
How Do Some People Ship So Damn Much, I Want to Be Like Them - chrisbaglieri
http://www.chrisbaglieri.com/blog/2015/3/13/inspiration-is-a-catalyst
======
beat
For me, a lot comes down to that complicated "work/life balance". I need to
make sure I get enough sleep, I get varieties of stimulation, I get enough
time with the people I really love (love is a HUGE part of my life)... that
I'm balanced. If the balance goes out of whack, if I overfocus on one thing,
my broader productivity drops precipitously.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. Every time you sprint, you reduce your
marathon speed. Sprints wipe out energy reserves that need replenished. I'll
bet if you look at the high-productivity people you admire, you rarely see
them panicked against a hard deadline with impossible requirements. They don't
get into those situations, because they know what it will do to their overall
productivity.

Also? Success breeds success, and comfort with occasional failure breeds
comfort with occasional failure. The biggest cause of procrastination and
paralysis imho is fear of failure, of doing something wrong. Look at the
billions of questions on internet forums of the "What is the best X for Y?"
form. People won't try to do Y, because they don't have the "best" X. They
fear that if they don't have the best X, they'll fail - which is in itself a
magical belief that X is the source of success. It's not X that succeeds -
it's I.

Really productive people also have good process. They're skilled at breaking
down complex tasks into manageable pieces. And no, asking "What is the best
process for maximum productivity?" will not get you there. Try processes, and
see what happens. Refine by iteration.

Highly effective people are also very good at saying no. There's more
interesting stuff to do, more demands on your time and resources, than anyone
can possibly do. Learning to say no, quickly and firmly, is the best way to
save your energy for the things that get a yes. Dabbling and dithering doesn't
get work done. It wastes time and energy.

Wow, I should blog about this.

~~~
chrisbaglieri
Yes, you should =)

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yesimahuman
One other reason: they just aren't afraid to fail. I know a lot of people that
want to do things, and do try, but immediately feel overwhelmed by the
impossibility of it all. The most prolific creators I know realize failure is
a pretty uneventful outcome: you just move on to some other interesting thing.

~~~
metasean
I'd also add that they know how to recover from failure.

For example, I'm learning to program, and I can move pretty quickly on things,
as long as I'm getting enough information to make the next step. To me,
failure with feedback is awesome! But every so often, I hit a problem and
don't even know how to analyze the available information to move past the
error, and I tend to get bogged down at that point.

For the more experienced programmers out there, I wish there were a Stack
Overflow for troubleshooting specific problems, not as a reference for future
people, but as (a) a way for novice learners to help get 'unbogged' and (b)
slightly more experienced, but still junior developers to review other
learners' code and help them debug (which is in and of itself, as much, and
sometimes more of, a learning experience than actually coding something in the
first place).

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pearjuice
They just freaking do it. And it is not about quantity over quality. There are
a lot of people who pretend they are busy and do not have time but in reality
they are just postponing, procrastinating or killing their time by over
investing in shipped goods with no direct benefit or simply wasting time.

If you are reading this and could be using this time for something more
productive I suggest to close the tab. It doesn't matter what is written above
or underneath this comment. At this point you are not shipping things and
killing time. "But this comment thread is important!". No it's not. Close the
tab. Right now. You can thank me later.

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captn3m0
Someone I'd really like to point out is Brandon Sanderson. He's a prolific
writer with an average of 2-3 books every year. He has been asked how he
manages to write so much and at such quality (all his books regularly hit NYT
bestseller lists), and his answers revolve around:

\- He loves to write, more than ever; now that people are admiring his work.

\- He regularly writes 2500 words/day. Every day. This isn't much, but becomes
huge if done regularly.

\- He often does little side-projects (often unplanned) that end up as
published novellas, short-stories, or sometimes video-game tie-ins.

\- His ideal plan is to do one big project (large epic sf book) and follow it
up with a shorter YA novel.

\- He has a huge list of books he plans to write (currently around 30-40
atleast) all in various stages of planning.

My favorite point is that he writes good _and_ fast, which is a very rare
combination (see GRRM, for instance).

~~~
smacktoward
_He regularly writes 2500 words /day. Every day. This isn't much, but becomes
huge if done regularly._

Actually 2,500 words per day, every day, strikes me as a _lot_ of writing. I
did NaNoWriMo ([http://nanowrimo.org](http://nanowrimo.org)) a couple of years
ago, and to hit the "50,000 words in 30 days" target for that you have to turn
out around 1,700 words each day. I'm a fast writer compared to a lot of folks
-- just look at the length of some of my herniated HN comments to see what I
mean -- and even I found that target to be a pretty big lift. It's do-able, I
got in my 50,000 words, but by the end of the month I was exhausted. I can't
imagine doing it every day for the rest of time -- and that's only 68 percent
of the words Sanderson says he's turning out.

~~~
captn3m0
I missed the number a bit. Its 2000 words/day. Here's the quote:

>[..] I don't think I write all that quickly. I do about 2000 words a day,
most days. That's 250 words an hour working a normal schedule, and I often
work more. 250 words an hour is NOTHING. Try typing a few emails, and you'll
find out how fast 250 words goes by. I think for me, there are two secrets.

\- [From his AMA earlier
today]([https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_b...](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cpcyevl))

So, he writes around 8 hours per day, which is something you'd expect him to
do at his level. You have to realize that he does writing for-a-living, full
time. Most people doing NaNoWriMo aren't doing it full-time.

But yeah, he's definitely writing _consistently_, and that's what I find
interesting.

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PeterWhittaker
Some of the really productive people I know fall into either or both of two
camps: 1) ruthlessly focused (often with understanding, supporting spouses who
accept that they will enjoy only a small portion of their partner's time)
and/or 2) sleep freaks who need only a few hours a night.

A friend of mine is the latter: We have about the same drive, intellect, and
motivation, as far as I can tell from working together, from long talks over
beer, etc. But he needs about 4 hours a night, I need 8-9. That gives him
several extra days a week, compared to me. Even if he only takes advantage of
"one day", that still puts him 20+% ahead of me.

I also know several people in camp #1, some of whom are on second or third
spouses, very few of whom are still with original partners.

There is a third camp, the rarest of them all: Focused but balanced. They get
a normal amount of sleep, switch from rest to work mode and back again
immediately, and when in work mode are focused and productive the whole time.
They are the ones I try to emulate, at least to some extent.

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espinchi
A single person can have periods of shipping so damn much, and others of not
shipping a damn.

I apply a few tricks when I detect I am in a low productivity season (like
right now, I hate to admit):

\- Drop those projects or activities that are sucking time but are not really
going anywhere

\- Create weekly and daily TODO lists (sometimes on paper, others in Trelll)

\- Be more disciplined about my daily TODO list: won't go to bed until the
last item of today's list is done

\- Monitor my computer usage (I use RescueTime for that)

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javajosh
Well, I've noticed that I have two very distinct modes that correspond quite
closely to the Meyers Briggs judging/perceiving trait. INTP mode is open to
new things, but unable to get anything done, and INTJ mode is closed off, but
terribly effective.

To make real things with computers is actually a lot easier than deciding in
which of the many possible ways you would like to make things with computers.
You simply cannot let second-order concerns (shopping for tools) dominate
first-order concerns (building things).

If you feel like you're in a rut, try solving some synthetic exercises that
ask you to solve some simple string or integer array puzzles using _no_
libraries.

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dnautics
they probably also know how to get people to help them. If you have x more
hours in the day it makes it that much easier to ship.

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puredemo
"It's not smarts or talent."

I wouldn't be so sure...

~~~
chrisbaglieri
Thanks for your kind words and support!

~~~
puredemo
LOL, just seemed like a big assumption.

To sum up your blog post more succinctly -- being productive is a skill like
anything else, it takes time to develop.

Responding to inspiration quickly is one aspect of that skill, but it's not
the only one.

