how did your actual productivity “takeoff” compare to the idealized one you present here?
It was pretty similar to this here, except I took on way too many goals at once and spent way too long thinking that Beeminder was scary and not something that would benefit me.
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I have a hunch that there’s a lot of randomness in whether people who work to improve their productivity end up “taking off” or not
I’d be interested in hearing more about that.
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even after training yourself to be productive, you’re liable to fall prey to new tank syndrome and lose your good habits if you change your context (after graduating from college, moving to a new city, etc.)
I did transition from school to job without too much loss. I’ve found it usually takes me about three to four weeks to recover my habits in a context switch (e.g., school to internship, internship to school, school to job).
Limited data suggests that the long-term success rate for any given productivity hack is low. CFAR recommends people try lots of techniques and see what sticks. But I think for most people, if the first few things they try all fail, they’ll be discouraged and will be turned off of self-improvement for a while. On the other hand, if one of the first few things you try happens to succeed, you have the potential to build a success spiral (or at least get that critical encouragement to keep trying more techniques).
(If this all is true, it suggests you’re best off starting with something that’s easy and has a high priority of sticking, in order to get the self-improvement cycle started. For example, taking nootropics—it doesn’t require any willpower, it seems to work reasonably well, and it’s something you’ll probably want to try eventually anyway.)
It was pretty similar to this here, except I took on way too many goals at once and spent way too long thinking that Beeminder was scary and not something that would benefit me.
-
I’d be interested in hearing more about that.
-
I did transition from school to job without too much loss. I’ve found it usually takes me about three to four weeks to recover my habits in a context switch (e.g., school to internship, internship to school, school to job).
Limited data suggests that the long-term success rate for any given productivity hack is low. CFAR recommends people try lots of techniques and see what sticks. But I think for most people, if the first few things they try all fail, they’ll be discouraged and will be turned off of self-improvement for a while. On the other hand, if one of the first few things you try happens to succeed, you have the potential to build a success spiral (or at least get that critical encouragement to keep trying more techniques).
(If this all is true, it suggests you’re best off starting with something that’s easy and has a high priority of sticking, in order to get the self-improvement cycle started. For example, taking nootropics—it doesn’t require any willpower, it seems to work reasonably well, and it’s something you’ll probably want to try eventually anyway.)