This link has been bookmarked by 396 people . It was first bookmarked on 02 Mar 2006, by Mich.
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31 Dec 17
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23 Apr 17
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If you want to be more productive then, you have to recognize this fact and deal with it. First, you have to make the best of each kind of time. And second, you have to try to make your time higher-quality.
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Is there something more important you can work on?
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Why don’t you do that instead?
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But it’s definitely the standard against which I measure my life.
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18 Jul 16
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29 Jun 16
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14 Nov 15
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24 Aug 15
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21 Jun 15
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but what about the hidden assumption? Such comments imply that time is “fungible” — that time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel.
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Time has various levels of quality.
-
First, you have to make the best of each kind of time. And second, you have to try to make your time higher-quality.
-
Choose good problems
-
Is there something more important you can work on?
-
Having a lot of different projects gives you work for different qualities of time.
-
It also makes you more creative. Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in.
-
The psychic pressure of having to remember all of it can make you crazy. The solution is again simple: write it down.
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Make your time higher quality
-
One simple way is to go somewhere interrupters can’t find you
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Eat, sleep, exercise
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eat, sleep, and exercise.
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Talk to cheerful people
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having friends who are cheerful.
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The real productivity problem people have is procrastination.
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But the real question is: what’s going on inside your head?
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whether the task is hard and whether it’s assigned.
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Hard problems
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Break it down
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The first kind of hard problem is the problem that’s too big.
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Simplify it
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The important thing is to have something done right away.
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Once you have something, you can judge it more accurately and understand the problem better. It’s also much easier to improve something that already exists than to work at a blank page.
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Think about it
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Often the key to solving a hard problem will be getting some piece of inspiration.
-
Sit and try and understand the field fully.
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Assigned problems
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The weird thing is that this phenomenon isn’t just limited to other people — it even happens when you try to tell yourself what to do!
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Don’t assign problems to yourself
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Make things fun
-
So the secret to getting yourself to do something is not to convince yourself you have to do it, but to convince yourself that it’s fun. And if it isn’t, then you need to make it fun.
-
to listen to your body. To eat when you’re hungry, to sleep when you’re tired, to take a break when you’re bored, to work on projects that seem fun and interesting.
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19 Sep 14
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20 Jan 14
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It’s easy to start working on something because it’s convenient, but you should always be questioning yourself about it. Is there something more important you can work on? Why don’t you do that instead?
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19 Jan 14
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01 Jan 14
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08 Nov 13
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17 May 13
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13 May 13
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Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in. If you have a bunch of different projects going in different fields, then you have many more ideas you can apply.
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12 May 13
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It’s also much easier to improve something that already exists than to work at a blank page.
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11 May 13
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26 Feb 13
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Choose good problems
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Have a bunch of them
-
Having a lot of different projects gives you work for different qualities of time. Plus, you’ll have other things to work on if you get stuck or bored (and that can give your mind time to unstick yourself).
-
Integrate the list with your life
Once you have this list, the problem becomes remembering to look at it. And the best way to remember to look at it is to make looking at it what you would do anyway. For example, I keep a stack of books on my desk, with the ones I’m currently reading on top. When I need a book to read, I just grab the top one off the stack.
I do the same thing with TV/movies. Whenever I hear about a movie I should watch, I put it in a special folder on my computer. Now whenever I feel like watching TV, I just open up that folder.
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Don’t assign problems to yourself
It’s very tempting to say “alright, I need to put all this aside, hunker down and finish this essay”. Even worse is to try to bribe yourself into doing something, like saying “alright, if I just finish this essay then I’ll go and eat some candy”. But the absolute worst of all is to get someone else to try to force you to do something.
All of these are very tempting — I’ve done them all myself — but they’re completely counterproductive. In all three cases, you’ve basically assigned yourself a task. Now your brain is going to do everything it can to escape it.
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Make things fun
Hard work isn’t supposed to be pleasant, we’re told. But in fact it’s probably the most enjoyable thing I do. Not only does a tough problem completely absorb you while you’re trying to solve it, but afterwards you feel wonderful having accomplished something so serious.
So the secret to getting yourself to do something is not to convince yourself you have to do it, but to convince yourself that it’s fun. And if it isn’t, then you need to make it fun.
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Conclusion
There are a lot of myths about productivity — that time is fungible, that focusing is good, that bribing yourself is effective, that hard work is unpleasant, that procrastinating is unnatural — but they all have a common theme: a conception of real work as something that goes against your natural inclinations.
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And for most people, in most jobs, this may be the case. There’s no reason you should be inclined to write boring essays or file pointless memos. And if society is going to force you to do so anyway, then you need to learn to shut out the voices in your head telling you to stop.
But if you’re trying to do something worthwhile and creative, then shutting down your brain is entirely the wrong way to go. The real secret to productivity is the reverse: to listen to your body. To eat when you’re hungry, to sleep when you’re tired, to take a break when you’re bored, to work on projects that seem fun and interesting.
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If you want to learn more about the pscyhology of motivation, there is nothing better than Alfie Kohn. He’s written many articles on the subject and an entire book, Punished by Rewards, which I highly recommend.
I hope to address how to quit school in a future essay, but you should really just go out and pick up The Teenage Liberation Handbook. If you’re a computer person, one way to quit your job is by applying for funding from Y Combinator. Meanwhile, Mickey Z’s book The Murdering of My Years features artists and activists describing how they manage to make ends meet while still doing what they want.
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24 Feb 13
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spent writing a novel. And sadly, that’s just not the case.
Time has various levels of quality. If I’m walking to the subway station and I’ve forgot
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24 Jan 13
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15 Jan 13
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13 Jan 13
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25 Apr 12
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12 Oct 11
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11 Oct 11
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28 Sep 11
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27 Sep 11
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26 Aug 11
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27 Jul 11
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19 Jul 11
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02 May 11
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29 Apr 11
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05 Apr 11
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Time has various levels of quality.
-
There’s also a mental component
-
First, you have to make the best of each kind of time. And second, you have to try to make your time higher-quality.
-
Spend time efficiently
-
Choose good problems
-
Have a bunch of them
-
Having a lot of different projects gives you work for different qualities of time. Plus, you’ll have other things to work on if you get stuck or bored (and that can give your mind time to unstick yourself).
-
Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in. If you have a bunch of different projects going in different fields, then you have many more ideas you can apply.
-
Make a list
-
For example, my list is programming, writing, thinking, errands, reading, listening, and watching (in that order).
-
Each task can go under the appropriate section, so that you can do it when you have the right kind of time.
-
Once you have this list, the problem becomes remembering to look at it.
-
Make your time higher quality
-
Making the best use of the time you have can only get you so far. The much more important problem is making more higher quality time for yourself.
-
Ease physical constraints
-
Carry pen and paper
-
Avoid being interrupted
-
For tasks that require serious focus, you should avoid getting interrupted.
-
Ease mental constraints
-
Eat, sleep, exercise
-
Talk to cheerful people
-
Share the load
-
working on a hard problem with someone else makes it much easier
-
Procrastination and the mental force field
-
the best way I can describe it is that your brain puts up a sort of mental force field around a task
-
So what causes the mental force field? There appear to be two major factors: whether the task is hard and whether it’s assigned.
-
Hard problems
-
Break it down
-
The first kind of hard problem is the problem that’s too big.
-
A task is a specific concrete step you can take towards your goal.
-
You build up a momentum, each task leading to the next. And as your brain gets crunching on the subject, it becomes easier to solve that subject’s problems.
-
For each of my big projects, I think of all the tasks I can do next for them and add them to my categorized todo list (see above). And when I stop working on something, I add its next possible tasks to the todo list.
-
Simplify it
-
Another kind of hard problem is the one that’s too complicated or audacious.
-
Once you have something, you can judge it more accurately and understand the problem better. It’s also much easier to improve something that already exists than to work at a blank page.
-
Think about it
-
Often the key to solving a hard problem will be getting some piece of inspiration. If you don’t know much about the field, you should obviously start by researching it — see how other people did things, get a sense of the terrain. Sit and try and understand the field fully.
-
Assigned problems
-
People’s heads seem to have a deep avoidance of being told what to do.
-
Create a false assignment
-
This presents a rather obvious solution: if you want to work on X, tell yourself to do Y. Unfortunately, it’s sort of difficult to trick yourself intentionally, because you know you’re doing it.
-
One way is to get someone else to assign something to you.
-
The task has to both seem important
-
and big
-
but not actually be so important that putting it off is going to be a disaster
-
Don’t assign problems to yourself
-
Make things fun
-
a tough problem completely absorb you while you’re trying to solve it, but afterwards you feel wonderful having accomplished something so serious.
-
So the secret to getting yourself to do something is not to convince yourself you have to do it, but to convince yourself that it’s fun. And if it isn’t, then you need to make it fun.
-
Another way to make things more fun is to solve the meta-problem.
-
Instead of building a web application, try building a web application framework with this as the example app.
-
The real secret to productivity is the reverse: to listen to your body. To eat when you’re hungry, to sleep when you’re tired, to take a break when you’re bored, to work on projects that seem fun and interesting.
-
-
22 Nov 10
-
29 Oct 10
-
02 Sep 10
-
Such comments imply that time is “fungible” — that time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel.
-
time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel.
-
sadly, that’s just not the case.
-
sadly, that’s just not the case.
-
Such comments imply that time is “fungible”
-
Time has various levels of quality.
-
Time has various levels of quality.
-
If you want to be more productive then, you have to recognize this fact and deal with it.
-
If you want to be more productive then, you have to recognize this fact and deal with it.
-
First, you have to make the best of each kind of time.
-
second, you have to try to make your time higher-quality.
-
Spend time efficiently
-
Choose good problems
-
First, you have to make the best of each kind of time.
-
It’s easy to start working on something because it’s convenient
-
but you should always be questioning yourself about it.
-
you have to try to make your time higher-quality.
-
Is there something more important you can work on?
-
Why don’t you do that instead?
-
eventually, if you follow this rule, you’ll have to ask yourself why you’re not working on the most important problem in the world
-
Spend time efficiently
-
This isn’t to say that all your time should be spent on the most important problem in the world.
-
it’s definitely the standard against which I measure my life.
-
Have a bunch of them
-
Another common myth is that you’ll get more done if you pick one problem and focus on it exclusively.
-
Choose good problems
-
I find this is hardly ever true.
-
Just this moment
-
It’s easy to start working on something because it’s convenient
-
Over the course the day
-
but you should always be questioning yourself about it.
-
Is there something more important you can work on?
-
In the past week
-
do that instead
-
eventually, if you follow this rule, you’ll have to ask yourself why you’re not working on the most important problem in the world
-
This isn’t to say that all your time should be spent on the most important problem in the world.
-
it’s definitely the standard against which I measure my life.
-
Have a bunch of them
-
Another common myth is that you’ll get more done if you pick one problem and focus on it exclusively.
-
I find this is hardly ever true.
-
Just this moment
-
Over the course the day
-
In the past week
-
Having a lot of different projects gives you work for different qualities of time.
-
Make a list
-
you’ll have other things to work on if you get stuck or bored (and that can give your mind time to unstick yourself).
-
Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in.
-
If you have a bunch of different projects going in different fields, then you have many more ideas you can apply.
-
It also makes you more creative.
-
Integrate the list with your life
-
Coming up with a bunch of different things to work on shouldn’t be hard
-
But if you try to keep it all in your head it quickly gets overwhelming.
-
The solution is again simple: write it down.
-
it can make you crazy.
-
Most major projects involve a bunch of these different tasks.
-
my list is programming, writing, thinking, errands, reading, listening, and watching (in that order).
-
Once you have a list of all the things you want to do, you can organize it by kind.
-
Each task can go under the appropriate section, so that you can do it when you have the right kind of time.
-
Once you have this list
-
the problem becomes remembering to look at it.
-
the best way to remember to look at it is to make looking at it what you would do anyway.
-
Easing mental constraints is much harder.
-
One thing that helps is having friends who are cheerful.
-
I’ve also thought about some more intrusive ways of doing this.
-
It’s tempting to think that you need to get away from people and shut yourself off in your room to do any real work
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Share the load
-
but this can be so demoralizing that it’s actually less efficient.
-
Even if your friends aren’t cheerful
-
just working on a hard problem with someone else makes it much easier.
-
the mental weight gets spread across both people.
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having someone else there forces you to work instead of getting distracted.
-
The real productivity problem people have is procrastination.
-
everyone procrastinates — severely.
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that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to stop it.
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Make your time higher quality
-
it looks like you’re just doing something “fun”
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What is procrastination?
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To the outside observer
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instead of doing your actual work.
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(This usually causes the outside observer to think you’re lazy and bad.)
-
Making the best use of the time you have can only get you so far.
-
the real question is: what’s going on inside your head?
-
The much more important problem is making more higher quality time for yourself.
-
I’ve spent a bunch of time trying to explore this
-
the best way I can describe it is that your brain puts up a sort of mental force field around a task.
-
Ease physical constraints
-
Carry pen and paper
-
It’s not particularly solid or visible, but you can sort of feel it around the edges.
-
Pen and paper is immediately useful in all kinds of circumstances
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the more you try to go towards it the more it pushes you away.
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(I used to do this, but now I just carry my computerphone everywhere.
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I’ve never been able to overcome this mental force field through sheer willpower.
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you have to rotate a magnet.
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Instead, you have to be sneaky about it
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it makes up for it by giving me something to read all the time (email) and pushing my notes straight into my email inbox, where I’m forced to deal with them right away.
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It doesn’t let me give people information physically
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For tasks that require serious focus, you should avoid getting interrupted.
-
Avoid being interrupted
-
go somewhere interrupters can’t find you.
-
One simple way
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set up an agreement with the people around you
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That’s why setting up specific agreements is a good idea:
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You don’t want to overdo it.
-
if you’re really wasting time you should be distracted.
-
Ease mental constraints
-
It’s a much better use of time to help someone else with their problem than it is to sit and read the news.
-
Eat, sleep, exercise
-
you can be interrupted when you’re not really focusing.
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Time when you’re hungry or tired or twitchy is low-quality time.
-
Improving it is simple:
-
eat, sleep, and exercise.
-
you’ll be much more productive if you do take that nap, since you’ll improve the quality of the day’s remaining time and you were going to have to sleep sometime anyway.
-
This is one of the most thoroughly replicated findings of social psychology — over 70 studies have found that rewards undermine interest in the task.
-
People’s heads seem to have a deep avoidance of being told what to do.
-
The weird thing is that this phenomenon isn’t just limited to other people
-
it even happens when you try to tell yourself what to do!
-
Talk to cheerful people
-
This presents a rather obvious solution:
-
if you want to work on X, tell yourself to do Y.
-
Unfortunately, it’s sort of difficult to trick yourself intentionally, because you know you’re doing it.
-
you’ve got to be sneaky about it.
-
The task has to both seem important
-
and big
-
but not actually be so important that putting it off is going to be a disaster.
-
It’s very tempting to say “alright, I need to put all this aside, hunker down and finish this essay”.
-
Even worse is to try to bribe yourself into doing something
-
the absolute worst of all is to get someone else to try to force you to do something.
-
Procrastination and the mental force field
-
In all three cases, you’ve basically assigned yourself a task.
-
they’re completely counterproductive.
-
Now your brain is going to do everything it can to escape it.
-
But in fact it’s probably the most enjoyable thing I do.
-
Hard work isn’t supposed to be pleasant, we’re told.
-
Not only does a tough problem completely absorb you while you’re trying to solve it, but afterwards you feel wonderful having accomplished something so serious.
-
So the secret to getting yourself to do something is not to convince yourself you have to do it, but to convince yourself that it’s fun.
-
if it isn’t, then you need to make it fun.
-
I first got serious about this when I had to write essays for college.
-
Writing essays isn’t a particularly hard task, but it sure is assigned.
-
So I started making the essays into my own little jokes.
-
Another way to make things more fun is to solve the meta-problem.
-
Instead of building a web application, try building a web application framework with this as the example app.
-
Not only will the task be more enjoyable, but the result will probably be more useful.
-
that time is fungible, that focusing is good, that bribing yourself is effective, that hard work is unpleasant, that procrastinating is unnatural
-
There are a lot of myths about productivity
-
but they all have a common theme:
-
a conception of real work as something that goes against your natural inclinations.
-
for most people, in most jobs, this may be the case.
-
There’s no reason you should be inclined to write boring essays or file pointless memos
-
if society is going to force you to do so anyway, then you need to learn to shut out the voices in your head telling you to stop.
-
if you’re trying to do something worthwhile and creative, then shutting down your brain is entirely the wrong way to go.
-
The real secret to productivity is the reverse: to listen to your body. To eat when you’re hungry, to sleep when you’re tired, to take a break when you’re bored, to work on projects that seem fun and interesting.
-
It doesn’t involve any fancy acronyms or self-determination or personal testimonials from successful businessmen.
-
It seems all too simple.
-
It almost seems like common sense.
-
society’s conception of work has pushed us in the opposite direction.
-
If we want to be more productive, all we need to do is turn around.
-
what causes the mental force field?
-
whether the task is hard and whether it’s assigned.
-
There appear to be two major factors:
-
The first kind of hard problem is the problem that’s too big.
-
Hard problems
-
Break it down
-
A task is a specific concrete step you can take towards your goal.
-
that’s something you can do.
-
when you do that, the next steps become clearer.
-
You build up a momentum, each task leading to the next.
-
as your brain gets crunching on the subject, it becomes easier to solve that subject’s problems.
-
For each of my big projects, I think of all the tasks I can do next for them and add them to my categorized todo list (see above).
-
when I stop working on something, I add its next possible tasks to the todo list.
-
Another kind of hard problem is the one that’s too complicated or audacious.
-
Simplify it
-
The important thing is to have something done right away.
-
you can judge it more accurately and understand the problem better.
-
Once you have something
-
It’s also much easier to improve something that already exists than to work at a blank page.
-
Think about it
-
a perfectly reasonable piece
-
all the way through.
-
Often the key to solving a hard problem will be getting some piece of inspiration.
-
If you don’t know much about the field
-
you should obviously start by researching it — see how other people did things, get a sense of the terrain.
-
Sit and try and understand the field fully.
-
Do some smaller problems to see if you have a handle on it.
-
Assigned problems are problems you’re told to work on.
-
Assigned problems
-
Numerous psychology experiments have found that when you try to “incentivize” people to do something, they’re less likely to do it and do a worse job.
-
External incentives, like rewards and punishments, kills what psychologists call your “intrinsic motivation” — your natural interest in the problem.
-
Create a false assignment
-
Don’t assign problems to yourself
-
Make things fun
-
-
28 May 10
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01 May 10
Dylan HoggIt’s easy to start working on something because it’s convenient, but you should always be questioning yourself about it. Is there something more important you can work on? Why don’t you do that instead?
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14 Mar 10
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11 Feb 10
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28 Jan 10
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08 Jan 10
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30 Nov 09
Shrutarshi Basu"“With all the time you spend watching TV,” he tells me, “you could have written a novel by now.” It’s hard to disagree with the sentiment — writing a novel is undoubtedly a better use of time than watching TV — but what about the hidden assumption? Such comments imply that time is “fungible” — that time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel. And sadly, that’s just not the case."
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16 Sep 09
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13 Sep 09
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22 Jun 09
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08 May 09
Dan Dascalescu<<“With all the time you spend watching TV,” he tells me, “you could have written a novel by now.” It’s hard to disagree with the sentiment — writing a novel is undoubtedly a better use of time than watching TV — but what about the hidden assumption? Such
debunk productivity cool time fungible management GTD procrastination assigned task anti against
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24 Apr 09
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23 Mar 09
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16 Mar 09
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05 Mar 09
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27 Feb 09
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26 Feb 09
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21 Feb 09
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04 Feb 09
Jerry GrahamIf you want to be more productive then, you have to recognize this fact and deal with it. First, you have to make the best of each kind of time. And second, you have to try to make your time higher-quality.
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02 Jan 09
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. Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in. If you have a bunch of different projects going in different fields, then you have many more ideas you can apply.
-
Integrate the list with your life
-
Talk to cheerful people
-
External incentives, like rewards and punishments, kills what psychologists call your "intrinsic motivation" -- your natural interest in the problem.
-
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30 Dec 08
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Damon SnyderHOWTO: Be more productive
The first kind of hard problem is the problem that's too big. Say you want to build a recipe organizing program. Nobody can really just sit down and build a recipe organizer. That's a goal, not a task. A task is a specific concrete step you can take towards your goal. A good first task might be something like "draw a mockup of the screen that displays a recipe". Now that's something you can do.4 -
25 Dec 08
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time is "fungible" -- that time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel. And sadly, that's just not the case.
-
Time has various levels of quality.
-
make the best of each kind of time
-
try to make your time higher-quality
-
Choose good problems
-
Is there something more important you can work on?
-
Have a bunch of them
-
Having a lot of different projects gives you work for different qualities of time
-
Make a list
-
organize it by kind
-
Integrate the list with your life
-
Obviously if you attend one of these, you should stop
-
Carry pen and paper
-
Avoid being interrupted
-
You don't want to overdo it. Sometimes if you're really wasting time you should be distracted.
-
Eat, sleep, exercise
-
Talk to cheerful people
-
Share the load
-
ust working on a hard problem with someone else makes it much easier
-
Procrastination and the mental force field
-
So what causes the mental force field? There appear to be two major factors: whether the task is hard and whether it's assigned.
-
A task is a specific concrete step you can take towards your goal.
-
Simplify it
-
The important thing is to have something done right away
-
easier to improve something that already exists than to work at a blank page
-
Think about it
-
inspiration
-
how other people did things
-
smaller problems
-
Assigned problems
-
External incentives, like rewards and punishments, kills what psychologists call your "intrinsic motivation" -- your natural interest in the problem.
-
it even happens when you try to tell yourself what to do!
-
Create a false assignment
-
The task has to both seem important (you have to do this to graduate!) and big (hundreds of pages of your best work!) but not actually be so important that putting it off is going to be a disaster.
-
Don't assign problems to yourself
-
counterproductive
-
Make things fun
-
So the secret to getting yourself to do something is not to convince yourself you have to do it, but to convince yourself that it's fun. And if it isn't, then you need to make it fun.
-
Another way to make things more fun is to solve the meta-problem.
-
identify that component (bring it into awareness), and decide the best way to proceed with it.
-
-
09 Dec 08
Geoff EdwardsIf you want to be more productive then, you have to recognize this fact and deal with it. First, you have to make the best of each kind of time. And second, you have to try to make your time higher-quality.
work howto idea inspiration productivity tips procrastination mytools
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08 Jun 08
Thomas NicholsAaron Swartz on staying productive; GTD + 'Share the Load' + 'Talk to Cheerful People' etc
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23 Apr 08
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11 Apr 08
don dekaTime has various levels of quality. If I'm walking to the subway station and I've forgotten my notebook, then it's pretty hard for me to write more than a couple paragraphs. And it's tough to focus when you keep getting interrupted. There's also a mental
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09 Apr 08
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01 Apr 08
Paul Ryan"With all the time you spend watching TV," he tells me, "you could have written a novel by now." It's hard to disagree with the sentiment -- writing a novel is undoubtedly a better use of time than watching TV -- but what about the hidden assumption? Such
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