
Marc Andreessen - Guide to personal productivity - suprgeek
http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/the-pmarca-guide-to-personal-productivity
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jon_dahl
Great summary and some interesting ideas - especially 3x5 cards, no schedule,
and structured procrastination.

While I agree with his point on structured procrastination - sometimes the
most inspired work is done while avoiding something else - it's also important
to balance that with _focus_. I find my focused procrastination valuable and
my scattered procrastination frustrating. Procrastination is rarely productive
when it means bouncing between four things (reading HN, hacking on a library,
writing a blog post, and buying a book at Amazon).

Procrastinate in serial, not parallel.

~~~
jlees
I find more and more recently I'm not just procrastinating in parallel but
generally working in parallel. I'll switch from task to task and keep
forgetting what I was doing, go back to a tab and realise I've left something
half-done, walk through my office on the way to the toilet and sit down and do
the crossword instead... I actually feel like an absent-minded professor!

I can't really figure out why I've started doing this or quite how to stop it;
it feels a bit like those Choose Your Own Adventure books where I used to skip
ahead to see if certain choices would end up with death, end up with about ten
branching paths (I couldn't mark any more than ten pages with fingers!), then
collapse the paths one by one. I ultimately do get everything done and marvel
at it, but the sheer bamboozlement I face when realising I've "done it again"
is getting annoying.

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frossie
Oh man, a lot of the local tradesmen practice the "no schedule" thing. Drives
me crazy. "Can you come fix my electrics" "Sorry, busy right now, call me in a
month". No dude, I will call someone who can actually give me an appointment
in a month - I'm not going to keep calling you like a stalker.

In other words this is a great strategy if you are trying to turn away
business (which for people with too much business may be an advantage I
suppose) but it's kinda rude.

~~~
ovi256
I think as a hacker you may enjoy working on electric systems. So why not do
it yourself ? The tools will cost you about the same price as a single
repairman-call. The process of searching for an insulation fault is very
debugging-like - they both use the scientific method after all. And electrical
engineers are the original hackers!

Of course, hope you know the safety rules, would not want you to get hurt.
Encouragement void where forbidden by local law :)

~~~
frossie
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. I am the clumsiest person this
side of the Magellanic cloud. You should see me fumble with paint - you
wouldn't want me to mess with electrics :-)

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Mongoose
It's nice to see a productivity article that admits that most of it is person-
specific. Everytime Tim Ferris, David Allen, et al announce to the world what
they think precludes success, everyone jumps on the bandwagon and alters the
minutia of their lives. The best strategy is to take all advice with a pound
of salt, experiment, and develop a system of your own.

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aminuit
_People, for some reason, feel much worse interrupting you if you are wearing
headphones than if you're not._

I love my headphones, but this doesn't work at all for me. Usually it just
means that I'll get startled by someone tapping me on the shoulder. I'd love
to hear more thoughts along these lines though, i.e. how to keep people from
interrupting you during the day.

~~~
systemtrigger
I wear earplugs to help concentrate. When co-workers chat it does not
interrupt my flow. If someone speaks directly to me I can usually detect it.
If I make the decision to remove the orange foam in my ears I give that person
my full attention.

I sympathize with your situation. I wonder if it would do any good to
challenge each person who taps your shoulder. How about: "You really startled
me. I was concentrating and your touch felt like a lightening bolt. No harm
done but in the future would you mind approaching my desk more from the front?
I'd really appreciate it. So would my cardiologist."

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fuzzythinker
The "no schedule" and the "index cards" seems to be a little contradicting. If
you're setting yourself up to do 3-5 things the next day, you are setting a
schedule for yourself; it's just not time specific, that's all. In effect,
you're limiting yourself to only those tasks. Eg., if one of the task involves
research on coding solution, and the solution you found uses a nice coding
technique you are not familiar with, you wouldn't have the freedom to learn it
right there. If you have to put it off, most likely it will be forgotten or
will lose interest in it. The counter argument of say putting only 5 hrs or so
of task on the index card so you can still have freedom to do the example I
mentioned doesn't hold since one of the task may be to fix a minor bug that
turned out to be more involved than you thought.

For me, instead of putting the time to create such a "next day" task list, I
just have a list of task I know I need to do for work and for myself. For
work, trac is used (or whatever the company uses). For myself, I keep a list
of project goals, but no task lists. The time I saved for making and planning
task is spent on jogging down how much time I spent doing what at the end of
day instead. This keeps myself honest in not wasting time yet have the freedom
to do things I like at the moment.

~~~
simonw
I don't see them as contradictory at all - "no schedule" is about not putting
anything on your calendar (say in three weeks time), which frees you up to
plan your day 24 hours in advance on an index card. It's also suggested that
you don't have to commit to getting all 5 things done, so you can still pursue
new things if they come up.

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jlees
Some really interesting ideas that are close enough to what I already do that
I might well try them. Working to no schedule would be _brilliant_ if I could
pull it off, but I worry that as a mix of coder and pointy haired suited type,
my conflicting need to fit in with the rest of the world's "let's meet in two
weeks' time at 3pm" and desire to have things just happen will lead to
frustration rather than fulfillment.

Only doing things that both your head and heart say yes to - yes. Once I
started doing this and followed a piece of advice passed down by a fellow
entrepreneur - "You don't _have_ to do anything" - my load felt so much
lighter. Why was I wasting time? God knows.

The phone/voicemail checking doesn't really for me, though (whether that's a
UK thing or not I don't know). I tend to do this automatically for unknown
numbers since I get plenty of calls I don't need to take; I also forget my
phone far too often. Instead I get nagging emails, or worse, someone recently
emailed my _cofounder_ since I didn't answer the phone. They had my email
address. I don't get that.

Strategic incompetence, though, seems too close to passive aggressive
workplace politics (I don't _want_ to organise the office party so I'll just
balls it up..) to my liking.

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joechung
Working with people who are "strategically incompetent" is a nightmare. Don't
do this.

~~~
gaius
It can backfire, too. A recent conversation:

Manager: Why are you working on system X?

Me: Because cow-orker Y says he doesn't know how to do it

Manager: But he's on-call to support that system!

Me: Perhaps this is an issue that you ought to discuss with him.

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coffeemug
This is excellent advice.

Answering e-mail twice a day and leaving the inbox empty every time is
_crucial_ to email productivity. It's obvious how it saves time - the more you
answer emails, the more people reply. So you end up sending three times as
much email each day as you would have if you only answered twice a day. You do
more "work" but get less done. On the other hand, answering email twice a day
gets things done and keeps your mind clear.

~~~
adriand
I never thought about that effect of answering emails promptly, but you're
absolutely right. The more emails I send, the more I receive, which creates a
vicious circle.

Unfortunately for me right now, many people know I respond rapidly to email,
so they email me for urgent issues that need immediate attention since they
know I'm generally available. That said, I probably just need to start giving
out our support email address and telling them it'll be dealt with by the team
as a whole, since there's no guarantee I'm not in a meeting or out for the day
(or, as the case may be, not answering emails any more because I read this
comment!)

~~~
coffeemug
So slow it down. Respond five times a day for a week. Then four, three, etc.
After a couple of weeks you'll be down to two emails a day.

Of course it's tough if you're on support, but then there should be a separate
account for handling support issues. All other email should get the "two
respones a day" treatment.

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ganley
Sheesh. "If you can get away with it," indeed. Most of these 'strategies'
simply say: I am far more important than you, and if you want any of my time,
you'll get it when and if I damned well please. In particular, strategic
incompetence is the most obnoxiously passive-aggressive behavior ever. This
might work for pmarca or Arnold, but for most of us it is career-limiting for
everyone to think you're a dick.

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dekiba
I had no idea who Marc Andreessen was until this post. I clicked through to
[http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2009/10/15/a-marc-
andreessen...](http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2009/10/15/a-marc-andreessen-
blog-archive/) and discovered a whole new universe of "how to get funding" He
seemed to have written some posts in conjunction with Paul Graham

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budu3
I used to love pmarca's blog post. I think it's great someone dug up his old
posts. It's so sad he took a hiatus from blogging. I guess he found more
"productive" this to do and writing blog post fell off the to-do list.

~~~
jedc
Thanks... I'm the someone who put the archive together. :)

He wrote so much good stuff, and I wanted to make sure it was saved and
available to entrepreneurs. The full story is on my blog at
<http://blog.jedchristiansen.com>

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ggruschow
His anti-todo list starts with "don't be(come) a parent."

~~~
billswift
Reading comprehension problems can really mess up snarks, can't they. His
"anti-to do list" was of things he DID that day.

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arnorhs
Excellent article. I just wish I could do two upvotes.

~~~
ashot
please stop saying this

