3 ms·

There was an HN article posted 6 months ago (maybe?) from an ivy-league study (Harvard I want to say...) that found the difference between productive people and

by rkalla 15y ago

There was an HN article posted 6 months ago (maybe?) from an ivy-league study (Harvard I want to say...) that found the difference between productive people and unproductive people which seems to suggest the opposite of this blog post. The study found that people who focus on the future and the work that needs to get done, tend to get more done, be more productive and subsequently were more successful. The people that focused primarily on what had been done experienced a false sense of "completion" and had a tendency to stop working or take longer breaks between tasks. FWIW, I do see this compulsion of focusing on "tomorrow" (defined as 'whatever is next') in successful people, but I also see very little appreciation for the "Now" or what they have accomplished. I have tried to balance my moments of compulsion about tomorrow/next/more/bigger/do-it! with taking stock of the life I am leading from time to time and enjoying it. I am happier as a result and am capable of enjoying beautiful life-moments that would have previously been impossible for me to experience without anxiety. Personal Aside: My wife and I went to Bora Bora years ago as part of a bigger trip to NZ. The total serene beauty of Bora Bora almost drove me insane. I wanted to try and paddle one of the kayaks back home at the time because my ego-driven mind was completely dominating my thoughts. I didn't see some of the world's clearest water or beautiful sand, I only saw "No high speed internet", "No IDE", "No code" and "No progress" which, at the time, meant the world was going to steam-roll me and I was going to fail miserably. After getting home I knew I had to do something about that way of thinking. I knew the only thing that was waiting for me at the end of THAT path was a life of stress, ulcers, pain and the inability to deal with change or an occasional life-sized curveball with any sort of control. Happiness is my default state now. I wasn't even trying to accomplish that... it is a side effect of very little work, just an awareness of what my thoughts are doing.

mistercow 15y ago
I am always suspicious of advice based on studies of "what successful people do" because there is a high potential for false causality, and for inapplicability to other people's lives. I suspect that many of these habits of successful people are simply side effects of the way that their minds work, and that they may not work for someone whose mind works differently. Ripe bananas are yellow, but painting a green banana yellow does not ripen it. I will speculate as to how it might be that being successful is correlated with looking forward, even if that is not an inherent fact: the "to-do list" is a familiar, well-known concept, while the "done list" is not. So if you're motivated by the future, you have a ready-made tool that will make you more successful. If you're motivated by your recent accomplishments, you have no such tool - and you may even make things worse by using a future-motivating tool that is not effective for you. Like I said, this is speculation and hypothesis. But I will say from experience that it is often the case that person A has a habit that seems effective, and person B sees no benefit from adopting that habit.
- ajkessler 15y ago
  Ripe bananas are yellow, but painting a green banana yellow does not ripen it. You're making a huge assumption here that the way someone's mind works is fixed and unalterable. I don't believe this. I think, and have some personal experience here, that you can change the way you think about things, the way you approach things, etc. And you can certainly develop the way successful people look at the world. I actually think the banana metaphor is excellent: a certain technique may not work for person A, who thinks about the world in A way. But, that person can work to change their mind, to ripen, and eventually see the world close to the way that person B does.
  - mistercow 15y ago
    >You're making a huge assumption here that the way someone's mind works is fixed and unalterable. Well first off, that's not what I meant by my analogy. I was making a point about causality vs. correlation. Secondly people's minds are certainly alterable, but the extent to which they can be altered is not unlimited. Moreover, given a scale with A) altering your mind so that you can adopt someone else's habits, and B) adopting habits which play to your current strengths, it makes more sense to tend toward B when possible.

by rkalla 15y ago

mistercow 15y ago

I am always suspicious of advice based on studies of "what successful people do" because there is a high potential for false causality, and for inapplicability to other people's lives. I suspect that many of these habits of successful people are simply side effects of the way that their minds work, and that they may not work for someone whose mind works differently. Ripe bananas are yellow, but painting a green banana yellow does not ripen it. I will speculate as to how it might be that being successful is correlated with looking forward, even if that is not an inherent fact: the "to-do list" is a familiar, well-known concept, while the "done list" is not. So if you're motivated by the future, you have a ready-made tool that will make you more successful. If you're motivated by your recent accomplishments, you have no such tool - and you may even make things worse by using a future-motivating tool that is not effective for you. Like I said, this is speculation and hypothesis. But I will say from experience that it is often the case that person A has a habit that seems effective, and person B sees no benefit from adopting that habit.

ajkessler 15y ago
Ripe bananas are yellow, but painting a green banana yellow does not ripen it. You're making a huge assumption here that the way someone's mind works is fixed and unalterable. I don't believe this. I think, and have some personal experience here, that you can change the way you think about things, the way you approach things, etc. And you can certainly develop the way successful people look at the world. I actually think the banana metaphor is excellent: a certain technique may not work for person A, who thinks about the world in A way. But, that person can work to change their mind, to ripen, and eventually see the world close to the way that person B does.
- mistercow 15y ago
  >You're making a huge assumption here that the way someone's mind works is fixed and unalterable. Well first off, that's not what I meant by my analogy. I was making a point about causality vs. correlation. Secondly people's minds are certainly alterable, but the extent to which they can be altered is not unlimited. Moreover, given a scale with A) altering your mind so that you can adopt someone else's habits, and B) adopting habits which play to your current strengths, it makes more sense to tend toward B when possible.