Whenever I see a productivity blog by someone who is enthusiastic about recent changes they've made to their life, I immediately assume the writer is quite young.
As people get older, they realize that you only have the "right" to write a blog on productivity if you've actually found a system that keeps you productive for years on end.
If you do find such a system, it's much more likely to be idiosyncratic, involve a complex set of barely conscious reflections and automatic associations which get you into a certain frame of mind, and also almost impossible to fully describe since you probably don't understand every element of it. Which makes it nearly impossible to write about.
By this I mean productivity becomes part of who you are, so that your "productivity system" becomes barely distinguishable from your personality. That is, to outsiders, you have a productive personality, or you are "just an innately productive person".
This alienates the productivity seeker, because not many people who are not productive currently can imagine becoming innately productive people. So in turn they seek help from people who are not "innately productive", and instead have recently developed some kind of conscious system to deal with productivity. Which is a fragile approach.
The blockage points seem to be identity trade-offs like "are you willing to become less open-minded and curious to become more productive?". Because often what is holding you back is an addiction to a certain frame of mind that is antithetical to completing a specific set of tasks each day. The blockage is that you're not actually willing to become an innately productive person.
> Whenever I see a productivity blog by someone who is enthusiastic about recent changes they've made to their life, I immediately assume the writer is quite young.
> As people get older, they realize that you only have the "right" to write a blog on productivity if you've actually found a system that keeps you productive for years on end.
i broadly agree with you -- i'm not sure it has to do with the author's age, per se, but productivity advice based on recent changes to the author's systems ought to be taken with a huge grain of salt.
that said, i do think it is good to share what one is trying and whatnot -- blogging is cheap. for example, while the reader-beware above applies to this post and most of the ideas were familiar to me, i had never thought to record my screen while i code to get feedback, despite the fact that i record myself regularly to asses performance in music! that bit alone made it worth the 5 min it took to read.
Yeah, from personal experience (and from watching others), a lot of the habits like the ones the author cites last a few months and then you end up dropping them for whatever reason.
You mildly contradict yourself in saying your innate productivity is impossible to write about and then mention it requires identity trade offs. The mastery curve has always been described as going from conscious to unconscious grokking and these blogs are the fodder for thinking about what works and what doesn't.
> This alienates the productivity seeker, because not many people who are not productive currently can imagine becoming innately productive people. So in turn they seek help from people who are not "innately productive", and instead have recently developed some kind of conscious system to deal with productivity. Which is a fragile approach.
But isn't it the only approach if you want to find that custom tuned productivity system that is right for yourself? Trial and error, listening to young people who might not have "gotten it" but might have discovered one missing nugget that will get you over your next personal threshold? Isn't a more fragile approach to look at a persons age and say "I'm older than x so I have nothing to learn from this young one with their silly conscious system".
The issue is novelty effect. People inexperienced in improving their own productivity will try an intervention, see great improvements in the following days, and decide to blog about it. But the improvements usually come not from the intervention itself, but from the novelty aspect - so they tend to disappear within a week. After suffering from that many, many times you finally learn the pattern and stop blogging about random things you're trying.
That said, trial and error is definitely the way to go, and I like to read about systems people develop from themselves - sometimes I discover a weird trick that sticks with me for longer.
The points were good, especially the one about writing a lot of code then wasting time trying to find the bug. I've actually seen people work like that and it drives me nuts.
I think you're right that the author is young, but that doesn't mean the observations aren't useful for those who haven't figured some of this stuff out for themselves.
As people get older, they realize that you only have the "right" to write a blog on productivity if you've actually found a system that keeps you productive for years on end.
If you do find such a system, it's much more likely to be idiosyncratic, involve a complex set of barely conscious reflections and automatic associations which get you into a certain frame of mind, and also almost impossible to fully describe since you probably don't understand every element of it. Which makes it nearly impossible to write about.
By this I mean productivity becomes part of who you are, so that your "productivity system" becomes barely distinguishable from your personality. That is, to outsiders, you have a productive personality, or you are "just an innately productive person".
This alienates the productivity seeker, because not many people who are not productive currently can imagine becoming innately productive people. So in turn they seek help from people who are not "innately productive", and instead have recently developed some kind of conscious system to deal with productivity. Which is a fragile approach.
The blockage points seem to be identity trade-offs like "are you willing to become less open-minded and curious to become more productive?". Because often what is holding you back is an addiction to a certain frame of mind that is antithetical to completing a specific set of tasks each day. The blockage is that you're not actually willing to become an innately productive person.