
What is your least popular but deeply held opinion on personal productivity? - yarapavan
https://twitter.com/andrewchen/status/1074087782736248832
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jondubois
About software development, I have a lot of unpopular views about testing.

\- You should try to write as few tests as needed (and focus on getting as
much value as possible out of each test case).

\- Only write unit tests for logic that is either: 1. Too complex to reason
about or 2. Very old and hasn't changed in a very long time (like 1 year or
more) and you want to lock it down.

\- For TDD; integration tests are the best.

Also, I have unpopular views about statically typed languages; I'm not a big
fan of them. I spent many years working with statically typed languages in a
professional setting (in fact, my first language was statically typed) so I
have a deep understanding of the pros and cons of each one so I feel very
strongly that dynamically typed is better in terms of productivity (both for
initial development and also refactoring).

Basically I'm against the corporate approach of software development. I'm
particularly against all software development approaches which aim to treat
engineers as disposable and untrustworthy entities.

It's obvious why executives don't like this type of thinking but it's
surprising to me why engineers themselves also often disagree with it.

~~~
statictype
I’m curious to hear how refactoring can be better in a dynamically typed
language, especially if you dont have sufficient test coverage.

A statically typed language - even a relatively weakly typed one would seem
superior for refactoring.

~~~
jondubois
For a lot of projects, a small number of carefully chosen integration test
cases can give you a large amount of coverage. Unit tests are often a problem
for refactoring because they discourage you from making necessary changes
(since updating unit tests is hard work, it incentivizes developers to limit
the scope of the refactoring).

The reason why typed languages are slower to refactor is simply because they
just take more time to think about. For example, it takes time to discuss and
agree on types with your team members; what they should be called and whether
or not we should combine some interfaces into a single interface...

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paulgb
Mine: getting a good sleep and regular exercise has a greater impact on
productivity than your choice of methodology.

~~~
tonystubblebine
+1.

A fun mental exercise is to classify sleep as brain training and then compare
the results of sleep to a brain training game (or practically any other
activity).

~~~
andai
I classify sleep deprivation as brain damage, that way I use fear of becoming
stupider to motivate me to stay healthy.

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notacoward
That we (in software development) should worry more about negative
productivity than positive productivity. If you're headed in the right
direction, doing the right things the right way, you're productive even if
you're moving slowly. The world doesn't need more efficient mess makers, but
that's exactly what we get when people focus too much on per-hour or per-day
pseudo-productivity. Races don't award medals for being the fastest runner in
the wrong direction.

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rvense
Being productive doesn't make me happy. Sometimes being happy makes me
productive, but certainly not always. I can be very content doing nothing for
long time periods of time.

As a result, I generally don't value productivity very highly.

~~~
tonystubblebine
I bet a lot of people already know this, but it was a surprise to me this
year. The book Flow originated from happiness research. I'd always assumed it
was a book about productivity, but it's actually a book about what activities
make a person happiness.

That says something important about productivity. You'll only be happy with
productivity meets up with a level of challenge that puts you in a flow state.
Productively doing easy tasks is boring.

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vages
Going in with the mindset that I will probably fail (badly) the first time I
try at something. Most people, including an earlier version of myself, are
discouraged by it. I now find comfort in it, and I also find I'm a lot quicker
at trying out new things and implementing new routines while succeeding at
them than before.

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maxxxxx
Productivity is not about who is working the most. You can't always be
productive. Sometimes it's better to take some time off and think about
things.

Moving fast is not always the most productive way to do things.

Workplace environment can have a huge negative impact on productivity. Noise
and distraction can kill productivity.

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irishcoffee
98% of meetings are useless for almost everyone in attendance, and the whole
meeting could have probably been replaced with an email

~~~
ThePadawan
I'm always surprised to see another person beat this dead horse.

I've never worked in an environment was happy to see highly paid engineers sit
idly in a meeting.

No one has ever said "Yes sure we have the time and money to spend to have you
be bored instead of productive".

Obviously, YMMV - I simply want to express how I can in no way relate to the
"bad guys" (management) in this scenario.

~~~
dandare
Developers can be like small kids. They will complain about meetings or they
will complain about not having the big picture, not being consulted, not
having a say in whatever, etc. Irrelevant, unfocused or unprepared meetings
are bad, but that is a truism.

~~~
irishcoffee
Oh my.

Being a parent of small kids, not once have my kids complained about "not
having the big picture" or "having a say in whatever, etc."

I'm struggling to find the useful, productive substance part of your comment.

~~~
dandare
Taking a metaphor literally is not a good counter-argument.

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jt2190
> Being super organized is a bad thing... [It can] make you overly passive on
> other peoples’ use of your time.

This is why I practice “Inbox who gives a f __k”. I scan the subject lines of
the messages in my inbox, and only open the ones that I think have relevant
information that I can’t get some other way. (I currently have greater than
7700 unread emails in a relatively low traffic account.) Any time taken to
touch /manage/sort/categorize/unsubscribe is a waste.

~~~
andai
I recently started practicing "Inbox delete all".

Coupled with "wtf is this, unsubscribe", I have been experiencing steadily
increasing levels inner peace.

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mgamache
Procrastination has benefits. I am not sure it's a net gain, but I will tell
you it's paid off more then I would be comfortable admitting (over 20+ years).

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notjustanymike
As a manager, the job is to make your employees not happy but productive.
Employee happiness is one of many ways you can get to consistent productivity,
but it's not the end goal.

I've found too many managers believe as long as their employees are happy then
they're doing a good job managing. It is totally possible to have happy
unproductive employees, and sometimes the only way to help them improve is to
make them unhappy. Set difficult expectations, alert them to their failings,
and establish a transparent plan for improvement. If necessary, take away the
damn ping pong table.

I want to employees to be happy insofar as it improves their output, retention
likelihood, and company morale. If their happiness kills their and others
productivity then difficult conversations must be had.

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vmlinuz
One big screen. Proper full-sized good quality keyboard. Fairly chunky
wireless mouse.

If you spend most of your time working at a desk, why are you hobbling
yourself with inferior kit which exists to be portable, not productive?

Yes, I'm relatively old... Get off of my lawn!

~~~
emilburzo
Do you have any chunky mouse suggestions? (wireless or not).

I'm struggling to find a larger size mouse that:

\- doesn't have a million buttons (e.g. gaming)

\- lasts more than a year

~~~
orev
I find gaming mice seem to be built better than others. Currently using a
SteelSeries Sensei Laser RAW which is ambidextrous and has minimal buttons and
lighting. It’s also on the larger side if that’s what you’re looking for. Also
add. 3M precise mouse pad (I wish their designs weren’t so ugly though)

~~~
emilburzo
That actually looks really good, but I can't seem to find it in stock
anywhere.

Do you know if there's a succesor or am I just not looking in the right place?

~~~
orev
It appears to be in stock on Amazon, and it also recommends a newer version
you could look at.

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bchjam
Productivity is a poor metric for actually improving your quality of life,
solving hard problems, or doing much of anything other than running in circles
at speed.

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SllX
Keep a clean house and your equipment in a good state of repair; your kitchen
and bathroom with all of their associated appliances and plumbing are as
important as your bedroom and office, and it is worth it to keep a cleaning
and maintenance schedule you follow like clockwork.

Get at least 8 hours of sleep, a physical at least once a year and see a
dentist at least once a year. Cook your own food, or marry someone who will do
it for or with you. If you drink any beverages routinely, invest in the
equipment to do it yourself.

I don’t care what tools you hack in, you know what you need better than I do,
the only thing I will say on this topic is that for any task I use a computer
for, I make sure that of my equipment, there is one canonical way to do it. If
I want to set a timer, I use Siri. If I want to invoke a podcast, I use Siri.
If I want to know the time, I look at my watch on my wrist, not on my phone.
If I want to read something, it is either in Instapaper or iBooks, unless it
is Wikipedia. Anything overtly mundane, I probably already automated.

It’s not what you use, it’s how you use it, and I like things to be boring and
predictable. I don’t ever want to be surprised.

~~~
graeme
Could you expand on the one canonical way to do things: is it about decision
fatigue, ir something else?

And, how do things get in instapaper in the first place? That sounds like a
system worth trying, but for me the browsing is the hard part.

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1996
Thow every best software practice out of the window. It is administration
growing more administration. Peer programming is just dividing productivity by
two.

To be productive: start vi, code, run the code. No source control. No
planning. Just do until you reach your objective.

My way is to iterate and improve. I get in one day what a team gets in a month
if they are lucky

And when I don't feel like working, I don't. I wait until I feel the need.

~~~
todd3834
Do you work primarily alone? How is source control slowing you down? No
planning?

I would normally never ask this but since this is such a radical suggestion
I’d love to see some of your work. I’m guessing no open source without source
control. Would you mind sharing some of your public projects so we can see the
kind of results to expect from this mindset?

~~~
1996
Sure, you can check cryptomarketplot.com - but no open source sorry.

I work in small team because I like productivity.

Why no source control? Same for why not updating the operating system or
tweaking the keyboard shortcuts on your editor. Extra things take extra brain
power. Remove everything extra to concentrate on the core.

No planning is important to concentrate even more on important features: the
right moment dictates what you should do right now.

~~~
fouc
how do you test out changes and revert them easily? (basically how do you
backup?

git makes this trivial, and doesn't get in the way of anything

~~~
1996
The old way: cp -adr program-v3-withnewfeatureX program-v4

Then work on program-v4 with test deploy until you are happy. Then when ready,
change your production deploy scripts to use program-v4, and the "emergency-
revert" scripts to use program-v3

Editing 2 scripts is not more complicated that running git commands.

That said, I like git. git is nice. But unless you are writing the new linux
kernel with tens or hundreds of people you may not need it.

I try to remove everything I do not absolutely need and use the simplest
hardware I can get away with. Complexity for complexity sake is not
productivity.

~~~
tom_
I've always been disappointed by people that say they work without source
control - because it _always_ turns out they do something like this. Always.
And this differs from source control in no meaningful fashion.

Once again, my hopes of finding out some interesting new way of working, that
I couldn't even imagine: dashed!

~~~
1996
The ways are not so different. The tools are, a bit.

As you wisely said, this differs from source control in no meaningful fashion.

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miccah
There are two kinds of work to be productive on: exciting work and busy work.

Exciting productivity occurs when you are doing or learning something new. The
excitement motivates you to keep taking another step forward. For this type, I
have learned it is best to take baby steps to avoid burnout and to create a
steady flow of productive days.

Busy productivity is boring. It is standard routines that you just need to do.
For this type, I have found that my mood greatly affects how much I can do.
There is no strong motivation other than "it has to be done." That being said,
I add additional motivation by keeping in mind that it will make my future
self's life easier.

Last thing I want to add is that productivity stems from self love, and the
simplest way to love yourself is to take care of yourself: eat well, exercise,
and sleep well. Having that basis will motivate you in all other aspects of
life.

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ianai
That caffeine is bad for work that requires thought.

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gaze
Productivity is largely dominated by decisions to keep using and deal with a
tool which is mediocre for the job or to redesign the tool... and often the
best decision is to keep using. I've found management of technical debt to be
one of the hardest things. Most people either fall into the camp of
continuously reinventing the wheel because it's kinda fun, often easy and
satisfying, and they can convince themselves that the time invented will pay
off, or they just use bad tools and curse the darkness rather than lighting
the candle. Some snap back and forth between these two extremes. Having good
judgement about this is a rare and valuable skill.

~~~
jeremyjh
In my very first job, for some reason they paid for my whole team to go a
Covey 7-habits training. This was 20 years ago. The only thing I took away
from it is the phrase "sharpen the saw". Sometimes you need to stop working
and optimize your tools or workflow a little bit. You have to be careful not
to let this become a huge time suck, but if you never do it you are paying a
massive opportunity cost.

~~~
gaze
I think my point is that knowing when to sharpen the saw, if the saw is sharp
enough for the job, and knowing when to stop sharpening and start sawing is
the hard thing.

The general problem here is a combination of estimating the time it will take
to finish a project, and a problem of knowing what key problems dominate the
final product... themselves two of the hardest things to do.

~~~
jeremyjh
I have to confess my decisions here are often driven by frustration that
reaches a tipping point. But yes, calculating short and long-term payoffs
against the investment is very hard.

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marsrover
Mine is getting high and listening to Jazz while I clean the house. (I don’t
know if it’s unpopular or not but I bet if it were more popular there would be
less people in a shit mood)

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benjohnson
For me - no remote work: I would fritter 12 hours being lazy and unproductive.

Instead, I'm at the client's site for 6 hours. I set my monitor so people can
see it and then I crank. I go home and turn off the devices and enjoy the time
with my family - without worry.

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Tomminn
It is more productive to hate a task and do it in a rage than to love it.

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manicdee
You have to actually use the system for it to work.

Context: I have pomodoro timer, Asian Efficiency, 7 Habits, Personal
Productivity self help books galore and still get nothing done.

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swayvil
Productivity is the death of personal growth. Talking zero sum game here. More
of one means less of the other.

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aklemm
Would you differentiate "productivity" from "organization and discipline"?
Organization and discipline I think can help personal growth fundamentally.

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swayvil
Probably not.

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rwnspace
A) You have always done whatever you wanted to do. You get a say in which
voice/urge most constitutes 'you'. The more you veto, and the more you can
distinguish the urges, the more of a say you get. Everything else is fluff.

B) The productivity industry is a total sham and a net drain on productivity.
It's mostly social manipulation. The industry takes attention away from the
things productivity is a side effect of, such as level of control, overall
health, and level of insight into oneself. This is partially due to -

C) All texts/advice/systems put minor spins on a couple of templates, and most
of the good ones steal from Marcus Aurelius. Whichever flavour of system fits
the fashion of the day the best becomes 'the best' because reasons.

D) The definition of 'productive' is so absurdly narrow and restricted in the
late-capitalist hegemony as to render most of humanity utterly useless.
Clearly, they're not [1]. It's more about raising members of a certain class
with a certain personality profile [2] up to the status of a golden cow.

[1] for example, parenting is a fairly productive activity.

[2] that is, two things we're lucky to be able to change a lot about.

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porpoisely
Good god, it's sunday. Can we lay off the 24/7 productivity mantra or
propaganda for one day. Monday through saturday isn't enough?

A while ago I tried to count the number of overt "productivity" messaging I
came across in a day and I stopped after 17 or so - probably because it wasn't
a "productive" use of my time. Who knows how many subconscious or covert
productivity messaging I was getting.

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raptorraver
My best productivity hack so far is to stop reading books and blogs that
mention word productivity. I’d rather take a walk or close my eyes for 10
minutes.

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porpoisely
My personal productivity programming isn't sure that's a good idea.

Your walk seems like suboptimal time allocation and a loss of potential
productivity gains. Have you considered the productivity opportunity costs of
your decision?

While you are on a walk, have you considered listening to an audio book?
Perhaps a self-help audio book on having more productive walks? Why walk when
you can walk and listen?

Or think of how many emails you could respond to in your 10 minute walk? Not
only is your walk more productive, you will gain more muscle carrying around
your smartphone and increase hand eye coordination by typing on a smartphone.
A more productive you, is a healthier and happier you.

That is exhausting. People think that dystopia is a future waiting for us. I
think it's here.

