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Poll: What is your #1 productivity killer?

166 points by elwell ↗ HN
Referring to time that you think would have been productively spent if not for this agent. Productivity refers to whatever you traditionally regard as productive use of your time. Please choose only one option. After voting, upvote the poll in order to increase the sample size.

106 comments

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meowface
Tiredness and Internet distractions for me. I've also found that when I'm tired, I tend to be more likely to slip into more lazy habits like reading HN for an hour at a time.
a3n
Other: Work.
mekpro
Not in the list, but task switching is my #1 productivity killer. It's ten times harder to work three projects at the same time than one.
spiralganglion
I must second this point. I'm fortunate enough to work a job where, every few months, I manage to shirk all of my day-to-day duties and get to spend a few weeks just hacking on some big, long-term, greenfield project of my choosing.

After seeing how productive I am during those windows of pure, blissful coder-escapism, getting back to the emails and little issues on GitHub and helping my coworkers... it absolutely shatters my productivity. Not because I don't like doing the little things (they give a zen-like satisfaction all their own, like a well-used checklist). It's the constant context-switching. When I do need to code, it's so tough to get into flow, knowing that I'm likely to be interrupted again at any moment by someone needing help with a bug, or some server or client that's on fire.

...

I was also tempted to request an "All of the above", as all of the issues (yes, all — I was tempted to check every item on the list) play into this, for me. Anything and everything can, and does, cause me to get out of flow — unless I isolate myself completely, and truly know that I am isolated. Then I can flow.

mikeleeorg
This is mine too. Sometimes it's switching from various meetings and calls, other times it's various emergencies, and other times, it's from other random events. On the days where I can shut out all distractions, I find myself very productive. Unfortunately, I can't afford those kinds of days too often, but I do try to optimize my schedule and environment for them whenever I can.
glxybstr
im in the middle of trying to design and program an app and maintain/extend the existing web version. my schedule looks something like this:

monday: app programming tuesday: web programming and management wednesday: app design thursday: app programming friday, saturday: anything, as long as its productive. not necessarily related to this project

i find that having a day to just play around is really helpful in keeping things fresh. if it weren't for that i would go bananas. great learning opportunities as well.

jzwinck
Of course Hacker News will "win" this poll, because people who use HN a lot will be the most likely to complete the poll. It'd be interesting to have a poll which removes HN and asks to choose your first among the rest.

Experiment design is hard.

duncanawoods
Maybe this is a new feature. If HN polls > 90%, it will do the decent thing and automatically delete itself from the internet :)
MadMoogle
Depression/Lack of Interest is at least giving HN a run for its money. Besides, not everybody who spends time on HN will think it's their biggest productivity killer. Definitely A productivity killer, but maybe not the biggest one.
mercer
Plus, for some people, Depression/Lack of interest can be an underlying cause for spending too much time on sites like HN.
lhnz
Twitter.

Really though I can get focus whenever I want, I just require 10 minutes of focus upfront in order for me to forget about the internet.

gatehouse
Marked "drugs" but it is a combination of caffeine and nutrition. For max productivity I need a long stretch with energy and mental calm. Over or under eating creates drowsiness or distracting hunger. Over or under caffeinating is also a problem. The real reason I quit smoking was because I couldn't work for more than four straight hours without the cravings starting to affect my focus.

EDIT: workplace organization and sleep have been problems in the past but not now, thanks to melatonin and a private office.

Pengwin
This list seems to be full of both causes and symptoms?

I would say Depression / Lack of interest / Feeling stuck would be what causes me to stop being productive, and reddit and hacker news browsing is a symptom of those.

snarfy
video games (drug?)
fenier
Having to explain things several times to people before they actually listen to me long enough to understand what the problem is. I suppose that falls under 'office politics'.
taeric
For me, it is actually thinking of other ways to do things I've already done. Not always better. But I seem to obsess over really truly fully understanding an issue.

I do think finally reading Knuth's work is helping here. As he manages to show just what that means. Far beyond anything I would have ever expected. And, amazingly, it is completely approachable!

elwell
It's difficult to determine if time spent "truly fully understanding" will be a net time gain or simply time wasted. In most situations, I'll lean towards the former.
taeric
For me, definitely wasted. So much so that I now harp on everyone else for first getting the bloody job done. Then, if/when you have time, delve deeper.

Seriously, look at what I did here: http://taeric.github.io/Sudoku.html I still want to clean up parts it. Terribly so. What does this have to do with my day job? Really... nothing. Nothing at all.

Edit: More relevantly, what do my cleanups that I am obsessing over really help with understanding? Probably nothing. I just think I should clean up the function names and such. Stopping to actually understand how the fundamental algorithm works and where else I could/should use it isn't helped by my structuring the code differently.

jfoutz
At that level, it really depends on what you want to get out of life. You are not your job, or your car, or even your dissertation.

You may really want to know what code perfection means to you, but you might also want to know what it's like to have a family, or run a marathon, or whatever.

Don't risk your job, but spending the time to make something as good as you can make it is often rewarding.

Not to be all morbid, but the clock is ticking, death comes for us all. If it's bugging you, you should fix it - even if no one else cares. If your own satisfaction isn't enough, you should set it aside and do something worthwhile. (whatever that may mean for you)

spiralganglion
A Yak well-shaved is worth a whole lot of time in the weeds.
31reasons
Great! but please don't ask questions from Knuth's book when you interview someone for programming job. Please. :)
taeric
:) Not to worry there. I lay no claims to fully understanding his books. Just that I find them enjoyable and more approachable than I had thought.

Also, I am literally the only person at work that will vote to hire someone regardless of whether they got all of the answers "right."

vomitcuddle
ADD and wheat allergy. When I accidentally eat gluten, it completely destroys my ability to concentrate for a day or more.
conradfr
I wonder about the link between wheat and ADD.

If I eat too much wheat I seem to get strong headache and tiredness one or two days after, but if I take my Concerta I won't be getting them.

SeoxyS
I'm surprised by how few people said office politics. That's by far the problem that has the most potential to instantly kill my entire productivity and interest for an entire day. The second I have to ask myself "why am I dealing with this shit again?" is the second nothing else gets done for the day.
jasonkostempski
Obsessing over development process. It's a really bad problem for me. Vim; code format preferences for a handful of languages; Visual Studio preferences; XCode preferences; Windows keyboard shortcuts; OSX keyboard shortcuts... Even if I stopped doing it right now and coded with the settings until I die, there is no way the timed saved using them would surpass the time spent tweaking them.
andrewmunsell
New tools tend to sidetrack me quite a bit-- for example, new databases and such I just have to try out. Usually it's relatively productive, though, because it lets me know about what tools are out there and which ones could be applicable... But it still is excess "research" that doesn't really need to be done.
gs7
People having conversations around me are my biggest productivity killer. Sadly I'm in a small open office environment where it is culturally acceptable to have personal conversations with your coworkers at any time of the day, as if we were in a break room. Our manager is one of the worst offenders. None of my colleagues are developers so they're not really bothered by it as much, but I have a very hard time being productive and writing good code when I can't hear my own thoughts. It's very frustrating.
cr4zy
Earplugs work for me.
gdubs
I'm a fan of mynoise.net. Sometimes you want total silence, but a wide mix of quality noise can help focus the mind.
babby
The easiest and most most acceptable solution to that is earbuds/earphones. Put music on, put rain sounds on. If someone comes up to you to talk about non-work stuff decide whether it's a good time to take a quick break or to breifly explain; I'm busy, man.

I've got the same layout at work and I'm even the go-to tech support guy, but when I want to get shit done I'm not afraid to tell anyone to stop bothering me.

mkopinsky
I've found success at times with the pomodoro method, and the pomodairo tool. I have a ticking clock on my desktop, and if someone comes to bother me, I can easily point to it and say, "Can this wait another 12 minutes?"
nnain
A note of caution when using the, "I'm busy, man". It borders on appearing rude, even if you didn't mean to be.

One of my colleagues was a recipient of that dialogue and his working relationship with the other person almost ended at that point.

ryandvm
I've suffered from this a great deal. I have completely soured on the open office concept - at least if you want me to do anything that requires focus.

Headphones help, but unless you're a complete sociopath, it's impossible to not dedicate some amount of mental resources to human interrupt handling.

aerovistae
The need for a social life, and work. I only have a few hours after work each day, and I'm torn between building a social life and learning/building new things. The choice is a really difficult one, every day.
vomitcuddle
sounds like you could use a schedule, so you don't always feel like you should be doing things.

pick different days of the week/times for socialising and learning things. stick to them once you find the right balance.

XorNot
Health. I've been had off and on intestinal pains. You can work through a lot of things, but gut stuff definitely isn't one of them.
mr_spothawk
I wind up trying to understand the framework, and not solving the problem I'm working on.
ohwaitnvm
For the last two weeks: Ebay, and building Lego bought on Ebay.