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Comment by alexandercrohde | Hacker News Reader

I could not disagree more with this article's tactical advice (though the intention is great). If I could go back in time and tell myself anything when I first got into engineering it would be "Be sure to take at least 20% of your day to not code, but rather to think about / engage with / socialize with others. Do not optimize for personal output, you will help the system most by improving the system rather than executing 25% more. And you can't improve the system unless you learn the social graces, speak the lingo, are in a good mood, appear patient, and aren't counting all the seconds that are 'wasted' by these interactions"

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I read the article as speaking more about (1) developing a disciplined mindset, and (2) applying that to coding in the context of game development. For me, the article is a reminder that productivity is a mentality and commitment, rather than a metric.

Were you to apply the mentality of "get work done productively" to other domains such social / mobile, IT, or ecommerce, you get a different approach, which is exactly what you described: taking an 80/20 approach of coding and designing, optimizing for team productivity rather than individual.

I think this is up to interpretation. Optimizing for output could mean "improving the system", polishing your soft skills, rather than spending that 20% learning how to code in assembly. On the other hand maybe that assembly knowledge would have lead to creating something that would make others more productive, and end up saving years of combined humanity productivity. It is entirely up to the human in question on how time is utilized.

Unfortunately, most of us are just happy with our performance. We are having "meh" performance and then we look at others that achieve things and we think its luck and good timing.. While there are cases of luck/good timing, in most cases people spit blood, coding/hustling endless hours, pushing themselves constantly, being modest about their knowledge, being methodic and efficient. And the best part is that they are like pigs in mud, they enjoy it to the max. Even if everything failed, they would still emerge with a sense of achievement, just like kids playing with legos.

This is what the take away from this article should be, choose your path and execute like a boss. You are not a snowflake that can do things in 1 hour vs. 1 week, you are a spoilt kid thinking you are awesome, ending up wasting your true potential.

From the article...

>I still screw off during the day. I am not a code grinding automaton. I read Facebook, chat with others, Tweet, shop on Amazon, get coffee, read forums, write blog posts like this one and I'm totally fine with that.

I'm not sure that was what the article was suggesting. I didn't read the advice as only being directed towards the production of code (though I'll admit that that was it's focus and I didn't read too closely) but rather the setting and completion of set short term goals which may encompass affecting social, bureaucratic or systemic change.

Think the author said he was spending 80% of his day not coding, and was spending too much time on reddit, facebook, twitter, etc. Though the article certainly would have benefited from a mention of the benefits of coming up for air (he mentioned email as an unproductive task, which I certainly wouldnt agree with)

Sites like reddit, Twitter and Facebook are more like feeding a dopamine addiction. It's not really a healthy break to take. Taking breaks is good if you go for a walk, talk to a co-worker, meditate, grab a coffee, do some stretches, go to the gym. Breaks are not good if you're getting your dopamine hits on various fun websites. I mean they're fine as long as you mentally treat them like having a beer or launching Steam and playing a game for a bit. Should you be doing those things at work instead of getting your work done and heading home? Probably not.

Brilliant, had always lumped those together. But it is easy to end a walk.

You're probably not the audience, then. Some of us can really identify with it and have used these kinds of tips to help our focus. I've never been a 60-hour-a-week (let alone 80) kind of guy except when things are absolutely emergency on-fire. I have a very healthy work-life balance which REQUIRES discipline when you're actually working.

and if it were me it would be the absolute opposite.

No offense, but compare your GitHub profile to someone who "grinds" like https://github.com/bketelsen. There is far too much confirmation bias in regards to work-life balance and ability to actually produce. As far as clichés go, I believe that "if you do what you love, then you don't work a day in your life" == productivity.

Only clueless hiring managers assume that a lack of activity on Github means a lack of productivity.

In what world do you live in where you can judge someone's productivity by a public github profile?

I'm not sure that's the right comparison, and it illustrates my point. The correct comparison is how much we help our companies, not how much code we output.

I know people who produce less code but outperform on many more important metrics (salary, title, being valued at the company, whether they make their company more likely to succeed)

You REALLY should look into who the author is...

Here's a hint: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-hook-3743861

Wasn't about the author--I totally agree with author. I was replying to the top commenter, who seemingly is a software engineer and disagrees with the author. I think if anyone has read the history of Carmack, Carmack would agree that productivity is all about incredible focus and his amount and quality of code he output would be his measure of success.

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