Having suffered from "time tension" (I am sure the experts have a better term for it), I tend to build some slack into my activities. Perhaps this has resulted in my achieving far less, but it's helped me retain my sanity. But...different solutions work for different people, I suppose.
On Wed, Nov 8, 2017 at 9:15 AM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > Interesting article by Cory. This is something I've been thinking about as > well: the need to engineer some some *slack* into everyting you do, as > over-optimising (which is usually optimising the wrong variable, or > possibly prematurely optimising the right one) can have various adverse > effects in various domains: > > - Financial: e.g not leaving any cash in the bank account as it is all in > various investments can be bothersome when you have sudden need. Today is a > particularly interesting date to be talking about such a situation, for > folks in India at least. :) > > - "Productivity" e.g filling your day with busy work or even "important" > work back to back. > > - "Leisure" e.g feeling the need to fill every minute of your weekend or > holiday > > - Childraising e.g "classes" tuitions, camps &c &c > > All of which is another way of restating one of my favourite phrases: What > are you optimising for? > > Thoughts? > > Udhay > > http://locusmag.com/2017/11/cory-doctorow-how-to-do- > everything-lifehacking-considered-harmful/ > > Cory Doctorow: How to Do Everything (Lifehacking Considered Harmful) > November 6, 2017 > > I was there when “lifehacking” was born. It was the 11th of February, 2004, > at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, held in a giant conference > hotel in San Diego. I was on the committee for ETech (as we called it) and > I had lobbied hard for the inclusion of a talk called “Life Hacks: Tech > Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks” by Danny O’Brien, a technology > columnist and former standup comedian who is also a good friend (I am now > godfather to his daughter, Ada). I’d watched Danny compiling his research > for the talk and I knew it would be a great one. > > I liveblogged his presentation, because this was before lifehacking, but > after liveblogging (if only barely). Danny described a research project in > which he interviewed “overprolific” tech workers who had a reputation for > doing a lot of things at once, and reported on their commonalities. My > notes on the talk are still live at <www.craphound.com/ > lifehacksetcon04.txt>, > but the long and short of them was that all of these super-nerds were > really good at one or two flexible tools (ranging from Excel spreadsheets > to the programming language Python), and they used those tools to automate > many of the processes in their life. They also all used some kind of > master, monster to-do list and file-of-useful-pasted-snippets. > > I recognized some of my own working habits in the description, and, more > importantly, acquired some useful tips. After all, I was one of those > really techie people who did a lot of different things at the same time: > writing novels, working for an activist group, editing a blog, sometimes > even having a life. One intriguing takeaway from the talk was a > recommendation to read David Allen’s 2001 book Getting Things Done, an > instant classic in the “personal productivity” genre (this was after the > productivity genre, but still before lifehacking). > > Allen’s book is a fantastic and inspiring read. The core of his philosophy > is to recognize that there are more things in the world that you want to do > than you could do, and that, in the absence of a deliberate approach to > this conundrum, you are likely to default to doing things that are easy to > scratch off your to-do list, which are also the most trivial. After a > lifetime of this, you’ll have accomplished a lot of very little. > > Allen counsels deliberate, mindful prioritization of this list, jettisoning > things on the basis that they are less satisfying or important than the > other things you’d like to do – even if those other things are harder, more > time consuming and less likely to result in a satisfying chance to scratch > an item off the list. > > This resonated with me and, by 2004, I’d bought and given away half a dozen > copies of Getting Things Done and put its method in place. I even had a > chance to sit down with Allen in 2007 and talk about how the web fit into > his method. > > It’s been more than a decade since I took up Allen’s method and started > lifehacking (as the kids say), and I have a report from the field. > > The past 14 years have regularly featured junctures where I had to get rid > of something I liked doing so I could do something I liked doing more. Some > of that was low-hanging fruit (I haven’t watched TV regularly in more than > a decade), but after getting rid of the empty calories in my activity diet, > I had to start making hard choices. > > In retrospect, I observe that the biggest predictor of whether an activity > surviving winnowing is whether it paid off in two or more of the aspects of > my life and career. If something made me a better blogger – but not a > better novelist and activist – it went. The more parts of my life were > implicated in an activity, the more likely I was to keep the activity in my > daily round. > > Some of these choices were tough. I have all but given up on re-reading > books, despite the undeniable pleasure and value to understanding the > authors’ craft, which is easier to unpick on subsequent readings. But I > have more than 20 linear feet of books I’ve promised to read for blurbs and > reviews, and reading those books also teaches me something about the craft, > also brings me pleasure, also makes me a better reviewer, and also makes me > a better citizen of science fiction, who contributes to the success of > worthy new books. > > Some social media tools – like Facebook – make for fun (if problematic) > socializing, and all social media pays some dividend to authors who are > hoping to sell books and activists who are hoping to win support, but > Twitter also teaches me to be a better writer by making me think about > brevity and sentence structure in very rigorous ways (and from an activist > perspective, Twitter is a better choice because it, unlike Facebook, > doesn’t want the web to die and be replaced by its walled garden) – so > Twitter is in, and Facebook is out. > > There are some unexpected outcomes from this process, albeit ones that are > obvious in hindsight. > > The first is that it has gotten progressively harder to tease apart the > different kinds of work I do. People often ask, “How much of your day do > you spend writing, and how much being an activist, and how much on > journalism?” The answer has always been that it’s hard to cleanly separate > these activities, because they overlap – writing a blog post is a way to > think through and track an idea that might show up in a story, and also a > way to raise alarm at a political affair. > > But today, thanks to a vicious Darwinian winnowing process, the only > activities left in my day serve double- and triple-duty. There is virtually > no moment in my working day that can cleanly be billed to only one ledger. > > The corollary of this is that it gets much, much harder to winnow out > activities over time. Anything I remove from the Jenga stack of my day > disturbs the whole tower. > > And that means that undertaking new things, speculative things that have no > proven value to any of the domains where I work (let alone all of them) has > gotten progressively harder, even as I’ve grown more productive. > Optimization is a form of calcification. > > That presents a paradox: if the purpose of lifehacking is to mindfully > choose your priorities, what can you do when that process leads you to a > position where no more choices are possible? > > I’ll let you know if I figure it out. In the meantime, let this be a > warning to anyone who wants to do it all. > > Cory Doctorow is the author of Walkaway, Little Brother, and Information > Doesn’t Want to Be Free (among many others); he is the co-owner of Boing > Boing, a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a > visiting professor of Computer Science at the Open University and an MIT > Media Lab Research Affiliate. > > This review and more like it in the November 2017 issue of Locus. > > > -- > > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) >
