DonationCoder.com Software > The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009
Why Trying to be Productive is a Huge Waste of Time
Paul Keith:
Coincidentally someone just posted this on subjot: http://annaholmes.tumblr.com/post/10557866233/its-not-gender-warfare-its-math
Not directly related but some highlights are:
Let’s say I was designing a new piece of software to make my life as a writer a little easier. First, I’d program it count how many characters I’d typed out and in what amount of time, in order to document my productivity on any given day. Then I’d ask it to compare words, phrases, sentences and entire paragraphs from one draft to the next, in order to calculate how much of what I’d written had changed…or stayed the same.
This software, which I’ll call Grammar School, would allow me to record, and discover, patterns in my lifestyle choices and compare them to the quantity and quality of my output: What I’d eaten (and when) before I started writing; how many hours of sleep I’d enjoyed the night before; how much caffeine and alcohol I’d imbibed in the 24-48 hours prior. Did I work better with contacts out or glasses on? Had I showered that day? How many emails had come in during my most (and least) productive periods? How many times had I toggled over to Twitter, and how many instant messages had popped up on my screen while I wrote?
If I was feeling really ambitious, I’d incorporate a webcam component into my creation that would be able to monitor and record data as to the size of my pupils (big = excited and stimulated; small = anxious and immobilized) and how many times I had gazed plaintively at my monitor or rolled my eyes at my own inertia.
Would this software help make me a better, more productive writer? I doubt it; as far as I know, the process and craft of writing is not something you can improve on with data collection and analysis. But I’ll probably never find out, because, like so many millions of American women, I have no idea how to program a computer.
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...and that's 99% of the battle there I think. Systems give the illusion of being data driven and fuel the desire to analyze.
Even in over-simplified productivity concepts, you got these guys shilling up big rocks and circles and quadrants. They are clues and albeit better clues than normal, rarely "planning in-depth" people get but they are not gifts rained in by God the Santa Claus. Productive people who are already productive can get them to work and it can look and feel wonderful as a trinket but it makes productivity seem and feel more like a religion instead of something that can barely fit in the psuedoscientific category.
To compound this dilemma:
“Coming from a feminist viewpoint, the people who are developing technology are the ones with the power,” says Jennifer Skaggs, a University of Kentucky education researcher and author of the June 2011 paper Making the Blind to See: Balancing STEM Identity With Gender Identity. Skaggs points to the part that female automobile engineers played in designing airbags that did not seriously injure or kill female drivers and passengers, who, along with children, were disproportionately affected by exploding airbags after they were first introduced in the 1970s. As documented in the 2003 book Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, it turns out that automobile development teams, which were usually more than 90% male, were not only overlooking women’s interests, they were using only male crash test dummies.
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Most people are what the OutlinerSoftware forum members call CRIMPers. We are in search and get introduced to productivity concepts mostly from a technology trial while pretending there's little wrong with our understanding of the systems when in fact, even books, get the dream wrong or as the Salty Droid blog commentors would say "most of these are selling the unicorn". Unicorns are half real as a horse and a narwal actually exists but they are not supposed to be close to 50% right much less being "dependent" 100% correct concepts. People don't have productivity melt downs, most people have false hope meltdowns. Sugar coating it as productivity is only giving strength to the excuse that flawed methods are not flawed but you are the ones flawed or nobody is flawed and we all live in this happy rainbow waiting for the next Santa Claus to drop down the next God-like and infallible system that feels like raw hell when it severely destroys our inner identity and adds little to our external lives and surrounding.
We have to go back and look into ourselves and see if things like the above two links are really talking about productivity or they are talking management, software redundancy, false hopes, flawed pedagogy, etc. These are the things that not only often break down our systems or tools, they are the ones that often make us be unproductive to begin with.
For example, what drives quotas? The productivity system? The to-do lists? No, it's the philosophy of capturing everything and then trying to make a system fix it when it neither scales or fixes things that well to begin with. Doing it like this is akin to saying you can fill your browsers with bookmarks and it will relieve you of stress and by virtue of that, you will be productive. You won't if those bookmarks are a mess. Especially if you're like me who came from an IE culture where I was mostly ignorant of bookmarks until delicious.
We should stop asking (or believing people who think they are answering them) - why trying to be productive is a huge waste of time and start going back to gathering revelations of why the things we are doing is not only less of a waste of time to us but could also be less of a waste of time for others. At least that's what productivity should get back to. The repackaging of advises and false productivity related problems have sailed. The salesmen may have mostly left elsewhere. Now is a ripe opportunity for the rest of us survivors to fix the pieces.
Stoic Joker:
People don't have productivity melt downs, most people have false hope meltdowns. Sugar coating it as productivity is only giving strength to the excuse that flawed methods are not flawed but you are the ones flawed or nobody is flawed and we all live in this happy rainbow waiting for the next Santa Claus to drop down the next God-like and infallible system that feels like raw hell when it severely destroys our inner identity and adds little to our external lives and surrounding.-Paul Keith (September 23, 2011, 02:45 PM)
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Damnit man, that was positively beautiful! ...Hell I'm thinking about framing it.
There was a discussion in one of Heinlein's books about the quickest way to getting something done was to slow down. It involved an analogy of chasing someone by cutting through a planets atmosphere instead of all the way around the planet. I've always just added that to my grandfathers pick a pace you can maintain and stick with it philosophy and let the rest just be.
Uber productivity, and a case of 5-hour energy drinks a day ... is a dull ass-ed way to ensure an early grave.
40hz:
Productivity systems are dandy if you have the sort of job where you spend most of your day at your desk, on the phone, or in meetings. Great if that's your life. (I have a friend who has a worklife like that. She pushes an Outlook/OneNote combo to the limit of their capabilities and gets more done in a week than most people do in a month.) But it's not how my life plays out.
My work life has more in common with an acute psychotic episode than a day at the office, I've since given up on most high tech and 'überpsych' systems and implemented a very simple manual process. Combined with my three point triage filter, it works quite well for what I need it for.
I know it works well because I get things done on a timely basis; show up on time where I need to be; and, and enjoy greatly reduced levels of stress in my life doing it the way I do.
That's enough to make it "good enuff" for me.
------
Thought:
From what I've experienced and seen, most productivity systems are great if you're in a total morass and need to dredge yourself out of it. So in that respect they're most useful in clearing up a mess in order for you to get going again. But once you've exited the Slough of Despond, they seem far less useful for day to day use - unless what you're doing falls within the scope of what they're best designed to handle.
My friend works in the publishing industry as an editor. For that occupational role, the basic GTD paradigm works extremely well. And she's a past master with that system. Interestingly, I've noticed how often productivity experts are authors by trade. Which in turn makes me wonder if most productivity systems are intrinsically better (or possibly best) adapted to the tasks surrounding a professional writer (deadlines, milestones, meetings, submissions, tracking, etc.) or related "wordsmith" careers than most other occupations.
Hmm...something to think about. Gonna have to add it to my 'deep think' list. 8)
JavaJones:
Interestingly, I've noticed how often productivity experts are authors by trade. Which in turn makes me wonder if most productivity systems are intrinsically better (or possibly best) adapted to the tasks surrounding a professional writer (deadlines, milestones, meetings, submissions, tracking, etc.) or related "wordsmith" careers than most other occupations.
-40hz (September 23, 2011, 04:03 PM)
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Or maybe it's more like those people who write "get rich quick" schemes - the only one that actually works is writing and selling the schemes. ;)
- Oshyan
Stoic Joker:
Interestingly, I've noticed how often productivity experts are authors by trade. Which in turn makes me wonder if most productivity systems are intrinsically better (or possibly best) adapted to the tasks surrounding a professional writer (deadlines, milestones, meetings, submissions, tracking, etc.) or related "wordsmith" careers than most other occupations.
-40hz (September 23, 2011, 04:03 PM)
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Or maybe it's more like those people who write "get rich quick" schemes - the only one that actually works is writing and selling the schemes. ;)
- Oshyan
-JavaJones (September 23, 2011, 04:12 PM)
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That one gets my vote! :Thmbsup:
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