Just started reading my third productivity-related book this week. It's funny - the busier I am, the more I gravitate towards reading books. (I know I'm too busy when I don't have the energy left to read.) As a result, I've started using Instapaper as a means to read more articles with more focus, I'm experimenting with reducing my caffeine intake and I'm thinking of trying to delegate more in my working life. Hashtag neversettle. Part of my foray into the trite-filled swamp that is management books was spurred by a progress meeting I had last week with my superior. (It's one of those half-yearly review meetings where my progress as an employee is discussed. There's a name for that but it slips my mind.) We had a lovely conversation about my productivity and what I do to manage it. I explained some of my system - a constellation of devices, Markdown files, todo lists and Outlook rules - and she was impressed enough that she wants me to mentor a guy that started one month after me. He's a sweet fella but he's been missing deadlines and pulling allnighters to compensate. I don't think he has much of a system at all, and I always enjoy discussing these kinds of things so I'm actually looking forward to helping him."What separates the most productive people from everyone else is that they make course corrections every week to gradually get better at everything they do."
This is why I'm anxious to get to softball practice every week-- because I've spent time at home focusing on my own techniques, comparing with pros, watching youtube videos, trying things out. Eventually, I'm just ready to see if I'm more successful in a game-like environment. Some others also exhibit this constant series of small improvements; others seem to have decided that they're "done learning," and now they've stagnated. To my eye, that seems a lot less fun. Maybe I should practice that more in other areas of life.
I think the techniques themselves are less important than the system behind it. One of the books in this trifecta of productivity books is Scott Adams' (the Dilbert guy) book. He makes the point that goals are for losers (as in, you're a loser for a long time until you actually hit that goal), and that you should instead focus on implementing some kind of system that you'll be able to succeed at and improve over time. So instead of saying "I want to lose X pounds", he suggests saying "I will eat healthy/healthier", which is much easier to accomplish and improve upon. There's also a bunch of research that suggests that you will inevitably hit a plateau unless you develop ways to practice with deliberateness. Cal Newport calls it "stretch and destroy": stretch your current abilities to an uncomfortable level and embrace honest feedback, even if it destroys what you thought was good. That's not necessarily fun though, so I would think about what you want to get out of softball. Could be that it just satiates your sporting and socializing needs. There's no need to strive for perfection in everything you do, but I firmly believe it's good to do everything with deliberateness.
That's not necessarily fun though Then I guess I'm just weird :) A more serious explanation: I think there's inherent beauty in doing any thing well, regardless of what that thing is. This is why it's always cool to see people talking about the things they really care about, even if I absolutely don't care about that thing. Passion is cool. Doing things well is cool. Also I hate losing.stretch your current abilities to an uncomfortable level and embrace honest feedback, even if it destroys what you thought was good.
It's satisfying for sure, but it's not fun in the spaß sense of the word. Totally agree. (One of my favourite subreddits is /r/ATBGE.) The perfectionist in me always strives to do things well from the get-go. Which so far has worked wonders, but the downside is that I avoid failure like the plague and thus don't always know how to deal with it.I think there's inherent beauty in doing any thing well, regardless of what that thing is.
What's your workflow for that like? I really enjoyed it on iOS from an aesthetic standpoint, but found it to be a huge PITA to actually use, because it won't read RSS feeds or auto-update. Instead I had to go to Safari and add an individual article manually, and then save it to instapaper. The app itself was fantastic to actually read from, as I said, but it just felt like a glorified ebook reader or something. I e-mailed them about it, and even then, they told me you had to use a third-party tool to stream RSS/Atom feeds to Instapaper. Having to do that means Instapaper was redundant. I really wanted to like it, though.Instapaper
I have abandoned RSS a long long time ago and I know Instapaper is not really meant for that. Instapaper does have an email address you can send stuff to, so you could probably automate (IFTT?) an RSS feed to send email to that address. For me it's a "read later" app. I noticed that I enjoy sitting down and reading a bunch of articles distraction-free, but the various sources that I get my articles from (Hubski excluded) are optimized to keep you scrolling, not to have you read stuff. So I now shoot articles I read on Twitter off to Instapaper so that I can actually read it with focus instead of reading about it half-distracted by the next shiny thing. Plus, its highlighting function is just perfect for me, as that's what I always want to do with text (but rarely get the chance to). I can now highlight interesting passeges and easily send them off to my notes system in Google Keep after finishing an article.
That makes sense. I've thought about how that might work for me, but it just doesn't. Which as I said, is a shame given how nice it is to actually read on. But for me, all it does is add another step.