Friday, 27 November 2020
quote [ An office worker’s life is dramatically easier, in the moment, if she can send messages that demand immediate responses from her colleagues, or disseminate requests and tasks to others in an ad-hoc manner. But the cumulative effect of such constant, unstructured communication is cognitively harmful: on the receiving end, the deluge of information and demands makes work unmanageable. ]
Some nice thoughts on the whole self-structure thing which can quickly spiral out of proportion. Index cards still rule though.
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Paracetamol said[2] @ 12:42pm GMT on 28th Nov
[Score:1 Informative]
[Edit:] shit, this was missing the second half – fixed!
Here's the full text – turning off Javascript fixes nags and toggling reader mode allowed me to paste this with links intact: |
avid said[1] @ 7:37am GMT on 28th Nov
The New Yorker is getting pretty aggressive about limiting the free articles. Can you post the text?
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captainstubing said @ 1:23pm GMT on 28th Nov
I use GTD and run it out of a google sheet. It works well for me. That said, I don't have a regular gig so for me it is about running my life overall (including the work bit) in an easily accessed and maintained manner. The full capture thing (a big dump, as I like to think about it) is worth doing around once a year. I do my big dump between xmas and new year. I find it really interesting. There are some big questions that come up. I usually get pretty happy by the end of the process.
For my money there are two really important points to remember with GTD or any other get-shit-done process. The first is that the system you use is not an example of being productive. Building ever more complex systems is a giant wank, a massive spaff-a-thon that is robbing you of your essential drives and juices. Time spent on the system and the daily maintenance is a cost, not a benefit. Keep it simple. The second point is - what are you trying to produce? Being clear on that is pretty useful. I like to produce free time with a clear mind to lay on the couch and read. Or to have a proper giant wank. I don't want to spend my free time on trivial shit, or perfecting my GTD spreadsheet. So don't write it off. It can be helpful, but it needs some clarity of thought and a little (not a lot) of discipline. |
Paracetamol said @ 7:28am GMT on 30th Nov
The eye-opening thing for me was pointing out that no matter how well-structured individually, you're still interfacing with a broken system. That sounds like pushing responsibility to the bottom.
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captainstubing said @ 11:04pm GMT on 30th Nov
[Score:1 Underrated]
Yeah. I'm lucky in that my job can be put in a box pretty easily. I just mark out the hours on my calendar and do them. Some key 'sub-system' style tasks each semester make it to my GTD, but I pretty much phone my main job in these days. I use GTD for the rest of my life and stuff I actually do want to do. The job just pays for stuff. I also almost never respond to emails at work unless it is necessary for me to get my work done, or if I think it will be actually helpful to a colleague. I pretty much never respond to meeting requests unless it is something I agree I need to be at (rare) and I have maintained the rage at the temerity of those who dare to claim my time in a calendar without talking to me about it first. Fuck those people.
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avid said @ 6:20am GMT on 30th Nov
The productivity hack I want to see is something that detects "flow" (the mental state), and then suppresses all notifications, sounds and interruptions until the flow breaks naturally.
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captainstubing said @ 10:59pm GMT on 30th Nov
I don't think I ever get into flow at work - I just do the gig. However, with your ideal system I would never be interrupted while making beer or rubbing one out, so I guess it would still be useful.
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avid said @ 3:08am GMT on 2nd Dec
I was thinking it would use an eye tracker, so as long as you never break eye contact with the porn you wouldn't be interrupted. The beer making would be harder. I suppose just making sure that notifications only happen at the top and bottom of the hour might be enough.
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