>And actually, more than that, lots of what goes wrong is not just that productivity geekery doesn't work, it’s that it makes things worse, right<p>A lot of good points here. I figured this out myself ages ago and have done well to actively halt the 'only do things that are maximally productive' behaviors that actually cripple any productivity at all.<p>As one example amongst many: I wasn't taking the garbage out until the mail arrived. Because that was optimal! Maximize efficiency! Except it doesn't really help. Taking out the garbage takes 20seconds. Going to the mailbox and bringing in mail? 20 seconds. Doing them together and juggling bins, mail and doors? Over a minute. Not to mention the many minutes of distraction from the mental weight of a chore needing to be done. It's only theoretically optimal and the theorizing part itself is crippling.<p>Likewise I'd let myself get crippled by 'there's a meeting in 20minutes'. I'm sure it's a huge problem for others in the wfh era. I wouldn't start washing the dishes because i might be in the middle of it when i need meet with others and then with the stop and start that'd be less than optimal. But doing the dishes, even if slow turns out to be a 10 minute chore. I should have just done it. But i procrastinated because theory crafting told me that it'd be slightly less than optimal to do it now. Meanwhile i just waste those 20minutes on Hackernews. Even being less optimal i'm always better of doing it now.<p>It's definitely helpful to be aware of these behaviors. I think the focus on maximizing productivity affects the geek types more but it's absolutely crippling to let yourself go down these paths. Don't do it and you'll be better off and more productive.
Re: having multiple projects in the air<p>> the reality of it is that you don't make much progress on any of them because as soon as one of them gets difficult, you just bounce over to another one that feels easier.<p>This really rang true to me. I have so many projects, and once I hit a significant technical wall, I usually start looking at other projects where I can get things done more easily and get gratification quicker. It really sucks, and Burkeman's recommendation of focusing on only one project at a time until you're done makes a lot of sense.<p>That said, it also requires a lot of determination to see something through. I think for me that is one of the most difficult things: having sufficient motivation to accomplish a task despite the difficulties. There has to be a great reward on the other side in order to push through the tough stuff. Only a few times in my life have I felt that sort of motivation for projects, and I'm not really sure what the throughline was between them, but I hope to capture that energy again someday.
I think one of the major reasons tech geeks are mislead by this "productivity" culture is because we make the flawed assumption that our brains work similarly to (silicon) computers in the sense that our performance and output is consistent and independent of tasks performed previously.<p>If we can perform Action X in 2 days, then we should be able to perform 100x Action X in 200 days.<p>The reality, which I learned the hard way, is that you just can't extrapolate like that. Performing Action X could create a massive spike in cortisol that quite literally drives you (partially) insane in a matter of weeks and renders you nearly completely unproductive until you stop (and then you remain unproductive for a couple of months after that). Maybe Action X is dull, and performing it long term makes you genuinely depressed (and again, unproductive). Maybe it's engaging, but makes you question your morals and leads you to a moral crisis.<p>This doesn't even scratch the surface of the time-and-motion level optimisations found in the article.<p>Truthfully, I think the best way to be a productive being, if that's your goal, is to listen to your emotional warning signs (sense of meaningless, long-term unhealthy stress, perpetual exhaustion, long stretches of boredom etc.) and change your routines in response.<p>Keep your brain running on "clean fuel" and in good condition!
I think this article (and presumably the book) is mostly aimed at people who, in the words of the interviewer, have "this kind of overwhelming ambition that therefore makes the finitude of life seem particularly traumatising." The author claims otherwise, but... I'm skeptical of that claim.<p>When you are active and engaged in pretty much all areas of your life, and you really enjoy learning new things and especially learning how to do things yourself, you will reach a point when "productivity" is much less about minimizing wasteful behaviors, or optimizing routine tasks, and much more about effectively filtering through all of your ideas to identify the ones that truly deserve your finite time and attention.<p>The money quotes are near the end of the article, where he gives the pithy advice of "one thing at a time" (which has a book-length treatment in <i>The One Thing</i> by Gary Keller). In reference to the tendency to keep lots of projects or tasks going at the same time:<p>> the reality of it is that you don't make much progress on any of them because as soon as one of them gets difficult, you just bounce over to another one that feels easier.<p>> “okay, there are, four home improvement projects that all feel essential to making my living space acceptable. I'm going to deliberately give up all hope of making progress on three of them until I have seen one of them through to completion, or consciously abandoned it because it turned out to be a bad idea, that's okay too.”<p>> choosing to do something that matters when you've got more things than that matter than you can handle is always going to come with that feeling of anxiety about what's going unaddressed.<p>It sounds to me like the advice here is that one must learn to say "no", or at least "not right now". And that for most people, this boils down to <i>anxiety management</i>--assuaging those fears of missed opportunities or preventable errors long enough to sit down and focus on something truly worth doing.