Stop being a productivity nerd, and chill out

As I gained experience, I wanted to maximize output only, figuring that input would naturally minimize itself as I got more proficient.

Now I only worry about 2 things:

  1. maximizing output of the top item on my list
  2. making sure the right item is at the top of my list

In the process it serializes the threading and so it's going to destroy the threaded nature of these reposted conversations. In this way it's rebranding the information served here, misrepresenting the attention commenters here give the post, and confusing the outside reader.

I know there's an attempt to smooth these difficulties with the "This comment was originally posted on [[Hacker News]]" line but that leaves me still confused as to the origin and meaning of the comment quoted. I interpret that to mean, ridiculously, that commenters at HN gave their permission explicitly to repost comments on Feint. Actually, it even appears to me that they personally moved it.

This is, of course, very similar to the the controversy AllThingsDigital stirred up a little while ago (http://waxy.org/2009/04/all_things_digital_and_transparency_...) but I don't think Feint is really making a large improvement over that situation.

a) They impose a mental tax on you; it's hard to get into a flow state when you're busy thinking about whether you're doing what you should.

b) Make chores/minor tasks, etc., appear to be a good thing (after all, you're doing something productive) and idly staring into space a bad thing, even though the latter enables you to recharge your batteries so you can focus more intently on what's important. I think this is exacerbated because if you can't think of what big important thing you're supposed to be doing right now it's tempting to do something small just so you aren't "wasting time".

c) Also I've found that when I've done these things I wind up gaming the hell out of them so that I end up looking good by whatever metric is measured without actually achieving much more.

Yes, however, time management and team coordination do add overhead. Teams, however are much more scaleable that individuals. In addition, they are also fault tolerant.

Put in hacker terms... a great programmer is an superfast solid state drive, whereas a team is a raid 6 array with a bunch of disks that are slower and of varying speeds.

Overall, the solid state disk might individually perform better (and possibly be cheaper), but generally most people tend to agree the RAID array is a better way to go if you can afford it.

What works for me as a programmer is to get into the zone as quickly as possible. I like to set aside one day of the week to handle miscellaneous tasks. Other days its all about the zone.

There is a story about Schwab (Carnegie Steel) hiring a consultant to gave him the best productivity advice. The advice was to start with the most important thing first. Stick with it and when its done move onto the next important task.

Schwab loved the advice and promptly paid the consultant his fee. It worked even then.

Well, if you didn't achieve anything, you aren't really being productive.

I think a lot of people get confused between 'what you do' and 'how you do'.

Choosing the most important thing you need to do in the day first, or the 3 most important things you need done, etc is "what to do". When you have issues with that you spend your day working in things that dont optimally lead you towards your goals.

Doing it in the zone, at night while you spend the day on twitter or hacker news, etc is 'how you do'. When people have issues with this they get to the end of the day and notice the tasks they set up to do haven't been done to the person's full potential.

Auditing your time and thinking 'should I really be doing this?' is a 'what to do' tool. It has nothing to do with the fact you work at night or during the day.

Put into pg language, detailed time tracking only works for people on a manager's schedule, and not those who are makers. See http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html for an explanation of that.

1.) I feel highly motivated to achieve the task, and I become a very high achiever. I finish a task in 2-3 days that would otherwise be achieved by inefficient communication and discussion of a 5-employee team in a month. I do this without feeling any obligation to do it and without thinking about schedules, startup deliverables etc. I concentrate solely on the design problem and the reward of achieving it. I feel rewarded when it is finished. It feels like a celebration of the mind's capabilities.

2.) I look ahead and start planning about deliverables and deadlines. Since the tasks are so overwhelming on their own, the overall project looks very complicated. I feel overwhelmed, freaked out, and immediately stop having progress. I also start to have stress-related health degradation signs, and I get into an unproductivity cycle that is very hard to break.

I got this so many times that now I try hard to find ways to keep myself in (1) without going into (2). I find that keeping my focus on the challenge but not the time schedule helps. Think of it this way, if you stay in (1), you will get very timely progress anyway, so no need to think about schedules and deadlines.

It is also ironic how the same task may look so overwhelming and so much fun in different perspectives. It is actually fun that becomes your hell when you get schedules, deadlines, competitors and finance in the loop.

Your managers have other crap to do than to watch what you're doing 24/7 (or "8/5" for that matter) - they're much more likely to just hand you something so they can get it off their own plate and just expect you to handle it.

" You’ll end up spending your entire day “being productive” without actually achieving anything."

"Being productive" == achieving things. If you're not achieving something, you're not being productive (either because you're not doing anything [procrastination] or because you are doing the wrong things [i.e. your priorities are not set properly])

"Rather than this stupid auditing crap, come up with 3 tasks that are most important to your success. Do each one first thing in the day (my day is backwards btw, as in my day starts at around 9pm at night, im a bit wierd). Take a break in between each task and then feel free to procrastinate after."

This DOES NOT WORK. The only case in which this is a viable strategy is if you work for yourself and have no hard deadlines and you just want to keep yourself from reading reddit all day long - it doesn't work in most real-world situations. Like for example, your boss puts another project on your plate. But that never happens...

Take the advice of the late Randy Pausch - keep a time journal [http://www.scribd.com/doc/2519267/Time-Log-Sheet], and REVIEW that data (the data is useless if you just fill out time journals and let them sit in some folder somewhere).

Personally, I'd work on whatever I should be doing.... If it's as fun (or serves my long-term objective, need, wants, better)

Unearned guilt is a bad thing.