What I Learned About Productivity by Writing About Productivity
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I have a business, a job, two young children and there's this thing going on in the world that makes everything kind of strange and our of our control. Every time I read an article like this one, and this one isn't particularly good, if I may add, I feel like saying, yes, right, you go ahead and try that calendar blocking thing with two children at home generating an almost infinite amount of entropy in all four dimensions. And do tell me how that willpower thing is working out for you, that thing about just cranking on with the most important goals every day, when your nights are most unreliable, and you're just generally exhausted all the time.
But I keep clicking those links anyway, secretly hoping that one day, I'll crack the mystery of productivity for stressed-out parents...
But since we're on the topic, I'll share what I think is the secret now: the less you try to accomplish, the more you'll accomplish. Super-laser-focus is the only thing that works for me. That, and being kind to myself when I have unproductive days, which is almost every day.
I suffer from Insomnia, I have for many years, I'm up at 1am after a day which I let me discipline slide. I didn't feel as productive as I should've been today, So you know what I did? I worked till 8:30pm. I punished myself. I broke my new golden rule of getting off the computer by 6pm, which was working so well for me.
Then what happened? I didn't have any wind down time, then I couldn't sleep and now I'm up stressed about everything I probably won't get done tomorrow because I'll be too tired to focus on complex tasks, it's now a compound fracture, a cluster bomb of issues.
I think you're 100% right. Just walk away while you still can, retreat, then come out on the attack the next day feeling better.
I wish I'd taken my own advice.
At 5 pm or earlier you stop working. Then you focus on relaxing as much as possible to recharge. If you have kids, it's harder but it's even more important you learn to relax and recharge because they depend on you.
I find it incredibly odd how people can be absolutely bad at basic life skills and act as if it were some universal thing about mankind.
If they got some condition in their body or in their mind that makes then a permanent wreck, alright that's a thing. Or sometimes life just happens and your mother is dead - alright, you can be a wreck for some time.
This shouldn't be the norm.
Few things that have helped me:
- Have something like google calendar that reminds you so don't forget something important. Avoid turning small tasks into huge ones by missing a critical deadline
- Change the game when it is stacked against you. Most productivity advice is written about what can you do alone in the current situation (game) to improve, when changing situations could make things much better. I see too many people get stuck in bad relationship, bad job, etc. trying to make it work. Find places where the tide is rising and raising all the boats rather than working against you.
- Be kind and realistic to yourself. Look around, life is challenging and nobody wins everthing. Coach yourself the same way you would coach your kids with kindness and empathy and setting them up for success rather than something impossible.
(edit formatting)
1) Get as much information out of your head as possible. Store it somewhere you can find it later, but the specifics don't matter.
2) Segment your tasks into something you can reasonably accomplish in a given time. If you don't get it done you either misunderstood the task or the timeslots, review and try againt later.
3) Start. Just start. It doesn't even have to be something you had on your list. Just decide to do a thing, then do it.
Add analogies and anecdotes, bribe the NYT Best Seller list, and book yourself on the Today Show. Being a productivity writer is easy!
It's not, you'll do it for 8 odd years of your life and complain about how awful it is to everyone else. Constantly. Then tell us kids are the best thing that ever happened to you, no, really, honest.
And then it's done and a few years later you've got teenagers living with you who despise every fibre of your being.
The mystery is quite easily solved too. It used to take a village to raise a child, but we're now all doing it alone, isolated from our neighbours, and that's why you've got no time.
Hope that helps you to not bother reading any productivity articles until your kids are 8 or so.
TL;DR Stop reading them, they're not aimed at you.
Edit: Also, I'm only saying this to you, because I can't say it to my friends/sister :) Feels good to get that rant off my chest!
http://markforster.squarespace.com/autofocus-system/
It gives you the permission to "just" work on something for five minutes.
I like to look at it like this: time management systems and practices, at the personal level, are stacking lego blocks. You find the pieces that work for you and combine them - there's no one true system. Calendar stacking solves one particular problem - that problem may not be yours.
But the largest tip is having a "don't-do" or "someday/maybe" list. These are things that look productive but you have to actively say no to, so that you can say "yes" to what matters. It's not about habits or similar - it's about great ideas and things that might make sense later but you just have no time for it. So you write it in (and maybe some details) so that you can just release it.
It's a lego block.
Another lego block is the "3 things." Ruthlessly prioritize to the most important things. Have a very low priority queue for a day.
But ultimately, the key is that even the time gurus know that they are writing for a subset of all people. There is no one true method.
Currently my wife and I use a shared google doc, and while it is far from perfect, it ends up working well for us since it works on our phones and computers, is easy to bookmark, and the interface never changes.
Something like fish shell will never work for me. Not every machine is mine. So I tried Zsh. It turns out that better tab completion, syntax highlighting and suggestions does speed me up, but I don't feel lost when the machine has a default bash install.
The hours I've spent customizing just to decide it's too much and undoing half of it is baffling. At least I had fun doing it, or that's what I tell myself.
* Now
* Today
* Next Week
* The future
Anything more complex is a waste of time as it assumes I can predict how and why I need to work on something.
The end result of which is an ocean of SEO blogspam written by the the purveyors of such tools, reducing the signal-to-noise ratio the well below the threshold of usability.
I find that in my 30s, the solution for productivity woes is much the same as the ancient wisdom of my parents' computer-free generation:
(i) ensure decent nutrition and sleep
(ii) step away from the screens periodically
(iii) spend time outdoors
(iv) review your goals at the start of each day
(v) perfection is rarely necessary
"If it's not a definite yes, then it's a no."
Everything else I've found is noise.
Dossing about, loafing, or idling are not the work of the devil, they are necessary to getting things done since we need to pause and reflect, and conjure up ideas typically in silence.
My favorite phrase regarding this matter is as follows:
"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time".
Ironically, I got this by reading everything about productivity. Not a joke...back in the 80's, I read every book on the subject because I really wanted to know. And have been a bit of a productivity addict ever since. But now, getting the long view, I wish I had just learned more about who I really am, what matters to me, and just used the energy to live my own life.
Recently, a guy passed away in our little town. I thought to myself that he was a rare thing, just himself, not to shaped by some idea of what he should be. Taking to him was like sitting near a stream, or a warm campfire. Somehow so nourishing. Would like to see more of that in the world.
He even tried it once with his wife to avoid clearing out the garage. That tactic he only tried once, though, for obvious reasons.
Group productivity and collaboration, however, is a problem with square root complexity (if not worse) of the number of collaborators. It is not a solved problem at all. I hate all the existing ways and tools for sharing, working on something together, planning, scheduling, all the Asanas, Trellos and Jiras of the world. They all feel somehow wrong and counter-productive for any more or less non-trivial collaboration.
I think we all know there's a golden opportunity here, just not clear yet what a better collab tool should be like for 2021 and onward.
If by "solved" you mean we have a theory, then perhaps.
But truly solved would include how to get yourself to do it.
Chief problem being that anything boring was physically painful to me.
Pair programming helped a lot, but those gigs are hard to find.
Eventually diagnosed with ADHD. Completely shocking to experience “normal” with medication. I no longer take any medication (BP), but I can somewhat deal with boring stuff now, where before I could not.
Feels like I learned how to focus. The physical pain part is gone.
It’s still hard without it. If I could tolerate the side effects I would continue to take medication. But I at least now know what it feels like to stay on task.
Trello boards (Kanban boards in general) work great for certain types of people like designers, but they've never worked great for engineers I've worked with.
Jira is often just way too complicated.
Slack is great for asynchronous team meetings but if you're not checking in reguarly, you might find yourself scrolling way up to figure out what people are discussing.
A Github pull request + code review workflow is great for collaborating in code, but for documentation writing, some writers don't get it (and struggle with version control -- to them, track changes makes more sense). Google Docs makes more sense.
Almost all group collaboration solutions are at best local minima for the group you have right now and for the types of stuff you need to accomplish. Add or remove people from the group, and the dynamic changes.
That said, I have found my own local minima in Google Docs, and Markdown design docs + Mermaid diagrams in Azure Devops wikis (Github wikis are similar). But I also live in a word-centric culture. These things might not work so well in visual cultures.
Since it was in Bloomberg, I thought the article might be about productivity, dollars of GDP produced per unit of effort. An update to Chad Syverson's 2011 survey article, What Determines Productivity, perhaps.
Instead it's part of the victim-blaming industry of "if you're not frantically busy, you're wasting your life".
What's with the excessive productivity propaganda the past few years. Is that what humans are? What humans exist to be/do? Be products that produce as much as possible? So much time/resources/etc wasted to be more productivity. What's the end goal here?
From one overstated and meaningless self-help word to another. Is that what a human exists to do? Provide "value" to the community?
> After work I play piano, chess etc and any improvement done to these are "productive" too because I'm increasing my value to my community by making music, playing chess etc.
How does that provide value to the "community"? Did you ask anyone if you playing the piano or chess provided value to them?
Funny, I play the piano, chess, etc for my own personal enjoyment. Didn't realize I had to play it for the community 's benefit. What else do I owe the community? So as I can better attune my productivity?
Well, you are part of the community. If you get value from playing piano or chess then you've provided value to the community.
I think there are two reasons to have chosen community here. Firstly you could chose to do thinks for the benefit of someone else, if that's what you want. Secondly it gets you to think about the externalities that exist.
I guess the person you are replying to thought it was obvious that a person is a member of the groups that they are a member of.