TL;DR: Don't half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing. And then another. And then another. #manliness
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I find it odd that we seem to be taking so long as a species to develop a useful, simple and broadly agreed-upon idea about the peaks and troughs on the productivity landscape. Yes, it's better to focus than to multi-task. But it's also good to show up every day and make a little progress. You want to do the "minimum effective dose" each time.
To use his ladder analogy, climbing a quarter-rung a day gets you nowhere, but a rung a day is superior to 4 rungs in one day and then no more rungs for a week.
Aren't there more interesting things we can discuss about the nuances of productivity than "here there be dragons"? Or is this really just chest-beating bravado that we all do from time to time to make ourselves feel better about our choices, and I should get back to work?
Agreed! I think it's super important to avoid getting burned out, but I really wanted to highlight the importance of getting to new rungs, though, before you stop for so long that you slip back down.
Where do you personally find the optimums of productivity? For me it's all about having enough projects going that when I get tired of one, I can switch to another and feel fresh about it.
Sadly for me I think I still approach productivity in a very "barbaric" way- I have long periods of idleness and procrastination, then I rush a fuckton of work all at once. I've seen some success in my personal projects from writing daily, but I haven't yet adapted such practices to my work and other commitments... I'm an unproductive person who shouldn't be talking about this, heh.
I like this point. I think one of the problems is productivity can be measured so many ways, and they seem to be so context sensitive. Just looking at my own life suggests multiple types of measures for productivity...
For instance. I can apply the author's method to my house cleaning. Just wait until it's been scheduled, and knock it out fully in a manic cleaning session every other month for a few hours. Afterwards my house will be dazzling, and it will be great for a few days. Then I can do nothing for a while and it will turn into a mess over time again, and a couple months later I can make it dazzling again.
Unfortunately my goal is not to sometimes have a sparkling house - its to have a clean house because I find it peaceful. Bursty productivity is at odds with this goal. Rather, the overall result of spending 5-10 minutes a day cleaning stuff, with the occasional deep clean meets this goal better. Therefore it's more productive - the average state of the house is much much cleaner.
However, I recently built a patio at the same house. I had started it 3 years ago with the goal of "work on it a bit every weekend til it's done". After a couple weeks, it didn't progress anymore. So I set aside the weekend earl this summer and knocked it all the way out. Done, complete, usable and the goal is met. Basically the author's method. Bam goal met, in 1/150th of the time I spend trying the other way. Unbelievable productivity!
Of course I can come up with code analogies from my work too - but these are simpler but still illustrative examples :)
So it seems there is at least one axis of consideration for productivity - the maintenance vs one-shot axis.
Another thing that comes to mind related to this: personal development. I find that sometimes it feels like I'm not progressing at all - this is my skill set, this is what I'm capable of, thats all. Then one day I find that bam - I'm writing a bit of code that I know would have struck me as impossible a few months prior. Example: I remember about a year ago, I tried to grasp the dragon book. I gave up because it was too over my head on a lot of topics. I set it aside as as something to grapple with later. The other day I had to write a parser to handle an input file format that had the underpinnings of a DSL. I went and found a parsing library, and wrote a working parser using decent technique. In the interim I didn't really even explore that stuff - mostly I was focusing on unrelated goals. But somewhere in there I "leveled up".
In fact "leveling up" is a productivity related analogy I like a lot - it seems sometimes that I'm just grinding out things, and not making any progress, but in the background my brain is doing things - tiny imperceptible things, and then one day suddenly something clicks and they whole of the changes is noticable - I leveled up. Just like in an RPG when you grind out some battles do some boring side quests, and generally don't notice major differences. Then you get the level and have a new power and it's exciting again. This is productive, but in a different way: the end result is being able to accomplish more, but there's not a really good way of discussing it, the language isn't there.
Another under-explored topic is that of a concept I call many-tasking. It isn't multi tasking. It isn't single-tasking. It's more related to priortization and task ordering. Find a task that is blocking a few other tasks, and get it done, freeing up lots of other things to do. Similarly (much related but not exactly like David Allens context notion) there are often many very similar tasks related to bigger projects. Grouping them can be much more productive than not doing so. For example this morning I'll sequentially work on: some tasks for ops - making our services easier to deploy, some tasks for testing that will take advantage of some of those ops improvements, and a few changes to our core algorithm that will make ...
That was my thinking too, that being said, i would be much further in my sportive efforts if i would have taken the slow and steady approach. sure you can burn yourself out for three months, take a break and repeat the cycle, that is, if you don't loose interest because of overtraining, and get distracted with other stuff. better 15 minutes a day a whole life than 3 or more hours a day for who knows how long.
I see this type of thinking as the road to procrastination.
If you see each task as a large do or die task that needs sacrifice and extended concentration to complete otherwise there is no point even starting it... you don't start it.
That said, I do agree with this type of thinking and believe many other people do too which is why procrastination is such a widespread problem! My broader take is that you need gears and know when to change up/down. Sometimes you are going up hill and sometimes downhill. Sometimes you need to brake and sometimes steering is more important than speed. Ahhh car metaphores...
As someone who has managed many people, I believe this is a personality type. I've seen many programmers who make consistent, daily progress. In my experience that is the most common type. I've also seen a good number of people as described in the article. And there was one programmer that worked for me that took it to an extreme. She would do nothing for a week and a half and then do two weeks of work in a day or two.
I think it is important to find what works to motivate you on a personal level. Sounds like OP made a step in that direction but may be over applying the advice to other people.
It's also a great way to waste time, and fool yourself into thinking you're doing the right thing, when you would actually be better off spending the time working.
Overworking oneself is foolish. Great labor is made with precise work in clear thought, under a nourished and well-recovered body. Strokes of genius on the other hand, can be better aptly recognized for their origin of the mad spurious scientist. Software development usually does not involve too many strokes of genius. The hardest part is being precise, and being comprehensive. Do not take stimulants, code like a maniac, and kill yourself to build something. Build it calmly and collectively. This will reduce regret, and ensure that you do not sacrifice your health for a lucky strike.
I hate this linkbait title hyperbole. It takes whatever moderately good points he had and makes them seem ridiculously wrong-headed. I understand being a blowhard is often necessary to be seen and heard in American business culture, but if you don't really know your shit you end up looking like a douchebag to anyone with half a clue.
For instance, the context-switching cost is very true. It's better to focus on one thing at a time, and multi-tasking is endemic to our society. If you can focus on one thing for a few days with no distraction you can really accomplish mountains especially compared to the usual email/social media distraction dance that is seemingly normal for anyone with a smart phone these days.
However on the flip side, compressing learning that is intended to be absorbed over a few months into a couple weeks of sleepless nights is a surefire way to make sure your retention is absolutely squalid. We used to call this cramming, it allows you to pass an exam, but it's well-known that it doesn't lead to much in the way of long-term learning.
Not really. Slow and steady would be splitting the entire learning material over a longer period. This would be learning everything as fast as possible (cramming), then taking a couple weeks break, then cramming again. It is indeed much more effective.
(the general case is much less explored, and the article provides no evidence either way, unfortunately)
I don't think cramming then taking a couple of weeks break and then cramming again is an effective strategy. It only works with tasks that have a slow rate of decay.
Good for making progress on a side project and yet horrible for learning.
I think slow and steady combined with a few sprints each year is optimal. I do 1 hour/day most of the year and then 40+ hours/week for two non-consecutive months.
Well, I guess we're mostly arguing definitions here. If you do 1 hour/day, but fit as much knowledge as you can into that hour, are you cramming for one hour, or taking it slow and steady?
In practical terms, spaced repetition is with no doubt the best method for remembering things, and you could either see it as slow and steady, or repetetive cramming. For understanding things, I don't know of a good method; but it seems like understanding 'keeps better' as long as you remember the relevant facts.
You assume that all learning takes place over the cramming phase, then all practices is about keeping the knowledge fresh.
It is most likely that the cramming phase is an effective though limited way to break the novice threshold, though any knowledge gained here will be by necessity shallow. A later phase of slow and deliberate practices allows this initial mental structures to be settled in a pattern of competence an maybe provide the seedlings of insight that may be cultivated into true mastery of the subject.
Not specifically about learning, but I wonder how many half-finished projects sit in garages and basements. How many outdoor fire pits are partly built, some guy thinking 'Man I should have just done it in one go.' Desires and whims change on a regular basis for most people, making slow, prolonged progress a challenge for many people.
To be frank, you sound just as hard-lined against this guy's idea as he is hard-lined for the idea.
2-3 times per year you can go all-out for 3-4 weeks. The rest of the year you have to go at a much slower pace.
To make good progress both methods need to be used together.
Look at dieting. It is very easy and painless to eat 150-200 calories below maintenance per day (as an average sized man). You just eat a little bit less. E.g. If you normally get a large meal at McDonalds then get a medium instead. But over a year that adds up to 15 odd pounds of fat!
Or you can go on a hardcore diet and lose 3-4 pounds a week! If you are smart you will do it for 3-4 weeks and then taper off onto the slow and steady method for the rest of the year.
The problem is people see a huge amount of progress in those 3-4 weeks and think "If it works for 4 weeks I'll keep it up until I have a 6-pack". Then they crash and put it all back on.
All out for short periods and then slow and steady for the rest of the year works well in terms of learning as well.
I've found I can do an hour of study every working day without adding any stress to my life. I currently do half an hour in the morning when I wake and another half an hour during my lunch break.
Twice a year I also do 30-40 hours/week for four weeks. I basically put my life on hold and do nothing outside of work and study.
If I spent any more time in sprint mode then I would not be putting the effort I should be into my wife, my kids, my family, my friends, or my work. I also wouldn't be able to relax and enjoy myself.
> Look at dieting. It is very easy and painless to eat 150-200 calories below maintenance per day
Were you intentionally trying to make the reverse point? 'Cause this may be the worst possible example, otherwise: it's clearly not easy and painless to eat 200 calories below maintenance every day, given the huge obesity problem we have.
It is easy and painless. Pretty much everyone has the willpower to be able to order the medium sized McDonalds meal rather than the large (or the large instead of the super-sized). Or to use smaller sized plates when eating at home.
People don't stick to it because the results aren't very visible and they aren't fast. Not because it is difficult.
If you are 60 pounds overweight and somebody tells you to simply eat a little less and in 4-5 years you will be a healthy weight is that really going to motivate you to change?
works well when planned well. example, if you don't know linux, you can download the whole linuxfromscratch.org and read a few page during weekdays, and burn your weekend implementing it... or if you don't know much c++, you can download and find a few pdfs and videos online during weekends and burn yourself during weekdays... at least it works for me and gave me food for survival... :)
Even though I get tired of all the "rules" the entrepreneurial community sets out, half of which contradict the other half, I can completely relate to "slow and steady is bullshit" idea.
I started a company when I was 23 and found product-market fit almost immediately. But, being young, naive and completely unexposed to "real" entrepreneurship, I tried to grow the company organically, customer by customer, market by market (in my case, TV markets) rather than raise money. I woke up every day, hit my cold call targets, and spent the rest of the time coding, dealing with other IT issues, recruiting, managing employees, bookkeeping, etc.
While I was busy gathering rinky-dink customers in one corner of the country, my competitors raised money, expanded nationwide, and completely ate my lunch.
While this may be of the "well, that sounds like a personal problem" variety, I believe the following holds true when a new "gold mine" (i.e. as yet unrecognized market opportunity) is discovered by one or more companies:
"Even if you're growing, if you're not growing like crazy, you're falling behind, comparatively."
For example, let's say there's a company competing with Uber that's growing by 2x per year. In a vacuum, that's great, right? But not in reality. Uber is growing at like 100x per year and will eventually destroy that company.
So yes, I completely agree with OP, a least in terms of startups.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 52.2 ms ] threadI am all for finding out your personal way of doing things, but don't call things bullshit just because they don't work for you.
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I find it odd that we seem to be taking so long as a species to develop a useful, simple and broadly agreed-upon idea about the peaks and troughs on the productivity landscape. Yes, it's better to focus than to multi-task. But it's also good to show up every day and make a little progress. You want to do the "minimum effective dose" each time.
To use his ladder analogy, climbing a quarter-rung a day gets you nowhere, but a rung a day is superior to 4 rungs in one day and then no more rungs for a week.
Aren't there more interesting things we can discuss about the nuances of productivity than "here there be dragons"? Or is this really just chest-beating bravado that we all do from time to time to make ourselves feel better about our choices, and I should get back to work?
Where do you personally find the optimums of productivity? For me it's all about having enough projects going that when I get tired of one, I can switch to another and feel fresh about it.
For instance. I can apply the author's method to my house cleaning. Just wait until it's been scheduled, and knock it out fully in a manic cleaning session every other month for a few hours. Afterwards my house will be dazzling, and it will be great for a few days. Then I can do nothing for a while and it will turn into a mess over time again, and a couple months later I can make it dazzling again.
Unfortunately my goal is not to sometimes have a sparkling house - its to have a clean house because I find it peaceful. Bursty productivity is at odds with this goal. Rather, the overall result of spending 5-10 minutes a day cleaning stuff, with the occasional deep clean meets this goal better. Therefore it's more productive - the average state of the house is much much cleaner.
However, I recently built a patio at the same house. I had started it 3 years ago with the goal of "work on it a bit every weekend til it's done". After a couple weeks, it didn't progress anymore. So I set aside the weekend earl this summer and knocked it all the way out. Done, complete, usable and the goal is met. Basically the author's method. Bam goal met, in 1/150th of the time I spend trying the other way. Unbelievable productivity!
Of course I can come up with code analogies from my work too - but these are simpler but still illustrative examples :)
So it seems there is at least one axis of consideration for productivity - the maintenance vs one-shot axis.
Another thing that comes to mind related to this: personal development. I find that sometimes it feels like I'm not progressing at all - this is my skill set, this is what I'm capable of, thats all. Then one day I find that bam - I'm writing a bit of code that I know would have struck me as impossible a few months prior. Example: I remember about a year ago, I tried to grasp the dragon book. I gave up because it was too over my head on a lot of topics. I set it aside as as something to grapple with later. The other day I had to write a parser to handle an input file format that had the underpinnings of a DSL. I went and found a parsing library, and wrote a working parser using decent technique. In the interim I didn't really even explore that stuff - mostly I was focusing on unrelated goals. But somewhere in there I "leveled up".
In fact "leveling up" is a productivity related analogy I like a lot - it seems sometimes that I'm just grinding out things, and not making any progress, but in the background my brain is doing things - tiny imperceptible things, and then one day suddenly something clicks and they whole of the changes is noticable - I leveled up. Just like in an RPG when you grind out some battles do some boring side quests, and generally don't notice major differences. Then you get the level and have a new power and it's exciting again. This is productive, but in a different way: the end result is being able to accomplish more, but there's not a really good way of discussing it, the language isn't there.
Another under-explored topic is that of a concept I call many-tasking. It isn't multi tasking. It isn't single-tasking. It's more related to priortization and task ordering. Find a task that is blocking a few other tasks, and get it done, freeing up lots of other things to do. Similarly (much related but not exactly like David Allens context notion) there are often many very similar tasks related to bigger projects. Grouping them can be much more productive than not doing so. For example this morning I'll sequentially work on: some tasks for ops - making our services easier to deploy, some tasks for testing that will take advantage of some of those ops improvements, and a few changes to our core algorithm that will make ...
If you see each task as a large do or die task that needs sacrifice and extended concentration to complete otherwise there is no point even starting it... you don't start it.
That said, I do agree with this type of thinking and believe many other people do too which is why procrastination is such a widespread problem! My broader take is that you need gears and know when to change up/down. Sometimes you are going up hill and sometimes downhill. Sometimes you need to brake and sometimes steering is more important than speed. Ahhh car metaphores...
I think it is important to find what works to motivate you on a personal level. Sounds like OP made a step in that direction but may be over applying the advice to other people.
In a similar vein I suspect one of the key behaviors driving productivity might be not spending much time writing about productivity on the internet.
Irony of posting this understood obv, but then I make no claims to productivity, quite the opposite.
I will happily read or reread a productivity book just to be inspired to get my game on.
There are a whole lot of time sinks on the internet that are much much worse ways of wasting time.
Next week rolls around....
No OP was wrong! {Other conventional wisdom} is better than {one conventional wisdom} because of their personal story!
For instance, the context-switching cost is very true. It's better to focus on one thing at a time, and multi-tasking is endemic to our society. If you can focus on one thing for a few days with no distraction you can really accomplish mountains especially compared to the usual email/social media distraction dance that is seemingly normal for anyone with a smart phone these days.
However on the flip side, compressing learning that is intended to be absorbed over a few months into a couple weeks of sleepless nights is a surefire way to make sure your retention is absolutely squalid. We used to call this cramming, it allows you to pass an exam, but it's well-known that it doesn't lead to much in the way of long-term learning.
Learning in a compressed time-frame can be highly effective. The problem with college kids is they stop learning and practicing right after the exam.
If they kept spending a few hours each week for the next few months they would retain a large chunk of it.
(the general case is much less explored, and the article provides no evidence either way, unfortunately)
Good for making progress on a side project and yet horrible for learning.
I think slow and steady combined with a few sprints each year is optimal. I do 1 hour/day most of the year and then 40+ hours/week for two non-consecutive months.
In practical terms, spaced repetition is with no doubt the best method for remembering things, and you could either see it as slow and steady, or repetetive cramming. For understanding things, I don't know of a good method; but it seems like understanding 'keeps better' as long as you remember the relevant facts.
It is most likely that the cramming phase is an effective though limited way to break the novice threshold, though any knowledge gained here will be by necessity shallow. A later phase of slow and deliberate practices allows this initial mental structures to be settled in a pattern of competence an maybe provide the seedlings of insight that may be cultivated into true mastery of the subject.
To be frank, you sound just as hard-lined against this guy's idea as he is hard-lined for the idea.
To make good progress both methods need to be used together.
Look at dieting. It is very easy and painless to eat 150-200 calories below maintenance per day (as an average sized man). You just eat a little bit less. E.g. If you normally get a large meal at McDonalds then get a medium instead. But over a year that adds up to 15 odd pounds of fat!
Or you can go on a hardcore diet and lose 3-4 pounds a week! If you are smart you will do it for 3-4 weeks and then taper off onto the slow and steady method for the rest of the year.
The problem is people see a huge amount of progress in those 3-4 weeks and think "If it works for 4 weeks I'll keep it up until I have a 6-pack". Then they crash and put it all back on.
I've found I can do an hour of study every working day without adding any stress to my life. I currently do half an hour in the morning when I wake and another half an hour during my lunch break.
Twice a year I also do 30-40 hours/week for four weeks. I basically put my life on hold and do nothing outside of work and study.
If I spent any more time in sprint mode then I would not be putting the effort I should be into my wife, my kids, my family, my friends, or my work. I also wouldn't be able to relax and enjoy myself.
Were you intentionally trying to make the reverse point? 'Cause this may be the worst possible example, otherwise: it's clearly not easy and painless to eat 200 calories below maintenance every day, given the huge obesity problem we have.
People don't stick to it because the results aren't very visible and they aren't fast. Not because it is difficult.
If you are 60 pounds overweight and somebody tells you to simply eat a little less and in 4-5 years you will be a healthy weight is that really going to motivate you to change?
I started a company when I was 23 and found product-market fit almost immediately. But, being young, naive and completely unexposed to "real" entrepreneurship, I tried to grow the company organically, customer by customer, market by market (in my case, TV markets) rather than raise money. I woke up every day, hit my cold call targets, and spent the rest of the time coding, dealing with other IT issues, recruiting, managing employees, bookkeeping, etc.
While I was busy gathering rinky-dink customers in one corner of the country, my competitors raised money, expanded nationwide, and completely ate my lunch.
While this may be of the "well, that sounds like a personal problem" variety, I believe the following holds true when a new "gold mine" (i.e. as yet unrecognized market opportunity) is discovered by one or more companies:
"Even if you're growing, if you're not growing like crazy, you're falling behind, comparatively."
For example, let's say there's a company competing with Uber that's growing by 2x per year. In a vacuum, that's great, right? But not in reality. Uber is growing at like 100x per year and will eventually destroy that company.
So yes, I completely agree with OP, a least in terms of startups.