Category: Productivity
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Flow Traps Revisited
On a recent Friday night, I installed a video game on my computer: Civilization 5. I don’t play “hardcore” (that is: long, complex, time-consuming) video games much anymore. Really, barely ever. The last time I did before this was probably nearly three years ago. But there was a time when I played them regularly and really […]
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Doing The Work
To get a thing accomplished, you show up and do the work. That’s all you can do, really. Other things that aren’t “the work” don’t get the thing accomplished. And what happens as a result of your trying to do “the work”: that’s also not really your choice. You just show up and do “the work”. Byron […]
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“The Space to Be a Person,” or Why You Need Slack Time
Call it idleness, slack, non-action, pausing, or just plain “doing nothing.” Whatever you call it, too frequently today it is skipped, degraded, and seen as a less than noble use of time. The United States of America — where I was born and have lived all my life — is especially known for its “never slow down” mentality. […]
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It’s Just About Time and Attention
It seems that we only have control over two things in our life: the hours allotted to us, and the things we put our attention on in those hours. But that’s a fact that’s easy to miss. We worry about how pretty we are. About how smart we are. About how kind we are. About […]
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The Meaning of Meetings and Metawork
A bit of a neologism, I wondered if I should use the hyphenated “meta-work” instead. To explain: metawork is simply work about work. That is: rather than making widgets, metawork consists of conversations about making widgets. Meetings are the quintessential form of group metawork. And the popular disdain for meetings among white collar workers is mostly due to the […]
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Premature Optimizations and the Tool Distraction
I do a lot of computer programming. More than that, I’ve made it my primary task of the last few years to learn as much as I can about it. One of the ideas anyone who spends a lot of time doing this will come across is this quote from Donald Knuth: Premature optimization is […]
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The Art of Doing
It’s far too easy to let the worry that you’ll not do it right stop you from doing it at all. As someone who’s spent most of his life avoiding embarrassment at the cost of inaction, I feel rather certain I know what I’m talking about. Doing is the only way you’ll learn anything. Ten […]
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Flow Traps
One of the more popular psychological ideas in the public sphere is that of “flow.” The idea, originated by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is that we’ll get more done and enjoy it more when we’re given a level of challenge to keep us engaged and exercising a sense of mastery. One shouldn’t have to look very hard […]