. In turn, they also become wildly successful by providing you surface level tips on how to be a little more productive each day. While I used to be obsessed about this topic or what others call "hustle culture", I think you have to go through it before you realize how finite one's life really is. The overworking, the "always on"-ness, the comparison to others who happened to reach success earlier than us. It all doesn't matter at the end of the day. The simplistic perspective is that you can take common occasions and make them great and you'll find success or at least a better understanding of your definition of "success".
- truncate 4y agoI've come to realize that there is some kind of wisdom on not caring too much about outcomes, being in present and keeping things simple. For a long time, I believed in exactly opposite, success, over-optimize - whatever I do do it right way. Until during COVID, I found myself doing so many things, music, fitness, coding, photography, and later dating -- and you can constantly find endless amount of advise and new ways to do things on YouTube, while not realizing you are getting mentally exhausted. Trying to stay more in present, and keeping things simple now -- not to succumb to the mass-marketing campaign of whatever that something on internet usually is (most times it is marketing something, be it some product or themselves).
- thenerdhead 4y agoExactly. I firmly believe that there's even a paradox to all this. The less you care, the more successful you can be. Almost like Office Space. Doing a few things very well is what separates you from someone who does a hundred things not well at all. Attention is your most previous resource and it's stolen from us everyday by others when we should reclaim it for ourselves and those few things that we're passionate for.
- bilater 4y agoMeta point: Reading this article was productivity porn.
- ketzo 4y agoOnly if you don’t follow its advice!
- sdoering 4y ago> Meta point Meta porn
- redanddead 4y agoI was listening to Zuckerberg's internal Facebook memo to employees and they're really going all out on VR, they think it'll go big, trying to generate monopolistic effects by subsidizing their VR hardware so that more people buy in, and buying VR studios. Porn. Just give people meta porn
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoYet they just increased the cost of the quest by $100
- redanddead 4y agoJust checked, yeah you're right! Wonder why
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- notsapiensatall 4y agoThey can't. The money is in ads, and advertisers won't touch anything that isn't family-friendly. A startup might be able to do a decent job, but they would get booted off the app store faster than you can say a four-letter word. Too bad there's no good way for users to write and run arbitrary code on their devices.
- hahnbee 4y agoIt's the lesser of 2 evils. At least I'm learning when I'm consuming content that surrounds my work/lifestyle goals rather than just mindlessly scrolling through content that doesn't help me at all.
- Syntonicles 4y agoAgreed. This thread is filled with people who are confusing "consuming productivity content" with "actively being productive". It is one thing to discount reading blogs about time-tracking, efficiency and scheduling instead of implementing it in your daily life. It is quite another to discount the habits of productive people. To write those off en masse is to ignore the very real and obvious gradation of effectiveness we see in those around us. There are two counter-points that are often dismissed. The first is that if you haven't encountered the concepts, you aren't likely to stumble upon them without searching. Learning to plan and organize your behavior is no different from learning the fundamentals of any other skill. The second is precisely your point. Our thoughts and behaviors are driven by context. Given a person reading a blog about time-tracking and a person who-knows-where on an infinite social media scroll, who is more likely to close their browser and do whatever they feel is most important? I know who I would bet on.
- Apocryphon 4y agoI think there is truth to the idea that someone who is actually implementing these systems, even half-heartedly, is at least putting in some effort towards whatever their goals is. However, I don’t think the following is so clear-cut. > who is more likely to close their browser and do whatever they feel is most important? I know who I would bet on. Immersing oneself in productivity lifehacks is often a good way to feel productive without actually being so. So I don’t think either person stands to have a greater chance than the other towards getting back to work.
- jbjbjbjb 4y agoI think there’s a spectrum here on the one end you could be doing the work on the other end doing something that’s completely procrastinating like watching unrelated TikTok videos. And doing the work isn’t necessarily always best because you might actually benefit from some learning. That learning is probably not best consumed as a daily hours long habitual binge of productivity porn, that’s only slightly better than watching random TikTok.
- FredPret 4y agoI recently read The Focal Point and The One Thing. While these are tangentially related to productivity porn, they finally allowed me to let go of optimizing my work methods and focus on the one or two important things every day/week/month/year/lifetime. Stress levels: plummeting. Output (& happiness) much, much higher, far more than 10x before Optimized work methods: I now print out a very short to-do list for each business I work in. A literal printout from Notepad or Apple Notes. "Productivity": trending towards zero
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- the__alchemist 4y agoWhere's the line? Watching self-help content is described in the article as productivity porn. What about reading a self-help book? A (let's say good quality) non-fiction book? A scientific paper? A text book? Taking a class? Working on a project that is likely to fail? Writing code? Writing an article? Writing a book? > When I look for solutions to this problem I only come up with half-baked ideas and more questions. It sounds like the author's talking about science.
- Ensorceled 4y agoIf you are spending all your time "sharpening your saw" and no time "cutting wood" ... you are probable over the line.
- the__alchemist 4y agoLove that comparison. It also makes the distinction that this is a matter of degree; not kind.
- satisfice 4y agoWhy? Maybe I appreciate beautifully sharp knives. There is no line. Simply live an examined life. If you want to change something, change it. If not, that’s okay. This post by the OP is his own musing. It has little bearing on the rest of us, and personally I just think his analysis is wrong.
- Ensorceled 4y agoI completely and totally disagree with you! Wait, what are a we all feeling strongly about? Ah, a quip on hacker news.
- satisfice 4y agoI added something to the conversation. I made an actual point. If your point is that disagreement for its own sake is wasteful, I agree. But that has nothing to do with me.
- Kosirich 4y agoI wonder if people with (adult) ADD are more susceptible to this. Same as the author, I would like to hear the story of someone breaking the cycle for good.
- Ensorceled 4y agoI think the cure is to find a couple of systems that work and "settle" on them and stick to them. I have settled on the idea of "Minimal Viable Day" and "Minimal Viable Week" ... what are things that, if I did those things AND NOTHING ELSE, I would consider the day and week a success. Friday afternoon, I create a MVW todo item with 2-3 important things in it for the next week. Every morning I create MVD todo item with several things in it (often a bunch of smaller items and one or two largish items). Everything else goes into the todo list and is ignored until the next MVD/MVW checkpoint. Now I ignore all other "productivity hacks" and focus on doing this one.
- Kosirich 4y agoThanks for sharing. I understand what you mean and I'm currently doing something similar...again. What I (often) lack is the steps needed to go from a more complex long term project to MVW/MVD tasks and then sustaining that in the long run. I'm currently looking into ways of hacking this, this being the dopamine cycle.
- Ensorceled 4y agoI've been doing SCRUM for a long time ... it's pretty natural for me to break down projects into smaller pieces that fit into a 1 week or 2 week cycle.
- Kosirich 4y agoYea, I've been thinking the same. I don't do so much scrum at work, but when I did and when I tried something similar on non-direct-work related projects it did something for me...In retrospect, I remember the pleasure of achieving certain amount of "points". When you break them down, do you try to "predict effort" in points or similar? I think it's perhaps time to try again.
- redanddead 4y agoWhile reading this story it felt like we are subscriber() functions to social media's eventemitters. Like we're all hooked up to this larger system
- mustafabisic1 4y agoLove it, and totally felt this myself. That's why I created a newsletter for remote working parents. To be on the creation side and as least as possible on the consuming side. https://thursdaydigest.com/ https://thursdaydigest.com/
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoYour solution to productivity porn is to create more productivity porn?
- mustafabisic1 4y agoEverything about this post seems to be like that lol There is something to it for sure. Thanks for the comment, you cracked me up :D
- LordHeini 4y agoI really don't get any of those "be more productive", book, video, course and so on. Every single person I know just wastes their time with that. Usualy they work long hours and still don't get much done. But hey, they have Zettelkasten with things the never read. A to do list with stuff they never do. And they go out in the morning at 5 for jogging, while gulping down a liter of coffe or energy drinks which results in them being groggy the whole day. If you ever think you need to adhere to what is preached in any self improvement thing, just don't. Habe your shit in order, avoid working mor than 7 hours day and take your weekends and vacations seriously. Especially in IT nothing will get you further than being smartly lazy.
- coliveira 4y agoWhen I was just out of college I spent a couple of months reading that kind of literature. Then I started to realize that if I did everything they asked I wound't be myself anymore, I would be the image of an idealized "successful" person that these people write about. When I figured out that, I saw the whole think makes no sense.
- nonethewiser 4y agoBut presumably there is valid info about being more productive. You claim to share such info in this very comment. It's a very specific subset of advice that you are identifying.
- _the_inflator 4y agoWho gets really rich if you follow the "Buy all your personal Guru's stuff"? "Buy a new course if you struggle with task X" is a simple mantra. The only way to boost productivity is to hire people. That's what these gurus usually do: hire stuff and let marketing (again: other people) spin it, like the single guy does all the work alone.
- verinus 4y agoand what do you need for that? right: money! problem is: it's so much easier to get rich if you have money already...
- TrackerFF 4y agoHustle and grind. Create 7 streams of income. Work 18 hour days - anything less and you're a loser destined for mediocrity. Read 5 books a week. Start trading stocks and crypto. Take cold showers, hit the gym. Optimize your schedule, log every minute spent. Ditch your loser friends and only hang out with likeminded - success breeds success. Sigma grindset. Moon or bust. If you're not worth $1 million liquid before 30, cut off your finger and work even harder. Analyze your productivity and always look for places to cut fat.
- pacarvalho 4y agoIt is quite tough. What are your thoughts on if it is worth it?
- lbrito 4y ago$1 million is for losers. Its just dos comas. Real success is tres comas. https://www.russfest.net/home/tres-comas https://www.russfest.net/home/tres-comas
- onion2k 4y agoalways look for places to cut fat Ironically, you should also put butter in your coffee.
- schipplock 4y agowhy?
- onion2k 4y agoThere was a trend called 'bulletproof coffee' that went around SV and the startup world about a decade ago, where you were supposed to drink coffee with two spoons of butter and some 'brain enhancing' MCT oil in it. Lots of CEOs went mad for it. I don't think I've heard of anyone still drinking it for a long time. https://www.bulletproof.com/recipes/bulletproof-diet-recipes/bulletproof-coffee-recipe/ https://www.bulletproof.com/recipes/bulletproof-diet-recipes...
- 4y ago
- mise_en_place 4y agoI guess I take a different approach than the author does. I waste several hours a day on such social media consumption, but I don't delude myself into thinking I was productive. If anything, it lights a fire under me because I wasted so much time, and that gives me a productivity boost to finish the things I was supposed to do.
- macrael 4y agoI can't find an online article where Merlin Mann discusses this but I remember very vividly him talking about why he stopped posting on 43Folders.com a decade ago. 43Folders was a GTD productivity porn site and after while Merlin decided that he didn't want to be "giving drugs to addicts" and stopped posting little "5 ways to write a better task title" articles for all the same reasons OP is writing about here.
- dougskinner 4y agoHere ya go, one of my all time favorites of his: https://www.43folders.com/2011/04/22/cranking https://www.43folders.com/2011/04/22/cranking
- macrael 4y agoA beautiful piece, thank you. But this is more about him prioritizing family over his book. It must have been on a podcast I remember him talking about how he kind of had a crisis of faith over running 43folders and stopped doing little "life hack" posts.
- nicbou 4y agoHere is a really pleasant video with a similar message: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz4YqwH_6D0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz4YqwH_6D0 A writer writes. A painter paints. You are not defined by what you want or prepare for, but by what you do. On the other hand, you don't have to spend every waking hour being productive. You can go on a bicycle ride without measuring speed and distance. You can work on things that won't develop into income streams. Not everything has to be about the hustle and the grind.
- Forgeties79 4y ago>You can go on a bicycle ride without measuring speed and distance. It's kind of wild how people need metrics - myself included - in order to feel like they did something. I have been really trying to address that in my own life after I found it had creeped so far into my daily life that it was influencing what video games I play. I mean...what? I blame it on the fitbit I got years ago haha
- nicbou 4y agoI went the other way and refuse to measure things. I have a gut feeling for “enough” and it’s not a fixed value. It varies according to internal and external factors. I prefer to trust that feeling over arbitrary targets. I feel good about a long enough bike ride, even if it’s a few kilometres below average. Maybe I was tired, or maybe I lingered in cafes with a good book that time. Distance isn’t a good measure of happiness.
- jabits 4y agoI agree. My wife and I take ocean swims most days and we both use Apple watches for metrics. She wears hers without fail, but I sometimes (disappointedly) forget to wear mine. When that happens it almost feels like I didn’t work out.
- quickthrower2 4y agoI hustle but I timebox it. Figure out the hours/week it deserves. Less is sometimes better. The cliche of the shower idea is true. And if you are productive all the time there is no time for your brain’s webworkers to do their thing.
- rr888 4y agoI wonder how many "successful" people actually read this stuff.
- TedShiller 4y agoZero. They're being successful, so they don't need this
- travisgriggs 4y agoI'm gonna go read an article about how to be a better stoic now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 999900000999 4y agoLife advice, self help, etc, all of it is too general to be helpful to anyone. What works for a 46 year old married mother of 3 probably won't be what works for a 23 year old tech nerd. You have this obsession with becoming some type of super human who can do things vastly beyond your peers. Sure the average 30 year old living in LA will never buy a home. That doesn't concern you super elite hustle bro. Hustle so hard you have 3 houses, 2 lifted trucks, and a dog who can speak basic French. Most of us are by definition average. Actual life advice for our above character would be to move somewhere with affordable housing, only buy a lifted truck if you have cash, etc. No body wants to read. "Fix your life over 18 to 24 months by making difficult choices" People want. "Fix your life in 3 weeks, only takes 30 minutes a day"
- agota 4y ago>"Fix your life in 3 weeks, only takes 30 minutes a day" More like "This ONE Tip Will Change Your Life!"
- balaji1 4y agoSuch a good point. How do I calibrate to the all the advice out there? Find that hard - be it finance advice, health advice, hustle advice or anything else. Like you say, most of us are average. There's rarely any content for a '46 year old married mother of 3' or any of the average folks. But a normal person's daily life goes for a toss when they hear advice on YT (or watch a Insta reel or a TikTok dance) they know they won't be able to do themselves but they think should be doing.
- notsapiensatall 4y agoYou keep saying "lifted truck" like it's something to aspire to, but aren't pickups dirt cheap in the US?
- colineartheta 4y agoDo you mind pointing me in the direction of these dirt cheap trucks? I’ve been looking but have so far come up empty.
- 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- someweirdperson 4y ago> "Whether you are doom-scrolling on Instagram" [...] This most likely isn't intended to be reading a never-ending stream of bad news (on instagram?), but simply an endlessly scrolling site that keeps loading content before reaching the end of the page. The wiktionary definition [0] seems wrong. [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doomscrolling#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doomscrolling#English
- californical 4y agoI think that people use it hyperbolically rather than literally in that context — the original meaning is correct, but people use the word in an exaggerated context to make a point
- Barrin92 4y agoThe biggest issue with the whole productivity porn thing is that it's fundamentally 'midwit' activity. Genuinely novel work, by definition cuts through existing things, brushes them away and produces something that is new. Tending to your knowledge gardens and note taking tools and reading blogs and whatnot is just busywork. People who built real things generally do so because they have the will to do it, not because they have 500 pages of investment advice collected on Notion.
- jedberg 4y agoI disagree with the premise. I think the things you learn reading that tweet or that medium post can be useful. There were definitely times when I ran into a problem and thought to myself, "Hey I remember reading about this on Hacker News, how did they solve it?" and then going back and finding the post and finding a solution to my problem. There is also the notion of being able to make better decisions with more "connection material" in your mind. The more you know, the more likely you are to make a novel connection. I consider reading HN and the like part of building up that library.
- _gabe_ 4y ago> There is also the notion of being able to make better decisions with more "connection material" in your mind. The more you know, the more likely you are to make a novel connection. I completely agree with this, but I don't believe all blog posts and technical articles are written equal :) You have: 1. Your garden variety tech blog post about somebody's experience using X or Y framework or just a general techy blog. (I'm thinking a joel spolsky or coding horror post here) 2. A technical dive into a specific problem/framework. 3. A raymond chen style blog post explaining the reasons behind some weird api. And then you have the deeper material: 4. The Pragmatic Programmer. Not too dense and can still be enjoyed at a leisurely pace, but contains enough deep thinking type of material to motivate you. 5. A comprehensive reference book about a specific framework or concept (Game Engine Architecture and OpenGL SuperBible come to mind). 6. The Art of Computer Programming. I only consider the last 3 productivity material. The first 3 can be helpful in rare instances, but they're more akin to watching a 3blue1brown video where I say "That was interesting" and proceed to forget all about that topic.
- lytefm 4y agoIf we're talking about „reading a full article + following the discussion“, then yes. But for me, 1.) has also been helpful for discovering frameworks or tools that I'm now using in my everyday work life (e.g. LogSeq, Prefect). I wouldn't count it as „productive” either, but just reading announcements or random tech blog posts sometimes translates into actually adopting the thing.
- 4y ago
- quickthrower2 4y agoHe seems to conflate learning with productivity porn. Doing a course or even a short gym video is fine if (a) you sought it out to solve a problem and (b) you apply what you have learned. Even serendipitous “I will learn that interesting thing on HN” if done with purpose and diligence is fine.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y agoI would recommend https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54785515-four-thousand-weeks https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54785515-four-thousand-w... as an interesting counter-argument to all of the productivity literature out there.
- emadabdulrahim 4y agoI listened to his short lectures on the Waking Up app. Really enjoyed them and clicked for me. I wonder if it's still worth reading the book.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nvch 4y agoIt’s like fishing or hunting for somebody. Only a few pieces of information will be today’s catch (if I’ll be lucky today), but the hunting time is well spent anyway.
- personjerry 4y agoI think for content like this there's a scale between mostly "feel good" fluff (i.e. Gary V stuff, imo) to mostly "useful" stuff (i.e. Atomic Habits, imo). But everything has a mixture of actionability and story-based fluff thrown in there entertainment/inspirational value. In my opinion, the fluff gets you through the drier parts of the reads. But what you decide to actually take out of the book and action on - that's up to you. You turned it into mere entertainment when you read but didn't take action, for example, clean up your desk to enable your habits to begin, as clearly described in the Atomic Habits book. The good reads you'll probably need to note down and return to a few times to extract all the useful, concrete advice.
- jbjbjbjb 4y agoThat’s an interesting distinction. I think the in-between is the worst. At least with Gary V you know you’re getting energy and motivation. Another YouTube video skimming over lessons from Atomic Habits for the hundredth time is the mindless faux learning to avoid.
- owow123 4y ago"im not productive" === "im not happy / socially isolated and my self esteem is low" this statement probably holds true for 99% who "relate" to this shite. Stop lying to yourself, more work wont make you happy - It didnt the first time. There is no easy fix, disabling social media wont fix it. Most gains of that nature are short lived. For real results its long term work on yourself and changes to your environment (I'm just getting started on my journey of solving this dont take it from me, talk to people > 10 years old than you or read a philosophy book > 500 years old)
- ericmcer 4y agoIf you peruse instagram accounts that post tutorials of how to do things (cooking, art, engineering, etc.) you will quickly realize that there are thousands of positive comments and likes on instructional videos that teach things completely wrong. Anyone attempting to follow the video would be baffled. This article definitely comes up with a good term for the phenomenon behind the success of those videos.
- therealasdf 4y agoI unsubscribed from Ali Abdal's youtube channel for this same reason. I have the utmost respect for him and I'm amazed at how well he manages his life. However, i always felt anxious after watching his videos. This video to be exact made me feel like shit and made me decide I should unsubscribe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQSKyvjsUuI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQSKyvjsUuI
- a9h74j 4y agoThe article itself explores the analogy to porn more deeply than the usual offhand reference to productivity porn, particularly with reference to energy-sapping and demotivating effects.
- schadara 4y agoPorn helps me sleep. Boom. Done. Also, a motivator because I sleep dreaming of having a nice gf one day :)
- biztos 4y agoOne of the original, and most effective, competition hacks is to convince people that you sleep less than they do. When someone tells you they sleep 5 hours a night then run two miles and take a 15-minute cold shower then start their work day, 85% of the time they are lying, 10% of the time you will have already noticed the effects of chronic sleep deprivation, and 5% of the time it's drugs. But this has been a surefire way to put your competitors on the back foot for hundreds, probably thousands of years.
- hackerlight 4y agoNo, some people have a genetic mutation that allows them to sleep for 5 hours a day.
- noud 4y agoAre there? Not saying they don't exist. But I've yet to meet someone who only sleeps 5 hours a day, doesn't have bags under the eyes, and doesn't fall asleep in every meeting.
- biztos 4y agoFascinating, and true about the mutation: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-identified-people-who-need-little-sleep https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/gene-id... So I should update the above to include some percentage who are lying about having this mutation, and an extremely minuscule likelihood your sales manager actually happens to have it. Second prize is a set of 23andMe test kits.
- nonethewiser 4y ago> But this has been a surefire way to put your competitors on the back foot for hundreds, probably thousands of years. So there examples of this?
- emsign 4y agoTricking competition like that is really a zero sum game when it comes to mental health. I don't recommend doing that at all. You don't want to be in an environment like that even if you've contributed to its existence, you're not in control anymore.
- Arisaka1 4y agoThis is 100% me if you substitute social media browsing with distro hopping and text editor tinkering. Now I understand why redditors decided to call that subreddit "unixporn". My solution: Stick with Fedora and Visual Studio Code, because I've spent at least 100 hours in the past month checking out Neovim, getting my first init.lua to work, messing around with configurations, making telescope work, make telescope look good. Then switched to Arch, try bspwm, Gnome, KDE, fonts. Meanwhile, my fellow junior colleague is flexing all over me his Docker knowledge, his experience in unit testing and CI/CD, and generally things people actually pay you for.
- mindentropy 4y agoI used to do that and it has helped me quite a bit. Now I know what distro's are good and I can bring up embedded systems much faster and what needs to be packaged. I also have to have a particular font and color or it would be difficult to focus. Not sure why. Also if I use dark mode I start getting a headache. Not able to figure why it is so.
- Arisaka1 4y agoI don't know if you ever read is but I'm really curious to know what font you're talking about.
- mindentropy 4y agoFor Gvim my go to is Inconsolata font with white background. Similar case with the console. Dark mode for some reason is very difficult for me and gives me a headache after sometime or makes my head heavy. It is strange because previously I used to use dark mode without any issues and was preferred. Later I switched to lighter/white background with dark foreground.
- schadara 4y agoWell, then you’ll be a leet neovim ninja, and you can hack text like no other. Don’t be so hard on yourself. :)
- 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tomcam 4y agoA mild defense of productivity porn. It was books like Ben Franklin's biography, Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich", and Wayne Dyers' books that made me realize that I could get ahead by sheer determination and working fairly smart. They changed my life. It helped me get out of a fairly unpleasant home situation. I learned that I didn't need to be super smart or athletic or good looking to raise myself up a few steps on the (American) economic ladder. Grit, and putting myself in the way of success, and failing plenty, actually did propel me into a pretty damn good life.
- lisper 4y agoSometimes I feel as if our entire society has turned into one giant cargo cult. Whether it's OKRs or the latest tech fad or black turtlenecks, everyone looks at the last big hit, picks out some set of superficial features of the person at the top, and says, "Yeah, that is the key to success." No one ever steps back to think about causality or even what they actually want. Brings to mind one of my favorite aphorisms: furious activity is no substitute for understanding. Very few people seem to subscribe to it, but I've gotten an enormous amount of mileage out of it over the years.
- stevenfoster 4y agoThe Jewish people have their Sabbath, as a hispanic person myself, we have our Siesta. I spent over a decade in the tech industry and I'd literally be scoffed at for actually napping in a nap room or pod for 20min. Finally just started doing it in my car. But that's one of my practices that anchors me not only to my culture, but my Creator. It humbles me. And brings me joy. I hope everyone could find what their practice could be that would bring them this. Take some time, at least once a year, to sit down with yourself and have a vision for your life not based on work or status (ie vacations or the acquisition of things). If that isn't enough to snap you out, go to a small village in Latin America or maybe like Matthew McConaughey discovered and talked about in his book, a quaint monastery in New Mexico. Stay there until it makes sense. Most people want to be productive because they want to feel valued by others. But if you have to look to your own value from others, you've already lost, and will continue to lose forever. Be. You. Slowly. and you'll find you're more valuable than you ever thought.
- helpfulmandrill 4y ago> Most people want to be productive because they want to feel valued by others. But if you have to look to your own value from others, you've already lost, and will continue to lose forever. I think for me its about fear of death.
- danielbln 4y agoDeath will come for you regardless of your productivity.
- 0807test 4y agoI know that submissions with no substance are frowned upon here, but I just wanted to tell you that for some reason your comment is the funniest one I read in quite some time. Maybe because of my lifelong struggle with productivity and procrastination... Cheers!
- PostOnce 4y agoYes, but you can either die having achieved your goals, or die with them unmet.
- felipelalli 4y agoThe best part: "Ironically, the thing delivering the wake-up message was productivity porn itself self-aware enough to surface the issue."
- tgtweak 4y agoTheres a reason the subreddit is called powerwashingporn... It's very satisfactory to watch someone else do something to completion - ideally in a sped up manner. Car detailing youtube channels, lawncare ("cleaned this disaster yard") channels, time lapse before/after renovations... They do very well for a reason.
- booleandilemma 4y agoYou can always be thinner...look better...
- wnolens 4y agoI blame Tim Ferris. He's the poster boy for productivity porn. He has a podcast where he tries to extract productivity tips from accomplished people, then compiles the tips and sells it as a self help book. And he's completely genuine. Soooo deep down the productivity rabbit hole.
- dclowd9901 4y agoNothing to say about the piece except the author is trying to co-opt a super well known idiom into something that means nothing close to that idiom. I’m not sure whether to admire the audacity or laugh at the utter lack of awareness.
- florakel 4y ago> Examples of productivity porn include but are not limited to: reading a tweet by a top VC about how to become a better startup founder; watching a Youtube video about the 7 mistakes you need to avoid at the gym; perusing a Hacker News thread about how to improve the code you write. All of these activities deceptively make you feel like you’ve done something productive. “I just learned something new”, you tell yourself. Those examples from the article make sense but in my experience the biggest illusion of productivity happens right inside our day to day work routines, namely email and chat systems. People respond to endless email threads that in the end trigger no action, endless discussions on Slack channels with no decision making until eventually somebody calls a meeting. We type and type but in the end we waste our own attention and our coworker’s attention just to feel important and productive without doing anything useful most of the time.
- koheripbal 4y agoReading this thread is a good example.