Hacker News Reader

Comment by thomas | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: Is anything less productive than reading other people's productivity thoughts? It's a combination of procrastination and finding out what works for someone who is presumably more productive than you (ie: guilt).

View on HN

One less productive thing I can think about is reading a comment about how unproductive reading thoughts about productivity is :)

For the commenter, but think about the time saving for the readers of the comment!

It's turtles all the way down.

Or in this case, tomatoes.

(My first hn joke. Not sure if jokes are allowed but sure was worth it.)

I don't get your first HN joke.

Pomodoro timers are shaped like tomatoes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Wait, is this not the joke? Why's this getting downvoted so much?

I also read it as "throwing tomatoes", as each commentator was criticizing the previous level as being unproductive.

There’s always next time!

"The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. ... Each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the Italian word for 'tomato', after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer that Cirillo used as a university student."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

Thank you

As someone who had never contributed anything to this forum other than mediocre jokes, I can attest it's allowed (but more often than not downvoted to oblivion).

In the article you just read, the author writes an entire section: "2. Every productivity system stops working eventually and there’s nothing you can do about it"

If you're like me and have ADHD, you read looking for your next system that will work for a while.

And if you're a night owl, you inevitably learn how to sleep right through your alarms.

I was procrastinating and read about the Pomedoro technique and it worked pretty well for me. Sometimes you need a trick I guess.

Pomodoro worked great for me until I just stopped wanting to do my job.

But really who doesn't want to be super productive as we work ourselves to extinction.

Same, but it's good as a stop gap until I clear up enough stuff to be comfortable to take at least 3 weeks off.

The same, Pomodoro works well for me when I'm already motivated. It helps focus and is a decent multiplier when I have a baseline already.

When motivation is at a low, the 25/5 flips around.

Not everyone who comes across this post will be spending more time reading about productivity than being productive.

The term I've heard for that is 'productivity porn'. (as in, getting the satisfaction from observing productivity, without actually putting in the effort yourself).

I think it can actually be very productive if you engage with the article and take notes.

Example: I read the following article over the course of 2 days. While I was reading it, I had VSCode open and was taking notes in Markdown. While this article only mildly changed how I acted, it definitely planted a few seeds in my head, which I am trying to cultivate. And now I have a source of notes on productivity I can look at any time!

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/P3zrurj5hHKFKDL3M/productivi...

You never know when you’re going to find the next trick that will actually work to fool your brain into letting you get shit done for a while. These days I mostly rely on my own version of the Pomodoro method but I have definitely found value in other ideas now and then.

Commenting on them ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com