
Stop being so productive - Swizec
http://swizec.com/blog/stop-being-so-fucking-productive/swizec/3124
======
gizmo
Productivity isn't about working 80 hours a week. The problem is that there is
an infinite amount of things to do, cool things to experience and countries to
visit. Time? Limited. Extremely so. The solution? Spend your time in a way
that aligns well with your goals/ambitions/preferences.

When you look at a typical office life it involves 9 hours of commuting a
week, water cooler talk and meetings that don't go anywhere (but aren't much
fun either), very few holidays and an email-based culture. This is for most
people clearly sub-optimal, and yet it's often the lifestyle people kind of
gravitate toward.

If you want to go about your week in a relaxed manner, that's great. Do that.
If you want to work hard for 3 years and chase an exit? That's cool too.

I'm not sure what the real point is of the article, because most of the
statements about "productivity" are straw men. The title of the post is "Stop
being so fucking productive" and the only actionable advice in it is "become
more productive by switching projects less often (because it reduces context
switching overhead)". So this post contains yet another another strategy to
improve productivity while pretending to be tired of exactly those kind of
posts. Yawn. Except the productivity claim here is based on anecdotal evidence
(even though there are a lot of research papers out there that need
summarizing!).

~~~
askar_yu
This comment totally made my day.

You know, sometimes there are times where you can't really articulate your
feelings; but then coming across something you say "oh, that's exactly what I
thought/felt/meant". That's how I felt while reading your 2nd paragraph :)

------
lkrubner
I can not easily recall an article this wrong getting to the front page of
Hacker News. This in particular is refuted by several studies:

"You’re doing that to your brain. But with mental tasks productivity doesn’t
increase linearly with time worked. Every hour spent working hard is a tax on
the next hour you want to spend working hard. And so on until you can spend
hours, even days, working without achieving."

For a different view, please look here:

Core Learning Principle #10: Everything Else Being Equal, More Time-on-Task
Equals More Learning

[http://innovateonline.info/pdf/vol3_issue3/Ten_Core_Principl...](http://innovateonline.info/pdf/vol3_issue3/Ten_Core_Principles_for_Designing_Effective_Learning_Environments-
__Insights_from_Brain_Research_and_Pedagogical_Theory.pdf)

and also here:

<http://www.mcrel.org/toolkit/res/time.asp>

which says:

"Allocated time is that time in the school day specifically set aside for
instruction, as opposed to non-instructional time like recess and lunch.
Instructional time is the in-class time teachers spend on task, as opposed to
management-oriented activities, like taking roll. Engaged time is that portion
of time during which student are actually paying attention to the content
being presented - often referred to as "time on task." Academic learning time
is the proportion of engaged time during which students are successfully
learning or successful at the task they are engaged in."

Search Google for "time on task innovation insight" and it is easy to find
dozens of these studies. There has been a lot of research in this field, and
it all agrees that innovation tends to come from those folks who go deep into
a subject -- exactly those folks who are willing to put in 60 hour weeks where
all they do is think about some particular kind of problem. And then they have
an insight that changes the world.

~~~
peregrine
While I agree that time on task usually means learning all of these tests and
results are in a school setting. If I am learning a new tech I agree that its
positive to continually practice but when you've moved past the learning stage
and are in a stage where you can reach flow is it worth it?

I can only provide anecdotal evidence but in my experience living a more
balanced life, as opposed to focusing on several things at once taking no
breaks leads to better results.

------
jmj4
Cal Newport of at Study Hacks [1] has been talking about this type of stuff
for a while. He approaches what he might call _"a philosophy of deeply
thinking about hard problems"_ from an academic standpoint, but I think you
can apply it generally. He's done some pretty good interviews/detailed posts
on the topic.

I really think that pseudo-work is a killer. PG talks about this a bit here
[2]. This type of constant context switching is dreadful for productivity, and
also stresses you out. Saying that, some startups actually do require 100 hour
weeks. Read Max Levchin's interview with Jessica Livingston [3]; he spent like
4 days getting the Paypal demo ready, and then fell asleep at the restaurant
table after showing it to the VC's. But there are also times when you have
explore; Max said he had this later when Elon Musk came in as CEO and was
trying to change direction. Max had tons of free time, so he started playing
around. This led to the discovery of the fraud detection system that probably
saved the company.

So there's a time and a place for 100hr weeks, but you can lose sight of the
big picture if your head's to the grindstone all the time.

[1]<http://calnewport.com/blog/>

[2]<http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html>

[3]<http://www.foundersatwork.com/>

------
narkee
The entire thesis of this essay is based off of a false premise.

Being less busy doesn't cause you to become the creme de la creme. He has the
causal relationship reversed. More than likely, they feel less busy and
stressed because they are born geniuses.

Working less hard won't make you any more of a genius. In fact, for those of
us born without exceptionally talented minds, working hard is the only way we
can keep up.

------
abk
I feel that work habits are a very personal thing.

I find that I'm more productive if I work on multiple projects throughout the
day instead of dedicating to just one. I don't know if it's because I'm
putting artificial deadlines for myself (i.e., I have 3 hours to get this done
before I move on to task / project B) or because I stay more engaged and
motivated if I'm working on very different things.

On the other hand I know people like Swizec who will feel overwhelmed if they
know they have a number of tasks to get done in one day and will procrastinate
on all of them.

Always interesting to read about other people's productivity tricks though.

Edit: Also completely disagree about the comparison with professional
athletes. Burnout is very real and it will sneak up on you if you don't take
some time off to relax here and there, but just working hard will not damage
your brain like being a pro-athlete would damage your body.

------
cellis
I wish I could believe this, and for a year or so I did. But the fact of the
matter is that of the top 10 startups of the last 5 years, I can't point to
any that the founding team didn't put in 100 hr+ weeks (including wknds). It
seems like everyone I know who is super successful (traders, game developers,
startup founders) are working as many or more hours than me.

I will admit that they're not necessarily happier, but that's not really the
metric I measure myself by. It's easy to say "do what you love", but the fact
of the matter is that _building_ meaningful products is going to be painful
sometimes. The problems you have to solve aren't always perfectly aligned with
your skill set, and you might have to work harder and longer than someone who
is smarter or has an advantage that you don't have.

------
peregrine
I completely agree with this. On days when I have class, work and personal
projects are days when I feel like I get the least quality of work done,
further I am much more likely to procrastinate on all of them.

If I'm just working on a single project I feel better, I procrastinate less
and my work is considerably higher quality. I believe this is partially
because of the Makers Schedule[1] and getting into a state of flow.

Nice article its in stark contrast of some articles we've seen about startups
and programming lately.

[1]: <http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html>

------
BadassFractal
The article seems to suggest that by over-using your brain, you will damage it
long term.

As far as I know, there's no indication that too much focused studying/working
will make you anything but better at whatever it is that you're doing, and
will not hurt you noggin.

I'm confident the human brain can withstand pretty much any intellectual
effort in large quantities.

Crucibles are a fundamental aspect of one's personal and professional
development, if you're not facing then, you're missing out on giant leaps in
your growth.

------
koko775
I've long known that excessive context switching dampens my productivity, but
how else am I supposed to take my job seriously _and_ give my side projects a
shot? :/

~~~
TeMPOraL
If you badly have to context-switch, make the process as efficient as you can.

Context switches take a lot of time, but sometimes - like day job vs. side
project - are unavoidable. So instead of trying hard to avoid all of the
switches, maybe let's optimize the switching process so that it doesn't hurt
so much?

I started doing that at my last work - 10 minutes before leaving the office I
would open up my "Context Dump" file and write down exactly what's on my mind
- current project status, what I was working on, what have I done, what has to
be fixed, what quirks are there, what ideas I was considering - pretty much a
stream-of-consciousness-like mind dump to text file. And then, the next
morning, first thing I would do would be to open up that file and re-read it.
It helped me to rebuild my mind state in few minutes instead of an hour. Also,
my anxiety went down, which reduced the amount of time I procrastinated on HN
each morning.

------
pg
Newton was notorious for all-nighters.

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arundelo
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------
mhd
"Ever seen a top athlete when they hit 35?"

As someone who's turning 34 this week, this comparison kinda saddens me. I
would object, but why? It's not like late adolescents could be convinced out
of their own sense of superiority. (Never mind this being a bit American-
centric, as not all kind of sports are as depleting as American Football)

Yeah, I know, young scientists do their best work young etc. etc. Because
doing an iOS application or RoR is as mentally challenging as doing Nobel
prize winning research…

------
Cl4rity
The author of the article negates his points and attempts to protect himself
by saying that all the information was based on anecdotal evidence. Well, no
kidding?!

First of all, we need to determine the type of work being done here. If you're
in a creative environment, maybe 60-80 hours a week won't make you more
productive. However, if you worked in some kind of production facility or in
manual labor, you'll be a hell of a lot more productive if you put in the
time. The first time I adjusted the valves on my motorcycle, it took me over a
week. I took several breaks, I wasn't very organized and I mostly felt
discouraged. When I did the same thing to a new bike, it was equally
challenging since the parts and process were different, but I forced myself to
work at it several hours at a time. I did about three hours on a Friday night,
six hours on Saturday and two to three hours on Sunday and it was done.

If we're going to take anecdotal evidence as gold here, I might as well
mention that I learned complex piano pieces much faster and with greater
accuracy the more time I spent on the piano. If I would have studied the music
in 30-minute or 1-hour blocks, it would have taken me much longer. I tried.
Instead, I could learn and memorize a piece like Chopin's Polonaise in A flat
Major in just three days if I spent six or seven hours a day on it.

Everyone is different - that's my point here. Some people can work with razor-
sharp focus for several hours at a time, and others can't. There's nothing
wrong with that. The best you can do is learn what works best for you, then do
that. Can you get more done if you put in more time? Or are you the type who
can be productive for four or five straight hours so you can have the rest of
the day off? Figure it out.

Lastly, I want to include something that David Baltimore, former president of
Caltech, said about work and academic rigor:

"When I grew up, we worked hard, played hard and never thought to minimize our
activities because of stress. Sure, people were under stress and some cracked
under it, but leading a "stressful" life was honored because of the
accomplishments that could be achieved by those who could handle it. Today we
deify the spa, not late hours solving problems at school or work. Caltech's
high-achieving faculty and students are seen as weirdos because of their
intense focus, but even here, some graduate students and postdoctoral fellows
are seeking a more balanced life."

Source: [http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/29/opinion/oe-
baltimore...](http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/29/opinion/oe-baltimore29)

