- Remember that you are going to die. Time flies, have you noticed? Is that status symbol that you are pursuing really that important? Is it ever going to make you happy?
- There is more wisdom in one of your cells than in all self-help and management books combined. Maybe you can't focus for a good reason? What could that reason be?
- Remember the last time you felt glad to be alive? Was it related to being productive?
I can feel intensely alive and happy after having produced something, be it a nice piece of code, a short story that people might want to read or a meal that my friends enjoy. There are other surefire ways I can trigger happiness in myself (sex, drugs, exercise, to name some) but the resulting "high" feels more artificial to me.
I also get a lot of joy from all of the things you describe.
The fact that the pleasure you get from sex or exercise feels artificial in comparison to writing a piece of code might be something worth thinking about. Is this really how you feel, or is it how you were programmed to feel?
I guess what I mean to say is that sex and exercise (not to mention drugs) are more like quick fixes. You can just do it and feel happy for a while. On the other hand, producing something involves more investment and when this investment pays off, the resulting "high" feels more earned or deserved. To my mind it also feels less buzzy or chemically induced (although I am well aware that triggering your reward centres by making something is a chemical process as well).
It sounds like you are talking about visceral happiness vs reflective happiness. Two distinct kinds of happiness according to some researchers (i.e. Martin Seligman).
I like this, I think this sort of investment gives you(me) a foundation for happiness feelings to sit upon. Which otherwise can deflate quickly if it comes at the end of an unproductive(ineffective) day
There is an investment in exercise you just need to set goals. I went from never running 4 miles to completing 55km mountain runs. Then switched up and went from 800lbs powerlifting total to a 1300lbs total and still looking for more.
No citizen has a right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training…what a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable. - Socrates
Eh, that is strange. I do feel happy and energized from productive work (even "house work" or "a hard day's work" that's not inherently creative) but I've never felt like an entirely different person after having produced a nice piece of code, or stopped feeling physical pain, things like that. (And I do like feeling "energized" more than "high" in general so I'm definitely not knocking productive work here, but people who try to argue that doing something productive is some kind of transcendental euphoric experience need to stop smoking the ink of their Tim Ferriss books)
Sex drugs and exercise all rely upon natural or endogenous biochemistry. They may feel artificial but theoretically anyone could feel that way quite quickly, since it is inherently latent in our biology to experience those phenomena.
I love creating things. Software, metal models, lego models, house improvements... I just love creating things, big and small.
Sure, there are parts of all of those things that suck and I work to get through them and on to the good parts, but there's nothing else in life that gives me a high like creating something.
Everyone loves creating things. It's part of or human nature. It's one of the things that makes life magic again. Not "being productive". "Being productive" is code for doing shit you would rather not do. If you wanted to do that stuff, you would just do it.
Sure, even the stuff we are the most passionate about entails tasks that we would rather not do. We all get that.
For example, right now I want to work on a research project, but I have to fill some forms first so that I can keep having medical insurance. I would rather not fill the forms, but I will just do it so I can go back to the magical stuff.
If most of what I do requires a Pomodoro-hell-clock, 3 lists and a process that takes 10 chapters to explain, just to discipline myself into doing it, then maybe I made some bad choices along the way. But hey, maybe it's just me. I am just inviting people to take a pause and reflect. :)
I can't even imagine having that kind of feeling related to my job. Especially not if it's about coding. At least not if it's about typical B2B or B2C software.
What do you do for a living if you don't mind me asking?
I run a company called TalkJS (https://talkjs.com). We're a toolbox that lets our customers build a proper chat feature in hours instead of months.
This means lots of API design and I love to do API design. I get a deep sense of flow and purpose when dreaming up a tool (an SDK, a library, a language, a set functions or data types; whatever) that lets other programmers do a wide variety of things.
Admittedly the other half of my job is business & marketing related. I like it too, especially since "sales" in our case mostly means talking to other programmers, and so does "management". But not as deeply as the code work.
It also helps that since we're a remote-first company I can choose from where I work and I stop when I notice I'm too stuck or "my brain is full". We don't really do the typical startup-burnout-marathon.
I am the OP and I am a fellow researcher. I also love my job (most of the time).
One of the reasons I love it so much is that it affords me freedom to think deeply about things that I care about without being in a straight jacket of constant schedules, meetings, two-week sprints or whatever else is prescribed this week by the High Priests of Productivity.
Greatest "productivity" hack for me: having a door that I can close.
My point is that "productivity" is a shallow value, and that turning yourself into a robot will not make you or the world any better.
Speaking of academia, the "cult of productivity" and obsession with status is damaging science. It's not me who says that, it's Nobel Prize winners. For example:
"For the last few years, I’ve had an idea for a satirical self-help article called, “The Productivity Secrets of Adolf Hitler.” The article would feature all the popular self-help tropes—goals, visualizations, morning routines—except expressed through the exploits of Hitler."
Being productive for the sake of productivity is a fetish here, but not necessarily something fulfilling.
Personally, I do feel the happiest when I am productive. But in my case, the easy part is to focus on things I consider worthwhile, the hard one - being productive. YMMV.
Thanks for your answer, I had a laugh with the Hitler thing.
I clicked your link. I don't mean to be argumentative for the sake of it, but let me point out something that goes to the core of where we might disagree (or more, where I might disagree with a majority of people here). The article includes the following statement, in big all caps:
"You are what you value"
No I am not. I am also not my profession, not what I know, not my memories, not the clothes I wear or the music I listen to. I am a human being. If I close my eyes, and calm down, and manage to quiet my mind, all of the former stuff drifts away. "I" remain. I encourage you to try, but FFS don't take this as some "meditation technique to increase productivity" :)
Yeah, I also do have a problem with "You are what you value".
Though, perhaps from a different perspective. I do think I am a sum of my biology and experiences (much in the spirit of Daniel Dennett), rather than "a ghost in the machine". Values are a part of that, nothing more, nothing less.
---
As a side note, I know you may cringe at "found meaning of my life... and thanks to that I am 23% more efficient" (and in general, people adopting Buddhism Zen into the American cult of Business).
>Remember the last time you felt glad to be alive? Was it related to being productive?
Actually, studies show that in the long run, being in flow makes you happier than being free from work. At work, it's usually the "non-work" things that kill it (tedious boring work, people problems, rigid hours, etc).
These days going on a hike in a scenic area makes me glad to be alive. But I enjoy it mostly because my "free" time is heavily constrained due to work. If I did it 3-5 hours a day, I would not use it as an example of being glad to be alive. But for many, working on something of their choice for 3-5 hours a day would make them happy. If you enjoy certain areas of SW, I can guarantee you'll enjoy doing that much more than the hike that made you happy. (You'll still enjoy the hike, but not that much more than you do now). Ditto artist, etc.
Last Friday at work I solved some annoying headaches I had in Emacs using Elisp. It took under an hour, and would impress no one (I'm new to Elisp). That made not just my day but my whole weekend.
Of course, if your work is such that there's no hope of flow (e.g. you neither enjoy nor are challenged by any aspect of the whole industry), then you're screwed.
I've been wondering whether framing it like that (work vs life) is making things worse. I do it myself too, but what if those 8+ hours a day could actually also be leisure? Coworkers with young kids actually joke about coming to work to relax.
- Remember that you are going to die. Time flies, have you noticed? Is that status symbol that you are pursuing really that important? Is it ever going to make you happy?
- There is more wisdom in one of your cells than in all self-help and management books combined. Maybe you can't focus for a good reason? What could that reason be?
- Remember the last time you felt glad to be alive? Was it related to being productive?
No need to thank me.