I can not easily recall an article this wrong getting to the front page of Hacker News. This in particular is refuted by several studies:
"You’re doing that to your brain. But with mental tasks productivity doesn’t increase linearly with time worked. Every hour spent working hard is a tax on the next hour you want to spend working hard. And so on until you can spend hours, even days, working without achieving."
For a different view, please look here:
Core Learning Principle #10: Everything Else Being Equal, More Time-on-Task Equals More Learning
"Allocated time is that time in the school day specifically set aside for instruction, as opposed to non-instructional time like recess and lunch. Instructional time is the in-class time teachers spend on task, as opposed to management-oriented activities, like taking roll. Engaged time is that portion of time during which student are actually paying attention to the content being presented - often referred to as "time on task." Academic learning time is the proportion of engaged time during which students are successfully learning or successful at the task they are engaged in."
Search Google for "time on task innovation insight" and it is easy to find dozens of these studies. There has been a lot of research in this field, and it all agrees that innovation tends to come from those folks who go deep into a subject -- exactly those folks who are willing to put in 60 hour weeks where all they do is think about some particular kind of problem. And then they have an insight that changes the world.
While I agree that time on task usually means learning all of these tests and results are in a school setting. If I am learning a new tech I agree that its positive to continually practice but when you've moved past the learning stage and are in a stage where you can reach flow is it worth it?
I can only provide anecdotal evidence but in my experience living a more balanced life, as opposed to focusing on several things at once taking no breaks leads to better results.
This research also demonstrates that teachers need effective classroom management strategies in order to maximize their instructional time and minimize disruptions. However, it is important to note that, as researchers from LSS concluded in a study titled Extended School Day/Year Programs: A Research Synthesis, little research evidence exists to suggest that increasing the school day or school year will increase student achievement. Rather, "the crucial issue seems to be how the time is used, with quality of instruction being the key.
...which is basically the author's point, and it's the truth in my experience. Saying that you should try to amass a huge number of hours learning is a bit like measuring programmer productivity by SLOC: bigger numbers aren't necessarily better. A smaller number of quality hours are much better than a huge number of low-quality hours.
Now certainly, I don't deny that more quality hours are better than fewer quality hours. The problem is that it's very difficult to achieve a high number of quality hours. The human body is only capable of so much.
It's not obvious to me that the studies you reference are refuting the article. In your reference, time on task is time when students "are actually paying attention to the content being presented". Some people can pay attention for long periods of time, and some can't. So, maximizing time on task does not always mean 60 hour weeks, although that might work for some people.
I completely agree with this. On days when I have class, work and personal projects are days when I feel like I get the least quality of work done, further I am much more likely to procrastinate on all of them.
If I'm just working on a single project I feel better, I procrastinate less and my work is considerably higher quality. I believe this is partially because of the Makers Schedule[1] and getting into a state of flow.
Nice article its in stark contrast of some articles we've seen about startups and programming lately.
I feel that work habits are a very personal thing.
I find that I'm more productive if I work on multiple projects throughout the day instead of dedicating to just one. I don't know if it's because I'm putting artificial deadlines for myself (i.e., I have 3 hours to get this done before I move on to task / project B) or because I stay more engaged and motivated if I'm working on very different things.
On the other hand I know people like Swizec who will feel overwhelmed if they know they have a number of tasks to get done in one day and will procrastinate on all of them.
Always interesting to read about other people's productivity tricks though.
Edit: Also completely disagree about the comparison with professional athletes. Burnout is very real and it will sneak up on you if you don't take some time off to relax here and there, but just working hard will not damage your brain like being a pro-athlete would damage your body.
Productivity isn't about working 80 hours a week. The problem is that there is an infinite amount of things to do, cool things to experience and countries to visit. Time? Limited. Extremely so. The solution? Spend your time in a way that aligns well with your goals/ambitions/preferences.
When you look at a typical office life it involves 9 hours of commuting a week, water cooler talk and meetings that don't go anywhere (but aren't much fun either), very few holidays and an email-based culture. This is for most people clearly sub-optimal, and yet it's often the lifestyle people kind of gravitate toward.
If you want to go about your week in a relaxed manner, that's great. Do that. If you want to work hard for 3 years and chase an exit? That's cool too.
I'm not sure what the real point is of the article, because most of the statements about "productivity" are straw men. The title of the post is "Stop being so fucking productive" and the only actionable advice in it is "become more productive by switching projects less often (because it reduces context switching overhead)". So this post contains yet another another strategy to improve productivity while pretending to be tired of exactly those kind of posts. Yawn. Except the productivity claim here is based on anecdotal evidence (even though there are a lot of research papers out there that need summarizing!).
You know, sometimes there are times where you can't really articulate your feelings; but then coming across something you say "oh, that's exactly what I thought/felt/meant". That's how I felt while reading your 2nd paragraph :)
I've long known that excessive context switching dampens my productivity, but how else am I supposed to take my job seriously and give my side projects a shot? :/
I like the context switch. I can only work at one task for so long until the quality starts to decline. However, switching to a different job allows me to start fresh.
It works really well for software development: I can do the programming for a while until I can program no more, at which point I can switch over to designing interfaces. The mix between creative and analytical thinking is highly beneficial to my workflow.
When I focus on only one task, the quality of my work, at least from my point of view, is never as good.
If you badly have to context-switch, make the process as efficient as you can.
Context switches take a lot of time, but sometimes - like day job vs. side project - are unavoidable. So instead of trying hard to avoid all of the switches, maybe let's optimize the switching process so that it doesn't hurt so much?
I started doing that at my last work - 10 minutes before leaving the office I would open up my "Context Dump" file and write down exactly what's on my mind - current project status, what I was working on, what have I done, what has to be fixed, what quirks are there, what ideas I was considering - pretty much a stream-of-consciousness-like mind dump to text file. And then, the next morning, first thing I would do would be to open up that file and re-read it. It helped me to rebuild my mind state in few minutes instead of an hour. Also, my anxiety went down, which reduced the amount of time I procrastinated on HN each morning.
Cal Newport of at Study Hacks [1] has been talking about this type of stuff for a while. He approaches what he might call "a philosophy of deeply thinking about hard problems" from an academic standpoint, but I think you can apply it generally. He's done some pretty good interviews/detailed posts on the topic.
I really think that pseudo-work is a killer. PG talks about this a bit here [2]. This type of constant context switching is dreadful for productivity, and also stresses you out. Saying that, some startups actually do require 100 hour weeks. Read Max Levchin's interview with Jessica Livingston [3]; he spent like 4 days getting the Paypal demo ready, and then fell asleep at the restaurant table after showing it to the VC's. But there are also times when you have explore; Max said he had this later when Elon Musk came in as CEO and was trying to change direction. Max had tons of free time, so he started playing around. This led to the discovery of the fraud detection system that probably saved the company.
So there's a time and a place for 100hr weeks, but you can lose sight of the big picture if your head's to the grindstone all the time.
The entire thesis of this essay is based off of a false premise.
Being less busy doesn't cause you to become the creme de la creme. He has the causal relationship reversed. More than likely, they feel less busy and stressed because they are born geniuses.
Working less hard won't make you any more of a genius. In fact, for those of us born without exceptionally talented minds, working hard is the only way we can keep up.
I wish I could believe this, and for a year or so I did. But the fact of the matter is that of the top 10 startups of the last 5 years, I can't point to any that the founding team didn't put in 100 hr+ weeks (including wknds). It seems like everyone I know who is super successful (traders, game developers, startup founders) are working as many or more hours than me.
I will admit that they're not necessarily happier, but that's not really the metric I measure myself by. It's easy to say "do what you love", but the fact of the matter is that building meaningful products is going to be painful sometimes. The problems you have to solve aren't always perfectly aligned with your skill set, and you might have to work harder and longer than someone who is smarter or has an advantage that you don't have.
The article seems to suggest that by over-using your brain, you will damage it long term.
As far as I know, there's no indication that too much focused studying/working will make you anything but better at whatever it is that you're doing, and will not hurt you noggin.
I'm confident the human brain can withstand pretty much any intellectual effort in large quantities.
Crucibles are a fundamental aspect of one's personal and professional development, if you're not facing then, you're missing out on giant leaps in your growth.
As someone who's turning 34 this week, this comparison kinda saddens me. I would object, but why? It's not like late adolescents could be convinced out of their own sense of superiority. (Never mind this being a bit American-centric, as not all kind of sports are as depleting as American Football)
Yeah, I know, young scientists do their best work young etc. etc.
Because doing an iOS application or RoR is as mentally challenging as doing Nobel prize winning research…
The author of the article negates his points and attempts to protect himself by saying that all the information was based on anecdotal evidence. Well, no kidding?!
First of all, we need to determine the type of work being done here. If you're in a creative environment, maybe 60-80 hours a week won't make you more productive. However, if you worked in some kind of production facility or in manual labor, you'll be a hell of a lot more productive if you put in the time. The first time I adjusted the valves on my motorcycle, it took me over a week. I took several breaks, I wasn't very organized and I mostly felt discouraged. When I did the same thing to a new bike, it was equally challenging since the parts and process were different, but I forced myself to work at it several hours at a time. I did about three hours on a Friday night, six hours on Saturday and two to three hours on Sunday and it was done.
If we're going to take anecdotal evidence as gold here, I might as well mention that I learned complex piano pieces much faster and with greater accuracy the more time I spent on the piano. If I would have studied the music in 30-minute or 1-hour blocks, it would have taken me much longer. I tried. Instead, I could learn and memorize a piece like Chopin's Polonaise in A flat Major in just three days if I spent six or seven hours a day on it.
Everyone is different - that's my point here. Some people can work with razor-sharp focus for several hours at a time, and others can't. There's nothing wrong with that. The best you can do is learn what works best for you, then do that. Can you get more done if you put in more time? Or are you the type who can be productive for four or five straight hours so you can have the rest of the day off? Figure it out.
Lastly, I want to include something that David Baltimore, former president of Caltech, said about work and academic rigor:
"When I grew up, we worked hard, played hard and never thought to minimize our activities because of stress. Sure, people were under stress and some cracked under it, but leading a "stressful" life was honored because of the accomplishments that could be achieved by those who could handle it. Today we deify the spa, not late hours solving problems at school or work. Caltech's high-achieving faculty and students are seen as weirdos because of their intense focus, but even here, some graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are seeking a more balanced life."
22 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 51.0 ms ] thread"You’re doing that to your brain. But with mental tasks productivity doesn’t increase linearly with time worked. Every hour spent working hard is a tax on the next hour you want to spend working hard. And so on until you can spend hours, even days, working without achieving."
For a different view, please look here:
Core Learning Principle #10: Everything Else Being Equal, More Time-on-Task Equals More Learning
http://innovateonline.info/pdf/vol3_issue3/Ten_Core_Principl...
and also here:
http://www.mcrel.org/toolkit/res/time.asp
which says:
"Allocated time is that time in the school day specifically set aside for instruction, as opposed to non-instructional time like recess and lunch. Instructional time is the in-class time teachers spend on task, as opposed to management-oriented activities, like taking roll. Engaged time is that portion of time during which student are actually paying attention to the content being presented - often referred to as "time on task." Academic learning time is the proportion of engaged time during which students are successfully learning or successful at the task they are engaged in."
Search Google for "time on task innovation insight" and it is easy to find dozens of these studies. There has been a lot of research in this field, and it all agrees that innovation tends to come from those folks who go deep into a subject -- exactly those folks who are willing to put in 60 hour weeks where all they do is think about some particular kind of problem. And then they have an insight that changes the world.
I can only provide anecdotal evidence but in my experience living a more balanced life, as opposed to focusing on several things at once taking no breaks leads to better results.
This research also demonstrates that teachers need effective classroom management strategies in order to maximize their instructional time and minimize disruptions. However, it is important to note that, as researchers from LSS concluded in a study titled Extended School Day/Year Programs: A Research Synthesis, little research evidence exists to suggest that increasing the school day or school year will increase student achievement. Rather, "the crucial issue seems to be how the time is used, with quality of instruction being the key.
...which is basically the author's point, and it's the truth in my experience. Saying that you should try to amass a huge number of hours learning is a bit like measuring programmer productivity by SLOC: bigger numbers aren't necessarily better. A smaller number of quality hours are much better than a huge number of low-quality hours.
Now certainly, I don't deny that more quality hours are better than fewer quality hours. The problem is that it's very difficult to achieve a high number of quality hours. The human body is only capable of so much.
If I'm just working on a single project I feel better, I procrastinate less and my work is considerably higher quality. I believe this is partially because of the Makers Schedule[1] and getting into a state of flow.
Nice article its in stark contrast of some articles we've seen about startups and programming lately.
[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
I find that I'm more productive if I work on multiple projects throughout the day instead of dedicating to just one. I don't know if it's because I'm putting artificial deadlines for myself (i.e., I have 3 hours to get this done before I move on to task / project B) or because I stay more engaged and motivated if I'm working on very different things.
On the other hand I know people like Swizec who will feel overwhelmed if they know they have a number of tasks to get done in one day and will procrastinate on all of them.
Always interesting to read about other people's productivity tricks though.
Edit: Also completely disagree about the comparison with professional athletes. Burnout is very real and it will sneak up on you if you don't take some time off to relax here and there, but just working hard will not damage your brain like being a pro-athlete would damage your body.
When you look at a typical office life it involves 9 hours of commuting a week, water cooler talk and meetings that don't go anywhere (but aren't much fun either), very few holidays and an email-based culture. This is for most people clearly sub-optimal, and yet it's often the lifestyle people kind of gravitate toward.
If you want to go about your week in a relaxed manner, that's great. Do that. If you want to work hard for 3 years and chase an exit? That's cool too.
I'm not sure what the real point is of the article, because most of the statements about "productivity" are straw men. The title of the post is "Stop being so fucking productive" and the only actionable advice in it is "become more productive by switching projects less often (because it reduces context switching overhead)". So this post contains yet another another strategy to improve productivity while pretending to be tired of exactly those kind of posts. Yawn. Except the productivity claim here is based on anecdotal evidence (even though there are a lot of research papers out there that need summarizing!).
You know, sometimes there are times where you can't really articulate your feelings; but then coming across something you say "oh, that's exactly what I thought/felt/meant". That's how I felt while reading your 2nd paragraph :)
It works really well for software development: I can do the programming for a while until I can program no more, at which point I can switch over to designing interfaces. The mix between creative and analytical thinking is highly beneficial to my workflow.
When I focus on only one task, the quality of my work, at least from my point of view, is never as good.
Context switches take a lot of time, but sometimes - like day job vs. side project - are unavoidable. So instead of trying hard to avoid all of the switches, maybe let's optimize the switching process so that it doesn't hurt so much?
I started doing that at my last work - 10 minutes before leaving the office I would open up my "Context Dump" file and write down exactly what's on my mind - current project status, what I was working on, what have I done, what has to be fixed, what quirks are there, what ideas I was considering - pretty much a stream-of-consciousness-like mind dump to text file. And then, the next morning, first thing I would do would be to open up that file and re-read it. It helped me to rebuild my mind state in few minutes instead of an hour. Also, my anxiety went down, which reduced the amount of time I procrastinated on HN each morning.
I really think that pseudo-work is a killer. PG talks about this a bit here [2]. This type of constant context switching is dreadful for productivity, and also stresses you out. Saying that, some startups actually do require 100 hour weeks. Read Max Levchin's interview with Jessica Livingston [3]; he spent like 4 days getting the Paypal demo ready, and then fell asleep at the restaurant table after showing it to the VC's. But there are also times when you have explore; Max said he had this later when Elon Musk came in as CEO and was trying to change direction. Max had tons of free time, so he started playing around. This led to the discovery of the fraud detection system that probably saved the company.
So there's a time and a place for 100hr weeks, but you can lose sight of the big picture if your head's to the grindstone all the time.
[1]http://calnewport.com/blog/
[2]http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html
[3]http://www.foundersatwork.com/
Being less busy doesn't cause you to become the creme de la creme. He has the causal relationship reversed. More than likely, they feel less busy and stressed because they are born geniuses.
Working less hard won't make you any more of a genius. In fact, for those of us born without exceptionally talented minds, working hard is the only way we can keep up.
I will admit that they're not necessarily happier, but that's not really the metric I measure myself by. It's easy to say "do what you love", but the fact of the matter is that building meaningful products is going to be painful sometimes. The problems you have to solve aren't always perfectly aligned with your skill set, and you might have to work harder and longer than someone who is smarter or has an advantage that you don't have.
As far as I know, there's no indication that too much focused studying/working will make you anything but better at whatever it is that you're doing, and will not hurt you noggin.
I'm confident the human brain can withstand pretty much any intellectual effort in large quantities.
Crucibles are a fundamental aspect of one's personal and professional development, if you're not facing then, you're missing out on giant leaps in your growth.
As someone who's turning 34 this week, this comparison kinda saddens me. I would object, but why? It's not like late adolescents could be convinced out of their own sense of superiority. (Never mind this being a bit American-centric, as not all kind of sports are as depleting as American Football)
Yeah, I know, young scientists do their best work young etc. etc. Because doing an iOS application or RoR is as mentally challenging as doing Nobel prize winning research…
First of all, we need to determine the type of work being done here. If you're in a creative environment, maybe 60-80 hours a week won't make you more productive. However, if you worked in some kind of production facility or in manual labor, you'll be a hell of a lot more productive if you put in the time. The first time I adjusted the valves on my motorcycle, it took me over a week. I took several breaks, I wasn't very organized and I mostly felt discouraged. When I did the same thing to a new bike, it was equally challenging since the parts and process were different, but I forced myself to work at it several hours at a time. I did about three hours on a Friday night, six hours on Saturday and two to three hours on Sunday and it was done.
If we're going to take anecdotal evidence as gold here, I might as well mention that I learned complex piano pieces much faster and with greater accuracy the more time I spent on the piano. If I would have studied the music in 30-minute or 1-hour blocks, it would have taken me much longer. I tried. Instead, I could learn and memorize a piece like Chopin's Polonaise in A flat Major in just three days if I spent six or seven hours a day on it.
Everyone is different - that's my point here. Some people can work with razor-sharp focus for several hours at a time, and others can't. There's nothing wrong with that. The best you can do is learn what works best for you, then do that. Can you get more done if you put in more time? Or are you the type who can be productive for four or five straight hours so you can have the rest of the day off? Figure it out.
Lastly, I want to include something that David Baltimore, former president of Caltech, said about work and academic rigor:
"When I grew up, we worked hard, played hard and never thought to minimize our activities because of stress. Sure, people were under stress and some cracked under it, but leading a "stressful" life was honored because of the accomplishments that could be achieved by those who could handle it. Today we deify the spa, not late hours solving problems at school or work. Caltech's high-achieving faculty and students are seen as weirdos because of their intense focus, but even here, some graduate students and postdoctoral fellows are seeking a more balanced life."
Source: http://articles.latimes.com/2004/nov/29/opinion/oe-baltimore...