
Ask HN: Why productivity matters to you? - alfonsodev
I&#x27;ve being asking this to myself recently and I found it to be a very important question, answering it helped me to focus more during the day, so I wanted to share the question here, and I&#x27;m curious about your thoughts.
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jasonkester
In professional life, productivity is important because it's how I position
myself in negotiation.

I'll quote my day rate for a consulting gig, which will give the other party
an immediate pulmonary embolism. But before it becomes terminal, I'll continue
onto my spiel about how cost equals rate multiplied by time, and that neither
term is meaningful on its own.

So you can hire a $50/hr guy to build this, but it'll take him six times as
long because he's never built one o' these before. Or you can hire the $15/hr
guy who will labor away tirelessly for six months before it becomes apparent
that he is simply incapable of delivering a finished product. Or you can hire
me and end up with your thing built quickly and correctly. (at which point,
it's handy to point to a working example of something frighteningly similar
that you've built recently to underscore the point).

For my own stuff, productivity is just as important. If I can get a new
feature out the door in four hours on a Monday morning instead of 40 hours
over the course of a week, then I've bought myself a lot of time to spend
working on the next feature or (more likely) screwing off climbing rocks and
playing with the kids.

It's the reason a little question mark appears over my head every time I see
somebody mention how they don't mind writing code in a text editor and keeping
a browser window open to look things up. Maybe if I was sitting in a cubicle,
collecting a paycheck, that would fly. But if it's my time on the line, I'm
going to leverage every last scran of tooling to speed things up.

~~~
alfonsodev
My take away from your comment 'I've bought myself a lot of time'.

That's a great way to put it, I've being asking this, because usually people
put the focus on productivity method X or Y and this or that software to
manage tasks. One can miss the point of why is productivity important for
oneself in the first place. I found that for me focusing on answering this
question, rather than on particular tools or methods, motivates me much more
than just going mindlessly trough your workday fighting against productivity
tools/methods.

So I'm not saying that tools of methods are not useful, just saying that the
motivation can't come from using these tools or methods, but from the WHY. I
guess sometimes people are so enthusiastic about particular methods or tools
and there so much advice out there that it feels overwhelming.

So I though that coming back to the basic question could be helpful/healthy
reminder.

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mattbgates
Without productivity, nothing would get done. In our society, where we have
tons of distractions, as well as the innate ability for procrastination, it
should be priority to set goals in order to accomplish things, even if it is
just one or two things a day. If you want something in life, you have to go
for it. Very few people get lucky and are given handouts.

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wjh_
It's not so much the productivity that means things to me.

I want to feel like I'm achieving things, and if I sit about all day doing
nothing then that isn't going to happen. The only way to achieve things is to
be productive.

Plus it feels great at the end of the day, to look back and see everything
you've managed to do.

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brown-dragon
I have so many things that I need a system to keep me productive. Plus, it's
fun to get things done and be confident in not having missed anything
important.

Productivity is about getting the right results for the least effort!

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coralreef
In theory, if I'm more productive, I get more time and/or money.

