
Looking at Productivity as a State of Mind - dctoedt
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/28/upshot/looking-at-productivity-as-a-state-of-mind.html
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norswap
I have come to exactly the opposite conclusions than the one proposed in this
article. For me, not working when I don't feel like it, and really exploiting
the times of high energy yields the most productivity.

If I force myself to trudge through moments of low energy, it saps all my
energy. Moreover if I finish my alloted time of work, and then hit upon a high
energy moment, it forces me choose between working even more and having any
kind of leisure.

Of course, I think this has to do with the work one does. I'm in academia and
the article discusses data entry. You don't really need creativity or
initiative to do data handling.

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applecore
Have you tried meditating?

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norswap
Haha, this comment could nearly pass itself as parodic :)

But as a matter of fact, I do from time to time, although I don't really see
it as a way of improving my productivity.

But I think you're onto something in the sense that often not feeling
energetic of focused comes from the presence of parasite emotions or a sense
of disorder. So it actually might help.

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trustfundbaby
Ultimately disappointing article ... discusses productivity in the purview of
line-workers/data-entry type jobs, and clumsily tries to extrapolate to
contemporary work environments/jobs that require more creativity and mental
skill to perform :\

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javajosh
Follow up study: women physically abused by their spouses claim to appreciate
the treatment, agreeing that it helps them to "control their impulse to speak
when it is not appropriate or wanted".

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lutusp
That reads like an Onion satire. If it's literally true, it's very depressing.
And I suspect it's literally true, at least for some women.

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javajosh
It is _definitely_ satire, meant to highlight the fact that it is _abhorrent_
to abuse people, or set up perverse incentives that may result in abuse, for
non-performance, _regardless_ of how the worker perceives the abuse. The fact
that the workers in the study _wanted_ the increased risk without any increase
in compensation makes me sick to my stomach.

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gumby
_The fact that the workers in the study wanted the increased risk without any
increase in compensation makes me sick to my stomach._ The way it was
described, they may have made less before, and by (in the au courant jargon of
our day) "gamifying" it their earnings may have increased. For example if they
typically entered 4800 fields a day, the extra "all or earn half" incentive of
making it to 5K might actually spur them to more productivity, and hence more
earnings.

That is what Clark meant when he used MBA-speak to describe the workers as
having "hired" their employers.

This article comes across as describing a discovery while in fact so far it's
merely an interesting hypothesis or even simply model, which might ultimately
prove to be informative. Since the author is one of the people doing the work
I don't know if this is accidental or intended.

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ajessup
These conclusions seem to be focused on a very 19th century vision of "work",
where productivity is just a function of efficiency and not, say, creativity
or risk-taking.

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calibraxis
I delved into some papers (and one author's body of work), and they seem quick
to slap bizarre ideological interpretations on their results.

For example, I happily game-ified tedious BS jobs/classes by introducing
elements of danger triggered by poor productivity. I thought the work was
utterly pointless, and cheered whenever the corporation got hurt. But I needed
some twisted motivation to show up and get through the damn day. And feel that
my excellence was recorded somewhere.

The Kaur/Kramer/Mullainathan paper seemed to only use a barebones "endline
survey," with easily-steered responses. Not in-depth interviews led by the
subjects, which might've uncovered inconvenient info. (Or did I miss them?)

I also looked at economist Greg Clark's work. It's... weird... but at least
his work is refreshingly honest about its political underpinnings. In a way
others try to hide. And there's some interesting bits if you squint and remove
the weirdnesses. For example, workers may take over a factory. But under a
market economy, they may reasonably decide to oppress themselves by hiring a
manager who sits in an air-conditioned room and is immune to the worsened
workplace he develops.

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ultimape
Tl;DR: Management Anti-Patterns are rife in the industry because they appear
to solve problems at first glance - and they do work because they reach a
local maxima. See the six-sigma cults that are little more than cargo cultists
running around with checklists.

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sheepmullet
The average business fails to provide staff the autonomy they need to be
productive. Articles like this don't help one bit.

 _I_ need a couple of hours of peace/alone time every day to focus on the
important parts of my work. I'm lucky enough that my work is ok with me going
to the local coffee shop for hours at a time. Most workplaces aren't. They
claim to care about results but take such a short term view.

Don't evaluate me on my daily performance or the number of story points I have
completed this sprint. Look at my performance month to month and year to year.

Of course some places have such high turnover (20%+) that they can't evaluate
on a year to year because people aren't around for long enough but they have
bigger issues.

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raldu
The most horrible article I have read at NY Times so far. Pushing workers to
work harder and faster by motivating them with punishment is not about
productivity at all. Alienating workers, saying that they "wanted" punishment
and backing up all these "business" rhetoric with science is just sick. I
wonder what "state of mind" the author was in when producing this article. Did
he also hired the Ivy League College he is working in to help with his "self-
control" issues? And providing workers with a "wellness program" just because
it "reduces health costs" was the most chilling part. We are all human beings,
not quantities or rats in a maze.

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cJ0th
> Pushing workers to work harder and faster by motivating them with punishment
> is not about productivity at all.

I don't like this idea either. Unfortunately, this kind of "motivation" is
state of the art in many jobs. It kind of reminds me of Brandson's "take as
much holiday as you like". That sounds positive at first but also motivates
people to not take holidays at all because of the fear of being less
productive than their co-workers.

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musername
it's state of the art in society. that is, because someone long ago discovered
it working and society isn't pushed to try out better means, because the bad
effects aren't overall noticably punishing enough for the pusher, ironically,
and because negative feedback is a cheap basic part of the constant learning
process. It's pretty productive, because it's focused on the product.

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kitd
No mention of the Hawthorne Effect[1] on the Indian data entry workers? A bit
of an omission.

1
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

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musername
interesting read but not really substantial, given that the theories are
inconclusive. the observer effect is something i'd be more willing to believe,
e.g. the relay assembly women might just increase productivity to be
sufficient enough for all the changes to stop already, to be polite or being
reminded of productivity being actually important.

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freeduck
I agree this article is bad on many levels. But I also think it catches one
important point. People who are pursuing a goal, that they themselves have
committed to will be more productive

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a3voices
Productivity is based on a ton of different factors. For example aptitude,
experience, confidence in the task at hand, expected value, expected time
frame, state of mind, peer pressure, "fitting in" (being surrounded by people
who are working), belief systems about what you "should" do, role playing.

