I feel like productivity advice is hard to find a one-size-fits-all solution for, because there are so many varieties of unproductivity with different psychological roots.
Childish unproductivity: just a general preference of other activities as well as the dopamine hit of a new distraction. Becomes less prominent from 0 to 25. Tends to set in with adults in their off hours (before 11:00 for “night people”, after 7:00pm for “morning people).
Institutionalized unproductivity: the variety seen in working adults who’ve spent a lot of time in typical corporate jobs. At a corporate job, your goal is not to get fired which means to slow down politics. You don’t want to underperform because that will generate politics, nor do you want to overperform because that will generate politics. Helps you avoid getting fired but maladaptive to the time-poor environment of a side project or a non-VC startup where actually working a triple-digit number of minutes per day is essential. Manifests as learned laziness in high-status corporate denizens (executives) and learned helplessness in low-status corporate denizens (peons).
Anxious unproductivity: fairly rare, except at low levels, in most people. Paralyzing at high levels and may require professional help.
A lot of productivity advice centers on beating back the childish unproductivity, because that’s something that we all naturally get better at as we get older. That’s useful, but I like how the OP gives concrete suggestions that help toward de-programming one’s learned corporate/institutional unproductivity as well.
Might I suggest linking to an article from that blog that actually has a little more meat on it? It isn’t great to link to a blog of “all good stuff” with an article that is only a few short paragraphs long and which seems to be kinda navel-gazy productivity hacking.
I feel like productivity advice is hard to find a one-size-fits-all solution for, because there are so many varieties of unproductivity with different psychological roots.
Childish unproductivity: just a general preference of other activities as well as the dopamine hit of a new distraction. Becomes less prominent from 0 to 25. Tends to set in with adults in their off hours (before 11:00 for “night people”, after 7:00pm for “morning people).
Institutionalized unproductivity: the variety seen in working adults who’ve spent a lot of time in typical corporate jobs. At a corporate job, your goal is not to get fired which means to slow down politics. You don’t want to underperform because that will generate politics, nor do you want to overperform because that will generate politics. Helps you avoid getting fired but maladaptive to the time-poor environment of a side project or a non-VC startup where actually working a triple-digit number of minutes per day is essential. Manifests as learned laziness in high-status corporate denizens (executives) and learned helplessness in low-status corporate denizens (peons).
Anxious unproductivity: fairly rare, except at low levels, in most people. Paralyzing at high levels and may require professional help.
A lot of productivity advice centers on beating back the childish unproductivity, because that’s something that we all naturally get better at as we get older. That’s useful, but I like how the OP gives concrete suggestions that help toward de-programming one’s learned corporate/institutional unproductivity as well.
Might I suggest linking to an article from that blog that actually has a little more meat on it? It isn’t great to link to a blog of “all good stuff” with an article that is only a few short paragraphs long and which seems to be kinda navel-gazy productivity hacking.