
Stop being a productivity nerd, and chill out - feint
http://feint.me/2009/12/chill-out-productivity/
======
edw519
When I was a junior programmer, I wanted to maximize productivity which I
defined as output / input.

As I gained experience, I wanted to maximize output only, figuring that input
would naturally minimize itself as I got more proficient.

Now I only worry about 2 things:

    
    
      1. maximizing output of the top item on my list
      2. making sure the right item is at the top of my list
    

This seems to be working much better than any other approach I have ever
taken. When I make the most progress on the most important item, things like
project management, efficiency, and time management suddenly seem much less
important.

~~~
jacquesm
The only thing I seem to worry about is making sure that the total amount of
work on my 'list' is smaller when I quit the day than when I begin it. Most
days I seem to be losing that battle.

~~~
discojesus
I don't think this is the criterion you want - if I won the lottery, for
example, my to-do list would explode with all the new possibilities presented
before me; however, if that happened, I certainly wouldn't consider it a bad
day. :)

~~~
jacquesm
Good point, I had in mind that all things being otherwise equal and being
occupied with more or less the same stuff for the duration of the existence of
said list.

And I don't play the lottery ;)

~~~
discojesus
"I had in mind that all things being otherwise equal and being occupied with
more or less the same stuff for the duration of the existence of said list."

Fair enough.

"And I don't play the lottery ;)"

Nor do I; 'twas just a thought experiment :)

------
tel
This blog scrapes HN comments and reposts them on the blog without permission.

In the process it serializes the threading and so it's going to destroy the
threaded nature of these reposted conversations. In this way it's rebranding
the information served here, misrepresenting the attention commenters here
give the post, and confusing the outside reader.

I know there's an attempt to smooth these difficulties with the "This comment
was originally posted on [[Hacker News]]" line but that leaves me still
confused as to the origin and meaning of the comment quoted. I interpret that
to mean, ridiculously, that commenters at HN gave their permission explicitly
to repost comments on Feint. Actually, it even appears to me that they
personally moved it.

This is, of course, very similar to the the controversy AllThingsDigital
stirred up a little while ago
([http://waxy.org/2009/04/all_things_digital_and_transparency_...](http://waxy.org/2009/04/all_things_digital_and_transparency_in_online_journalism/))
but I don't think Feint is really making a large improvement over that
situation.

~~~
feint
its a backtype plugin used by hundreds of blogs

~~~
sfk
And it's equally idiotic on your blog as it is on hundreds of other blogs.
What is the point of having the same "content" posted over and over again in a
multitude of venues?

~~~
feint
I agree - i removed the plugin. It worked better when most of the conversation
around my content happened on FriendFeed, where the conversation was much more
fractured. HN is different and FF is dead so I decided to remove it.

Thanks for your feedback

------
philk
I think the problem with these productivity methods isn't that it's bad to
track what you're doing but that:

a) They impose a mental tax on you; it's hard to get into a flow state when
you're busy thinking about whether you're doing what you should.

b) Make chores/minor tasks, etc., appear to be a good thing (after all, you're
doing _something_ productive) and idly staring into space a bad thing, even
though the latter enables you to recharge your batteries so you can focus more
intently on what's important. I think this is exacerbated because if you can't
think of what big important thing you're supposed to be doing right now it's
tempting to do something small just so you aren't "wasting time".

c) Also I've found that when I've done these things I wind up gaming the hell
out of them so that I end up looking good by whatever metric is measured
without actually achieving much more.

------
mikemainguy
Spoken like a young creative (at a startup? in the valley?) who is only
responsible to himself. Once you need to work as part of a team, time
management becomes important because you have to manage the interruptions +
coordination with other people who depend on each other to be productive.

Yes, however, time management and team coordination do add overhead. Teams,
however are much more scaleable that individuals. In addition, they are also
fault tolerant.

Put in hacker terms... a great programmer is an superfast solid state drive,
whereas a team is a raid 6 array with a bunch of disks that are slower and of
varying speeds.

Overall, the solid state disk might individually perform better (and possibly
be cheaper), but generally most people tend to agree the RAID array is a
better way to go if you can afford it.

~~~
feint
yes, im young and possibly creative (debatable) and do work at a startup...but
unfortunately not in the vallley.

I do manage a team (of 8) very creating and talented developers and designers.
I don't force my ideas on them - in fact i let them work however and whenever
they want.

The reason why I don't like time management - it focuses on time rather than
result. Tim Ferriss explains this much better than me. 80% of the work you do
will only result in 20% of the product. Therefore most of your time is
actually wasted. To fix this, one needs to focus on results and efficiency
rather than time. Pick the three most important tasks (which more often than
not aren't the most urgent, suprisingly) and tackle those.

------
rapind
Stop telling me what to do.

~~~
shimon
Right on. And stop assuming that the work habits you feel match your
personality and goals are fully generalizable.

~~~
diN0bot
> "If you’re boring, predictable and don’t enjoy having fun, then you should
> follow this advice."

and stop judging me.

~~~
feint
oh and btw, if you're worried my ideas threaten the concept of your app -
<https://procrasdonate.com/> \- don't worry they don't.

I think its an awesome app and has the potential to actually cause people to
do less auditing.

------
augustus
I agree.

What works for me as a programmer is to get into the zone as quickly as
possible. I like to set aside one day of the week to handle miscellaneous
tasks. Other days its all about the zone.

There is a story about Schwab (Carnegie Steel) hiring a consultant to gave him
the best productivity advice. The advice was to start with the most important
thing first. Stick with it and when its done move onto the next important
task.

Schwab loved the advice and promptly paid the consultant his fee. It worked
even then.

------
mtoledo
"You’ll end up spending your entire day “being productive” without actually
achieving anything."

Well, if you didn't achieve anything, you aren't really being productive.

I think a lot of people get confused between 'what you do' and 'how you do'.

Choosing the most important thing you need to do in the day first, or the 3
most important things you need done, etc is "what to do". When you have issues
with that you spend your day working in things that dont optimally lead you
towards your goals.

Doing it in the zone, at night while you spend the day on twitter or hacker
news, etc is 'how you do'. When people have issues with this they get to the
end of the day and notice the tasks they set up to do haven't been done to the
person's full potential.

Auditing your time and thinking 'should I really be doing this?' is a 'what to
do' tool. It has nothing to do with the fact you work at night or during the
day.

~~~
feint
"You’ll end up spending your entire day “being productive” without actually
achieving anything."

it was a pun (an oxymoron to be exact). Im sorry im so unfunny.

Whats wrong with doing things that don't lead you towards your goals?

------
bgray
This reminds me of another post which had a great quote, "Make Lists. Not Too
Much. Mostly Do."

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=989424>

------
btilly
The article missed the most important point, which is mental flow. If you are
engaged in anything complex then a certain amount of your job can only be done
when you have established a good mental flow. Tracking your time closely will
keep you from ever entering mental flow, and therefore blocks productivity.

Put into pg language, detailed time tracking only works for people on a
manager's schedule, and not those who are makers. See
<http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html> for an explanation of that.

~~~
mikemainguy
I disagree, part of the value of time tracking is that you can illustrate the
many distractions you have during a day and consciously block off time to get
into flow. Obviously this doesn't apply if you set your own priorities and
objectives, but often (in organizations bigger than 1) your priorities are set
or impacted by someone else's contribution.

~~~
btilly
That depends on how you do time tracking.

The most commonly described strategy is to write down what you are doing every
15 minutes. That definitely kills mental flow. A more useful one is to get a
Freshbooks account and track whenever you change tasks.

When someone talks about time tracking I usually assume they are talking about
something like the first strategy.

------
trapper
I'd like to know, does anyone actually do all these "productivity" methods?
I've never known anyone who tries all the things you read on blogs and sticks
with it for very long.

~~~
mstevens
I've stuck with a fair bit of Getting Things Done for a couple of years. And I
think it really helps me keep organised.

~~~
mschy
Me too.

I get a lot more done, and have a lot less stress.

------
Aegean
Really good point. By nature of my startup, I have to achieve highly complex
tasks in short time. These are heavyweight tasks that require high precision
design decisions and, I often find the following two things happen to me in
cycles:

1.) I feel highly motivated to achieve the task, and I become a very high
achiever. I finish a task in 2-3 days that would otherwise be achieved by
inefficient communication and discussion of a 5-employee team in a month. I do
this without feeling any obligation to do it and without thinking about
schedules, startup deliverables etc. I concentrate solely on the design
problem and the reward of achieving it. I feel rewarded when it is finished.
It feels like a celebration of the mind's capabilities.

2.) I look ahead and start planning about deliverables and deadlines. Since
the tasks are so overwhelming on their own, the overall project looks very
complicated. I feel overwhelmed, freaked out, and immediately stop having
progress. I also start to have stress-related health degradation signs, and I
get into an unproductivity cycle that is very hard to break.

I got this so many times that now I try hard to find ways to keep myself in
(1) without going into (2). I find that keeping my focus on the challenge but
not the time schedule helps. Think of it this way, if you stay in (1), you
will get very timely progress anyway, so no need to think about schedules and
deadlines.

It is also ironic how the same task may look so overwhelming and so much fun
in different perspectives. It is actually fun that becomes your hell when you
get schedules, deadlines, competitors and finance in the loop.

------
discojesus
"Honestly if you were to work like this you may as well work for a big
corporation where you can save yourself the hassle of having to audit your
time – as some jerk of a manager will do it for you."

Your managers have other crap to do than to watch what you're doing 24/7 (or
"8/5" for that matter) - they're much more likely to just hand you something
so they can get it off their own plate and just expect you to handle it.

" You’ll end up spending your entire day “being productive” without actually
achieving anything."

"Being productive" == achieving things. If you're not achieving something,
you're not being productive (either because you're not doing anything
[procrastination] or because you are doing the wrong things [i.e. your
priorities are not set properly])

"Rather than this stupid auditing crap, come up with 3 tasks that are most
important to your success. Do each one first thing in the day (my day is
backwards btw, as in my day starts at around 9pm at night, im a bit wierd).
Take a break in between each task and then feel free to procrastinate after."

This DOES NOT WORK. The only case in which this is a viable strategy is if you
work for yourself and have no hard deadlines and you just want to keep
yourself from reading reddit all day long - it doesn't work in most real-world
situations. Like for example, your boss puts another project on your plate.
But that never happens...

Take the advice of the late Randy Pausch - keep a time journal
[<http://www.scribd.com/doc/2519267/Time-Log-Sheet>], and REVIEW that data
(the data is useless if you just fill out time journals and let them sit in
some folder somewhere).

~~~
feint
"This does not work"? It works for me. and i think you missed the joke about
being productive and not achieving anything

~~~
discojesus
""This does not work"? It works for me."

Inheriting money might make someone a millionaire - that doesn't make "Have a
rich uncle" a viable financial plan. "Having a rich uncle" therefore "does not
work". The same goes for making a simple list of your three goals for the day
- for 99% of people, it just doesn't work because your simple plan is most
likely going to be blown to hell by some emergency/meeting/new project that
just landed on your plate. I believe you when you say that it works for you,
but it just doesn't work for the vast majority of people.

" i think you missed the joke about being productive and not achieving
anything"

I got the joke - you almost certainly meant that someone who is "being
productive and not achieving anything" is engaging in busywork but not doing
anything worthwhile, which would mean that they are active (i.e. they are not
procrastinating), but they are not properly prioritizing the actions they
take. I covered that case explicitly.

~~~
feint
I didn't say doing three things a day would work for everyone, but im willing
to put my name on the line by saying its more effective then auditing 100% of
your time. See this post: [http://blog.liferemix.net/lazy-
productivity-10-simple-ways-d...](http://blog.liferemix.net/lazy-
productivity-10-simple-ways-do-only-three-things-today) \- I take no credit
for the concept. Many smarter people have already shared this concept.

As per the joke - no im annoyed as I need to explain my pun. Obviously, its
impossible to be productive and not achieve anything. I was writing an
oxymoron (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron>) and also using satire to
bring to light, what I believe are flaws in common "productivity" knowledge.
Honestly, did I really need to explain this. anyone?

------
dchs
Everybody's different.

------
arnorhs
The main argument of this article seems to be that it is not fun to spend time
on what you should be doing... Actually, if you have two options, one is
something you should be doing, the other something you shouldn't, both are
fun.

Personally, I'd work on whatever I should be doing.... If it's as fun (or
serves my long-term objective, need, wants, better)

~~~
feint
no thats not the point - sorry if i didn't make it clearer. I love my job and
love working.

my point is people get too caught up on time tracking, goals, gtd etc. Im
wondering if they will look back in 5 years and go - sure I got things done,
but did I have fun?

------
socratees
Very truthful. Stop following what everyone does and create your own plan.
Besides, only you really know when you do your best, and you don't have to
audit 24 hours of your day.

Unearned guilt is a bad thing.

------
aditya
I know this has been asked before but are there other people that focus better
at night? Have you modified your sleep schedule to do this more? If so, how?

~~~
msie
My best hours are between 12am and 4am. It seems that I have unfortunately
fallen into a rhythm where my brain is ready to tackle programming around that
time. All other times I find it hard to concentrate when I have opportunities
to watch tv or walk around outside.

So my sleep schedule has adjusted to this. I sleep at 4am and wake up around
11am. You just have to be working late enough for so many nights for this to
happen. I think my biggest problem is working from home.

~~~
chewbranca
I used to be just like this, (and still am in some ways) where I am most
productive at night. I enjoy the peace and quiet when no one is around to
bother you. During the day there are endless distractions but at night that
all goes away. As I said, I used to be like this, now I have a baby and being
a night owl is no longer an option. I have been progressively migrating
towards starting my day at 7am, and I have to admit, I enjoy it. Yeah I've had
some great late night hacking sessions, but being able to start working early
and be done by 5 or 6 is very nice.

I find it much easier to separate work from home life when I start my day with
work, as opposed to spending all day knowing that at some point I will in fact
have to get to work. I've found that having things hang over my head like that
really messes with my motivations, I prefer to take the approach of work or
don't work, but nothing in between.

I also work from home, which is not only complicated by the fact that I have a
baby at home, but also that my office is sitting off in a corner in the living
room. The best solution I have found is to find a way to isolate yourself and
convince your mind that you are in the same mode as if you were working late
at night without anyone around. I have a nice pair of headphones that block
out most noise, and I purchased standing paper room dividers so I can 'shut'
my door and focus on work.

So while I've had a lot of fun being a night owl hacker, I find I live a more
balanced productive life getting work done first and early. As they say,
business before pleasure, with a personal corollary of don't combine the two.

