I feel like while all of these productivity "hacks" and systems (like Pomodoro) may have some merit, they're completely unnecessary.
It's really not too hard to:
* Work.
* If you lose focus, be mindful of the fact that your attention is wandering, and focus on your work again. This part takes some discipline. Discipline takes time to develop. Be patient.
* If you feel that you cannot focus on your work, get up and walk around. Go to the bathroom. Step outside for a moment. Take yourself out of the work, then return to your desk and immediately dive back in.
* Accept that you're a human - not a robot; that 100% efficiency is unattainable; and that it's a waste of your only life to try to attain 8 hours of productive work in an 8 hour day.
I don't need a timer. I don't need to develop Pavlovian responses to a mysterious ticking noise. I don't want the overhead of "productivity management applications". I just want to put my hands to work, until the work's done, and then do the next thing.
You are, essentially, a person with 20/20 vision saying “what’s the point of glasses?”
The point is that not everyone has the capacity to be even 10% productive without help, let alone 100% productive. Just like some people are still nearsighted even after all the vision correction possible, some people still have trouble focusing even after taking ADHD medication or whatever else.
If such people want to have any chance of doing a single thing with their lives, they need to fight their own brain the way one would fight a war: with strategy, bait and traps and feints, and a hard-eyed evaluation of which battles are worth fighting. That is, essentially, what these “productivity life-hacks” are a euphemism for.
Productivity isn't just doing things at all. It also implies to distribute your efforts on various tasks. Some tasks are less interesting then others and you can get lost on the ones you like. You can feel productive for streaks but after a week you realise that you forgot/ignored all the important stuff. This is what pomodoro can deal with.
But most productivity hacks need an decent amount of discipline, which people with some sort of "clinical lazyness" won't have. Building this discipline is a completely different topic.
Regular reminders to stay on task (and what that task is) can be really helpful even with medication. There is still an element of discipline there and disorders make a mountain out of discerning where the disorder ends and the lack of discipline begins. But if it helps it helps.
> But most productivity hacks need an decent amount of discipline, which people with some sort of "clinical lazyness" won't have.
Dismissing ADHD as "clinical lazyness" is about as insulting and technically incorrect as calling Alzheimer's disease "clinical stupidity". Sufferers of ADHD have problems with distractions, and maintaining attention, and systems like those mentioned in the article can help to manage that.
It reminds me of how last year (and still ongoing) we saw heaps of meditation apps.
It just seemed completely counter intuitive to me (as a Zen practitioner) to introduce something needlessly complicated on probably the simplest (not the easiest) thing you can do in your life.
There is a significant amount of learning involved in focus and meditation, by and large the people reading and buying these want a short cut and do themselves a disservice. Work is part of your life. Trying to have certain hacks to focus to work then pull up an app for more hacks on how read, then a different app for hacks on how to meditate to cast out the stress of work, misses the connection between why you cant focus in the first place. Not being able to read, work, relax are all symptoms of a problem: you are terrified of being bored.
The Pomodoro method seems like a good start, but in my opinion mindfullness should be applied to every part of your life.
Learning to focus on work will help you focus on work. Learning to be mindful will help you with relationships, sex, reading, work and pretty much every part of your life.
My best advice is to get comfortable being bored. Stare at a blank wall for an hour every few days. It will profoundly change your life.
I began appreciating boredom for its on sake after reading this article https://hbr.org/2010/06/why-i-returned-my-ipad years ago and since then I consciously avoid trying to be "productive" during commute, queues etc. Quoting from article: "Being bored is a precious thing, a state of mind we should pursue. Once boredom sets in, our minds begin to wander, looking for something exciting, something interesting to land on. And that’s where creativity arises".
Has there ever been an online discussion about a productivity method that didn't have someone come along to post the completely useless advice of "What's the big deal? Just do it."?
If you're one of those people who can work at a high-level of productivity on complex knowledge work without getting distracted or interrupted or losing focus constantly, congratulations.
Most people aren't like you.
And your advice is useless to them, at best.
Most people have a hard time with this and it's getting worse [1]. We didn't evolve to do the kind of work we do today [2], and beyond that, people's brains work differently. Many people with ADHD who started taking medication after years of struggling with focus issues describe it like a light switch in their brain. Why is it so hard to believe that it's a spectrum and that many without a diagnosis of ADHD find it harder to focus than you do?
Those of us who struggle with focus and productivity have heard the vapid advice of "just do it" hundreds or thousands of times. Not only is it worthless advice, it's often actively harmful.
Also, not to point fingers, but some of the people with your attitude (not all or even most) aren't actually all that productive and could stand to take a look at some of these methods.
Also, what counts as "work" might not match up. For some people, "working" means just sitting in front of a computer for a set amount of time. Especially with intellectual work, it's hard to balance the amount of time thinking about how to solve a problem, vs. actually implementing the solution. For all we know the person who says "you just have to have discipline" spends 95% of their time falling into random rabbit holes, and 5% actually coding, and so never gets anything done. Or otherwise, maybe they spend 99% of their time coding, but never actually stop to think about ways to solve the problem better.
I'm not saying that productivity tools solve all your problems, but I find that it makes it easier to choose how much time I spend on each thing.
This is a wisdom that comes with age. Everyone is different and some have more problems to concentrate and can take different levels of stress. What most see as lazy might be people that has burned out already, just haven't realized it, thinking it's just the way it's supposed to be. Be careful with how you work, you might be able to cope right now but your brain will make sure to break when it gets too much and the cost might be pretty high.
I've tried so many hacks, checklists, apps, Pomodoro, web video tutorials and TED talks on productivity, and I couldn't get up to speed with the rest of my senior team. I asked my wife what she does, and she said something very along the lines of what you said. I gave it a shot, and I ended up being the top performer that quarter (and hopefully the ones to come).
Now when someone asks about procrastination I give it to them straight. You're at work to work. Small breaks / breathers will come naturally. Get it finished and mess around on your own time or when you're done with your tasks. You'll only be benefiting yourself and be at the top of your team in no time.
I agree. It's curious that so many people believe they find it difficult to concentrate. Clearly, those beliefs can't possibly be accurate, as your story demonstrates. The solution is obviously to just try harder.
I think that part of the problem for me was that most jobs took something that could be an art and a craft (computer programming and system-building) and turned it into a grueling, feature-deadline driven assembly line for uninspiring, unpolished, and unremarkable products.
This was a complete productivity killer for me. For a long time, I blamed myself. I tried different techniques, motivations, even prescribed substances. Eventually, I realized that the problem was with what I was doing with my time.
Now that I am programming for myself, I have all the motivation that I need. I am not beholden to deadlines or commitments, I am free to Do It Right, refactor as I see fit, and finish whatever I'm working on with the level of Quality that I am happy with.
I get more done in a two-hour session than I used to in a day and sometimes a week.
I tried pomodoro for the focus effect, but I keep using it for a different reason. To avoid the "just one more tweak" trap I sometimes fall into. When the timer is up I decide whether the task is done or not. The latter means I commit another complete block to it, otherwise I move on to the next one. This also works great for non tech things like making music. But don't know if this is "officially" part of the methodology
Distraction wise I have eliminated anything long before that. No notifications except the 3 I actually have to react to immediately, phone in "do not disturb" mode and co-workers learnt that it can take several hours for me to respond to slack messages (but once I do, they get a quality response).
Wow, that sounds optimal. But if you have impaired executive functioning, that strategy becomes hard to the point of probably impossible.
I've got ADHD, so while I don't expect 8 hours of productive work from myself, if left to my own sense of "focus" and "discipline", I'm lucky to get 20 minutes in. If I'm emotionally or intellectually invested in something, time loses all meaning. And when the only work to be done lacks that pull, I inevitably get drawn to things which are either not work, or are only tangentially work related and get lost in that for hours at a time, even though it didn't feel that way. I can get lost in breaks too.
I make up for it by eventually getting that "oh shit" feeling and hammering everything out in the early hours of the morning when there is nobody online to distract me. The downside to that though is I end up staring at a screen too long, forgetting to eat or drink, and sometimes making myself physically ill from it all.
So pomodoro gives me a great balance. I write down one task to do, start my timer (in this case I use an instrumental soundtrack that goes 25 minutes) and when the music is done, get up, drink water and have a snack (I try to avoid browsing the internet) and get back to it (I don't use the 5 minute break timer, which is sometimes a problem, but if my mind is hooked into my work by then I'm usually eager to get back to it). The other big benefit of pomodoro is that I can use the first session for planning the other sessions, and that is a great way to plan and prioritize for the day without going overboard and spending 2 hours making a to do list that is too long anyhow. Also if I didn't write out what I was doing every day (even if it's written out somewhere else like JIRA) I would just straight up forget when I come back from a break and have to replan it all out again in my head (which would probably be forgotten again).
Pomodoro also helped me get better at shifting contexts, so since most meetings start on the hour, or half-hour, it doesn't feel like a huge interruption to stop anymore (though I find it's good to have a post-meeting pomodoro session that's half "write down what the heck that was about" and half "give your brain an extra break because meetings are hard".) So yeah, I need a timer. I agree that you don't the overhead of applications at all though. Pen and paper and timed soundtrack (or actual physical tomato timer which used to be something people had just laying around) keeps it dead simple.
To add to this, the best way I found to improve work life balance is when I arrive at work, I’d set the countdown timer on my phone to 8 hours and 30 minutes (to account for lunch) and when it starts beeping, I get up and leave. In the middle of something? Doesn’t matter. Leave it as is and go home. In my case productivity only improved, probably because I slept better and rested more.
I felt very much like this when the work being asked of me was less than 8 hours worth of productivity.
Once the requests started coming in for significantly more than that, I needed a system of rejecting requests and creating project timelines based on very consistent output.
I feel like these two things go hand in hand. But if you only have 4-5 hours of work to do, go ahead and be disorganized. The cost of the productivity system is bigger than benefits you receive.
Couldn't agree more but I think some people need a prescribed system, because they find it hard to listen to their own intuition. Following your intuition is optimal however, because we're all different.
I want to add one point, which is related to your final points: we all need to move regularly for health. Getting up and running up and down the stairs, round the block, or round the room is essential. It actually improves concentration too. Unlike conversational interruptions, intermittant bursts of exercise don't make you forget where you where, instead they help prevent tunnel-vision and allow your mind to zoom-out briefly to ensure you're going in the right overall direction.
Haha, you and I must have drastically different intuitions. My intuition will cause me to see a "5% battery warning", think to myself "OK, I have a few minutes I will finish this line of code and then plug it in" and then proceed to code for 10 minutes until my laptop dies or I see the 1% warning and remember that I need to find a charger. This happens multiple times a week.
Totally agree on using short breaks for exercise or walks though. I usually continue thinking about work on them, but the change of environment can be helpful if in a rut.
It's really not too hard to:
* Work.
* If you lose focus, be mindful of the fact that your attention is wandering, and focus on your work again. This part takes some discipline. Discipline takes time to develop. Be patient.
* If you feel that you cannot focus on your work, get up and walk around. Go to the bathroom. Step outside for a moment. Take yourself out of the work, then return to your desk and immediately dive back in.
* Accept that you're a human - not a robot; that 100% efficiency is unattainable; and that it's a waste of your only life to try to attain 8 hours of productive work in an 8 hour day.
I don't need a timer. I don't need to develop Pavlovian responses to a mysterious ticking noise. I don't want the overhead of "productivity management applications". I just want to put my hands to work, until the work's done, and then do the next thing.
[edit:formatting]