I've always found Stephen Wolfram's thoughts to be overly self indulgent, and this is no exception. But it is illuminating since it reveals what I most loathe: the productive life.
Being productive is not a good. It leads to wanting to attach a computer to oneself while going on a walk outdoors!
This is a common sentiment on the Internet. But when I look around at the people I know, none of the people who are anti-productivity are people I admire. In fact, the pro-productivity people do much more of everything with better outcomes.
- The pro-productivity people are more involved parents and family members
- The pro-productivity people are more involved in hobbies
- The pro-productivity people create many more things
- The pro-productivity people lift more, go outdoors more, travel more
It appears, empirically from my sample set, that being pro-productivity correlates with spending one's life meaningfully. Having chosen to model myself on those I know like this, my life has gotten better.
This class of advice (anti-productivity) therefore appears to me to be in the same class of advice as other Internet advice: "kick your kids out at 18 to teach them personal responsibility", "don't take on debt", etc.
To make it worse, you only have to scroll approx 1 page down before you have a picture of Stephen Wolfram outdoors.
The separation of work and play that so many online commenters form is perhaps key to this whole thing. Work is not a thing I do for money alone. I feel happy and fulfilled when I do it. It is fun!
Having read that blog post as well as others like [1], I'm not convinced Wolfram has the time to fulfill those bullet points in a fully engaged manner. He appears to be constantly working (or at least be available for calls and meetings) from waking up at 11am to going to bed at 3am, with a 2-hour dinner break.
I dunno, he's clearly not your average Joe. I also enjoy my work but it's more stressful than going for a walk or playing the guitar. At work there are expectations and deadlines, and I have to plan and manage my time, and update the right people when there are delays or scope changes etc etc. Going for a walk you can just be whatever you are in the moment, you don't have to do or be anything that's asked of you for a few hours.
> The pro-productivity people are more involved parents and family members
I haven't seen this amongst several people I know as pro-productivity. The productivity tends to be hyper-focused on work and side hustles/creative, and family/parental duties seemed to be neglected as a result. But I couldn't find any data on this with a quick search, so it's just conflicting anecdata to your anecdata.
Your other bullet points do align more with my experience, but not this one.
> But when I look around at the people I know, none of the people who are anti-productivity are people I admire.
It's interesting to me that you think the opposite of "pro-productivity"--which I define as people who are constantly engaging in life hacks to increase their perceived "productivity", and thus treat productivity as some kind of end unto itself--is "anti-productivity".
Could we agree that the healthy thing lies somewhere in the middle?
> Work is not a thing I do for money alone. I feel happy and fulfilled when I do it. It is fun!
I really wish I could get into this mindset instead of dreading work. I find no fulfillment from work, in fact the most fulfilled i've felt was when I had no obligations to anyone or anything (taking a break from work)
When you’re like Wolfram, where you are head of a 800-employee organisation, profitable from real users, and have a long road map of where you want to take your product, then work is essentially infinite and energising.
When you get to lead the vision of your “baby”, with support from 800 people, work is completely different from your typical middle manager of individual contributor.
> The separation of work and play that so many online commenters form is perhaps key to this whole thing. Work is not a thing I do for money alone. I feel happy and fulfilled when I do it. It is fun!
That's not "online commenters". It's like 95+% of people who work for a paycheck.
This. I felt an almost cringe-like reaction from reading the article. It reminds me of Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. At some point being productive becomes the end goal and no longer a means to an end, and you've lost touch with the beauty of just going on a walk in nature.
Being productive is good but only as a means to an end. If you're using your productivity to get more done then that can be dangerous. But if you're using it to get your work done faster then it's actually quite useful.
Perhaps you mean that being maximally productive -- that is, seeking productivity over all other goals in life -- is not a good? Because productivity is definitely a good. Without it, all crumbles away to the natural state, which is chaotic and for human purposes "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
I find that you’re projecting your thoughts and lifestyle onto his lifestyle choice. Just stop as it does nobody any good.
What’s wrong with attaching a computer to oneself while walking outdoors? Does he have the same intrinsic motivators as you? Probably not. Does it matter? Probably not.
What about people that go outside and just read? Is that not a good life?
He's the one who posted it online. Fine if others post that they think it's bad, and why. Laudable, even, if you suppose he posted it to communicate some message and others find that message to be harmful or misleading or otherwise bad. They ought to post what they think is wrong with it.
Most people don't have his potential. Yeah, I'm aware he pushes a lot of crackpot science, but he is still exceedingly brilliant. For the average folk, this is a horrible way to live.
Being productive is not a good. It leads to wanting to attach a computer to oneself while going on a walk outdoors!