Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by donatj | Hacker News Reader

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I've worked in the software industry for just over twenty years now. In my experience basically without question the most productive people I have known have had the messiest most chaotic setups online and offline. Hundreds of windows open, more icons on their desktop than it can display.

I worked with an older gentleman for the last decade until recent layoffs who had worked on Oregon Trail for MECC. Single most productive person I've known in my life. I aspire for half the career he's had. His desk was absolute chaos. He had multiple computers on his desk across an unmatched mix of monitors, all as described above, controlled with Synergy.

The least productive people I've known have clean aesthetic desks, no icons on their desktop, and inbox zero.

Don't get me wrong, there are absolutely people that are a mess that aren't productive at all. I have worked with them too. Frankly, in their case, cleanup like this suggests probably would actually help. I've just never seen the opposite.

I just know that the most productive people I've known have been insanely good at managing chaos, and lean into it.

Hear hear!

I maintain it’s because productive people know how to focus on what matters, to cut through the noise, and it’s not just by carefully thinking things through (though that’s an important skill too). It’s partly because they “just don’t see” the noise - if you like, they’re not distracted by it, they can tune it out - or rather, they don’t need to spend any energy tuning it out because they don’t ‘see’ or hear it in the first place!

I’ve frequently been: 1. Complimented on my productivity 2. Told I need a less messy workspace/environment.

One of these is true, the other is a road to depression - wasting time and energy tidying up and then feeling like I got no actual work done because, well, I didn’t!

There’s obviously a limit - continual small bits of sorting and organising ensure I can still sit at my desk and find stuff on my computer, but it doesn’t need to be the extreme clear-desk policy that proponents of Clean Work seem to be pushing. There’s a huge zone in between the two extremes.

> if you like, they’re not distracted by it, they can tune it out - or rather, they don’t need to spend any energy tuning it out because they don’t ‘see’ or hear it in the first place!

The human body is not made of regular lines.You can see it in ergonomics accessories. They are not what we would call beautiful. While I love to tidy every once in a while (mostly for cleaning), everything will eventually fallback into some organic arrangement where I don't need to think about what I need and what I don't will eventually get removed. I think about task planning, then I offload the result in the environment. Starting fresh every day will just gobble up my time in order to reconstruct the environment again.

I don’t tidy up very often, but when I do, it doesn’t take much time or energy. I just dump everything that isn’t version controlled into a junk folder, and it feels great.

I keep Inbox zero, mostly, using this system. If I haven't read it, how important could it have been, CTRL+A, DEL gets you to zero.

Instructions unclear: I purchased multiple bins, labeled them V1, V2, V3, and have dumped most of my pens, pencils and notebooks into them. What now?

Lol

>In my experience basically without question the most productive people I have known have had the messiest most chaotic setups online and offline. Hundreds of windows open, more icons on their desktop than it can display.

Man, I wish this would also work in reverse, like being messy would automatically make me a good programmer.

Agreed to an extent. I think there are different axes at play here though.

Their desk and computer setup is chaotic, but their "task system" is probably very minimalist. Either it's nonexistent - everything's in their head. Or it's a scribble pad with the next few things they need to do which they cross off and then write new things. Or it's a .txt. At most it's a .md but even that's already stretching it.

What it's not is an immaculately structured maximalist Notion workspace - which is what the "clean desk" people you're talking about often prefer.

Likely because the high-productive people have already transcended basic hurdles like getting overwhelmed or distracted through sustained long-term practice, to the extent that they no longer feel having an uncluttered environment necessary to have an uncluttered mind at work.

It is unlikely this will work for those less experienced.

I know and have known plenty intelligent coworkers that spend more time organizing and creating structures and planning than actually doing anything useful. I had a colleague who spent so much time setting up his coding environment and whatnot - that when we finished the project he hadn't done anything. at all.

I have known several highly productive people who were also neat.

I one had a roommate who, when they get stuck on a technical problem, start cleaning. The change of pace would often give them sparks of inspirations -- sort of like shower-thoughts without the shower.

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