Producer vs. Consumer
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I find if I do things in the reverse order (come home from work, plop down and start checking Twitter/reddit) then it quickly becomes dinner time and my brain has "shut down" for the day. It's easy to lull myself into thinking "Well Matt, today is almost over so no sense in starting something, just work on $FOO tomorrow".
Another trick that I've found that is highly effective for me is to "link" a producing behavior to a consuming one. I'm a bit of a TV addict so I made a deal with myself - I can watch as much TV as I want, as long as I'm doing it on the treadmill. Maybe you really enjoy listening to podcasts or sports talk radio, allow yourself to consume but only while you are doing chores or running errands. Some would argue that this is not a good way to build habits (in the sense that you are doing a behavior for the wrong motivations - in my case I am exercising in order to watch TV not to become healthier) but its been working for me so far.
In that book, Leo recommends your days 3 MITs (Most Important Tasks). These tasks are derived from your Goals, and Projects lists (He recommends that you start with only ONE goal for year, for e.g Learn Spanish, and break it down into 6-month goals, 1-month goals, and weekly goals). Furthermore, we all have projects on our plates, but he recommends that we
1. Pick only 3 projects (of which one should be tied to your ONE goal)
2. Finish ALL 3 projects before putting 3 more on the plate.
With all that in place, you should, on a day-to-day basis establish the 3 things you that will take you one step closer to your GOAL, or completion of a project - These MITs (decided on the night before, or first thing in the morning) are the first things you do everyday. That way, you know you have knocked out important items without having the day, or your manager, or your email throw you off.
He even recommends checking your email at 10 am (if possible, or later than the absolute first thing in the morning, because if you are like most people, your email usually has a few To-dos in it).
I have just incorporated his advice and am attempting to apply the same and I have to say that I feel so much less cluttered and far more focused. Knowing that I am doing what I need to do and then relegating myself to the not-so-important tasks later on the day seems to free up so much of the internal chatter in my head.
[Disclaimer - The link above is an a non-affiliate link, and I have no connection with the author other than having just read his book]
As far as I can tell, the best way to work toward being the person you want to be is to trick yourself into making a habit of it before it becomes too onerous to the lizard brain. It's only things that you do without thinking that will be able to override the desire to sit on the couch and consume calories.
Not that I think reducing distraction and cutting out that which is not necessary is bad, but when putting it into practice involves making all these lists day after day it starts to sound like New Year's resolutions -- ready to be abandoned by February.
Simply putting, if you are coding without stretching yourself, if you don't put much thought in it and do it almost subconsciously you are not learning anything.
He suggest to avoid acquiring habits for the things you want get better at. He supports his words with real life examples. I could relate it to myself, and found his techniques useful in my life. Overall it is a nice read.
For example, when playing a stringed instrument, if every note you play gets bogged down in what you have to do to make that note happen (place the finger down quickly, with a pop, then relax it instantly, move the bow arm in the opposite direction, allowing the fingers to cushion the crunch that would otherwise occur -- and that's a ridiculously simplified version) you would be literally unable to play.
Likewise, if you're constantly having to be super conscious of syntax, or thinking hard about how to split a string, you'll have a hard time writing code that does anything.
In fact, I think a lot of getting better at any complex task is the process of making the lower-level parts of the task subconscious, and being able to think at increasing levels of abstraction. The only way this can bog you down is if you refuse to revisit lower-level skills if their implementation is causing you problems.
From the standpoint of productivity, since that's what we're talking about here, if you have to list a bunch of long terms goals, and split them into tasks and whatnot in order to get yourself to start working, you've already lost. There's no way this will win out, in the long run, over the things that you do and want without thinking. Working has to be something that you just do. Once you've started then you can be conscious of what you're doing.
I couldn't find the exact citation from the book, but I will try to write down what I remember.
Colvin explains that with an example of Tiger Woods. He says that Tiger never subconsciously hit the ball. When he starts the movement of the arm to hit the ball and someone from the background screams, he can stop his arm halfway, and then after he is no longer distracted, he hits again.
Normally, when a mediocre player starts moving his arm in order to hit the ball, he no longer able to stop halfway through the action of arm swinging. And usually he would miss, because of concentration loss. He addresses that kind of behavior due to automation of some actions. He says that after some action has gotten automated, person performing it has almost no control over it. He also gives example of the professional car drivers and average drivers. Average driver will not be able to control the dangerous situation on the road due to the fact that his actions are almost automated. While professional drivers are able to see the situation much earlier, and steer and break more efficiently, because they are in better control of situation due to less automation of driving action (Less habit more conscious control).
I hope I could convey his words clearly, because I am not a native English speaker
Edit: Regarding programming, I noticed, the more code I write subconsciously, the more stupid bugs I get. Sometimes I write mysql_real_escape_string() instead of mysql_fetch_array() and then wonder whats gone wrong. I even look at the line with this bug for several minutes, until I stop, look away for a bit, and try to switch from autopilot to manual mode. After I fire up my real brain, I spot the bug in seconds, and have a stupid smile for a half second or so :)
The secret is not being aware of all the minor details, it's the ability to pay attention at the correct level of abstraction when there is a problem. I once had a horrible bug that after several rounds of testing seemed vary odd, until I got the ram swapped out on the test box and everything worked just fine. I don't assume RAM is faulty every day, but it's something to consider when no other option seems reasonable.
1. to be powerful. Being powerful makes them able to consume more, hence being more happy. People do everything to be more comfortable.
2. to solve peoples problems, make the world better place = to feed their internal ego, prove the world that he/she can be helpful. This is a subliminal instinct of humanbeing having the main goal is being powerful among other species. Being powerful - see point 1.
3. to make money. Having more money makes people able to consume more, without any problems.
Aren't there any producer without a goal gaining power to consume more? I don't know, maybe. Don't we always say that if we want people use our products first we should ask ourselves would I use it? If yes, this means you are a producer, because you made a problem-solving product. But this also means you are a consumer, because you would like to use it. Mark uses facebook. Is he a producer or consumer?
Do you know any producer that don't consume 100 times more than avarage consumers?!
And surely not 100x more than the average consumer.
You think Linus goes on reading blogs and watching movies all day?
Steve Jobs was quite a miimalist in how he lived. He even debated for months what furniture to buy -- and he lived for a while in an unfurnished apartment.
A huge lot of musicians when asked in interviews say the don't listen to much music besides what they work on.
Etc...
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Gates fan, I love Apple, I have 9 apple computers at home.
Before 90s he was a cool geek, famous millionaire guy, consuming too much clothes. He had always trendy fashion look. He bought one of most expensive cars when he was in his 20s. A Porsche then Mercedes. In his dashing days at Apple and NeXT, he weared the most expensive Brioni suits. He had a Plane. A super expensive plane. Do you know why? He said: "What I really need is a plane where I can take my family to Hawaii on vacation, go to the East Coast." He loved to stay in expensive resort hotels. Consumed too much there. Sorry but for me staying in a resort hotel doing nothing but looking to the sea 20 days is one of last things what would I do before I die.
What are you aiming for here? Has Steve been happier in this part of his life? Why has he changed his life style? To get unhappier?
>Steve Jobs was quite a miimalist in how he lived. He even debated for months what furniture to buy -- and he lived for a while in an unfurnished apartment.
...is factually incorrect.
Sorry, but I have a pretty good idea. I've also read the book. I think it's you that you didn't understand what is being a "consumer" IN THE CONTEXT of this discussion.
It has nothing to do with buying expensive cars, suits, lear jets and stuff. It has nothing to do even with buying lots and lots of them. Even if Jobs had a garage with 1,000 luxury cars and a walk in closet with 10,000 designer suits it wouldn't matter at all in the discussion we're having.
I might have muddled the waters a little with the "no-furniture room" example, but the discussion we're having (and the original article on reddit too), is about producing vs consuming as a life balance. Not about having less. As for my "no furniture" argument, that was not meant to imply that not buying stuff matters, just that consuming was not his goal, whereas building products (and companies) was.
Nobody would argue that Job's life was much more about producing than consuming stuff. He din't spend his hours in luxury car shows, nor in fashion boutiques, he spend them thinking about business and products. And I'd say he even did so while staying in "expensive resort hotels". The main criterion is if the items consumed are the GOAL of your life or just DECORATION. To put it in other words, Jobs was no Paris Hilton, nor "Hoarders" material.
Anyway, consider Buckminster Fuller as a counterexample to some of your points. He definitely had the spirit of a producer. Here is a quote from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/automobiles/collectibles/1... :
Fuller was born in Massachusetts in 1895 and died
in 1983. He was admitted to Harvard twice, and twice
expelled. He went from job to job until he was broke.
After illness killed his young daughter, he had a
revelation. He determined to make his life “an
experiment to find what a single individual can
contribute to changing the world and benefiting all
humanity.”1. to be powerful. Being powerful makes them able to consume more, hence being more happy. People do everything to be more comfortable.
Some people produce, are creative, because they just enjoy it. So they aren't doing it for something else, because the doing itself is fulfilling.
Being powerful makes them able to consume more, hence being more happy.
You definitely don't get happier by consuming more. Why aren't modern western societies happier than the poorer ones?
People do everything to be more comfortable.
Sure they do, but they don't get happier by doing it, that's the point. I think it's just a evolutionary strategy to save energy.
Speak for yourself. Actually, it seems like you already have spoken for yourself. What I mean to say is "don't pretend to speak for everyone when you are only speaking for yourself". It's mighty presumptuous of you to claim that you know the motivations of everyone in the world who is a producer.
My quote isn't the only example of this in your post, but it's the most egregious.
I took it one step further though. I knew how weak I was from years of habitual web surfing, so I forced a productive routine on myself by using the open-source app "SelfControl" to actually restrict me from accessing sites I knew were a time sink.
I also knew that I was unlikely to actually start the app at the beginning of the day, so I scripted it in my calendar to start the app an hour before I get up, that way I have no choice but to work. At the end of my workday, the app quits and I can then surf to my heart's desire.
So far, I've found this to be an ideal solution.
It's about focus and goals which can only be achieved by concerted effort over a long period.
Since consumers need producers and producers need consumers, you really can't argue that either one is inherently bad.
However, I would argue that our intent should be biased toward producing, since producing helps us grow. Consuming in this context has connotations of passivity, and while rest is important, too much rest will make us weak. Also, when you are consuming you can be mindless. When you are producing, you stretch your mind. Not only do you have to think about how to meet your goal, you have to think about what you are producing in context of value and other people. It's mind-expanding.
Also, it is natural for us to want to grow, so if we spend most of our time in passive consumption it will negatively affect our mood and sense of well-being in the world.
That wonderful book you read? It wasn't created by someone reading; it was created by someone writing. If everyone read Wikipedia and no one wrote Wikipedia, there wouldn't be anything to read.
Instead of "producer" and "consumer" I could have said "force of nature" and "hopeless stimulation junkie".
Whether or not you make anything of value to exchange with other people is not really important. How much you're consuming is also pretty irrelevant. The important thing is that your brain is in "make things happen" mode, not "stimulate me" mode.
I wasn't writing about economics, I wrote about you getting what you really want out of today and not having your attention and focus stolen.
This sounds like a slightly forced version of Hemingway's method:
"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start."
(i.e. stop for the day when you know exactly what your next step is, not when you're 'finished' and definitely not when you're stuck)
I find there's a certain paradox in the fact that we're probably all here on Hacker News and Reddit during our workdays, so we're mostly slacking. The question of why we slack and how to slack less (or whether we should slack less) is deep, relevant, immediate, and not covered really by this advice.
The first problem with distraction I think we could call the Train Problem -- unrelated to the trolley problem in ethics. This is the problem that you need a higher-order reflective process to 'switch tracks', so that your brain is like a runaway train on the track of distraction even though you literally have every opportunity to un-distract yourself. Flipping a switch and jumping on a track to the right destination just requires a little bit of oomph to do it, and the only reason why Wikipedia and webcomics and news sites are so distracting is because we forget to have this moment of "oomph" to pursue something better.
I've started to think of it this way: that the basic unit of will is Resolve. And resolve is as simple as choosing a future that you have somehow committed to moving forward. It's the moment that you say "I am getting married to her" but before you have set the date, or decided where, or proposed, or anything of that sort. You switch mental contexts to take something new for granted. In the philosophical sense, I suppose, we would say that you choose to believe something new. But I prefer to think of it as a database-driven programmer: we're talking about your brain querying itself, independent of the world it models. A resolve occurs when you make your brain return new, different results.
There's a subtler aspect which philosopher John Searle calls "the continuous causal gap" -- the sense in which you can resolve to think of yourself as a French-learner, but there is another resolve needed to take your first lesson, and then more resolve is needed to continue the lessons, and then you have to resolve to visit France and immerse yourself, and so on. It's a continuous gap of times when you need to "shift tracks" when you could have chosen not to shift them. The initial resolve only functions to guide the future ones -- "I am the sort of person who is learning French" just makes it easier to say, "what should I do today? Go to my French lesson." So there are mini-resolves every day which we've got to also consider.
But while this gives a useful view of the problem, it doesn't answer it. What went wrong, in your experience, with the trick of "starting off pointed in the right direction"? What did you need in order to "break free" of distractions -- what sort of system is conducive to reminding us to have these higher-order reflective processes where we can say, "yeah, I should really switch tracks, right now, at this instant"?
(I'll give you an example of something which makes it much harder: tabbed browsing. Closing a tab to signify the end of one distraction brings up immediately another distraction which I said I "would get to." Another thing which makes distractions on Hacker News more tempting is the knowledge that they will expire, so that if I do not read it now, I might never read it.)
I personally try and give myself at least an hour a day for just consuming whatever content I'm in the mood for. More times than not, I find use for this information sometime in my life. I think the hardest part is curating this content so it will be the most useful, which I think this post is getting at. Maybe the author doesn't find a benefit to reading their Twitter/Facebook stream which is fine, but this is not a producer vs. consumer problem, it's a signal to noise problem.
Also, I don't think it's so much about producer versus consumer (despite the title), but instead starting the day with easy productivity, to get into a mindset of getting things done. Consuming content is important, and can be very beneficial when curated well, but it's much easier to start consuming things than to start producing.
Does anyone know why this happens and ggod ways to stop it from happening.
Before I eat my breakfast or take a shower, I'll do a couple of pressups until I can't any more (usually about 40) and then some sit-ups(30 crunches and 30 normal ones). I'll then do so really light stretching (no idea what the names are: fetus position to stretching my back as I try to look at the ceiling etc...)
I'm currently living in Russia right now and trying to learn the language so my whole breakfast/exercise/shower I've got some Russian audio book playing in the background as well.
Related is Richard Feynman's method, quoting https://findings.com/joejanowski/document/18782:
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"
Reading digital copies has a major advantage in that you can search by keyword and only read the stuff that is pertinent to your research/goal. The rest is useless and you don't even have to skim through it...
I think I heard it for the first time 10 years ago from Brian Tracy : http://amzn.to/zv02VR
Although I am sure that others mentioned it before him.
* Gratuitous affiliate link included.