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| visits | member for | 8 months |
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| stats | profile views | 4 |
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1d |
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Single tasking vs Mulitasking @Qba-th'Intrepid: See this answer on Skeptics SE: skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/4158/8543 |
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1d |
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Single tasking vs Mulitasking The most important information about human multitasking is that it DOES NOT EXIST. Someone just blindly used a computer-science concept to describe a human phenomenon formerly called "distraction". -- As you said, the advantage of concentration is that it helps you get the work done and feel good; sometimes so good you don't even notice the time is running. On the other hand, distraction makes the work slow and ruins your mood. -- Now excuse me, what exactly was the original question? I got kind of distracted... uhm... multitasking... |
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1d |
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How to concentrate on only one thing? My favorite two sources: 1) Productivity instructor P.J.Eby has PDF chapters of his unfinished book ("Thinking Things Done") somewhere on his websites. Use google. It's like all the good parts from psychology, concentrated, all nonsense removed. 2) Center for Applied Rationality offers paid seminars to increase rational thinking, and this stuff is called "instrumental rationality" in their curriculum. In Moscow, visit your local LessWrong meetup and meet awesome people. |
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May 14 |
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What are the general steps to increase your IQ? Seems to me that IQ is mostly fixed, but it can be reduced by health problems. Improving your health, having a balanced diet (or simply enough nutrition, in poor countries) helps you reach your potential, but that's it. On the other hand, IQ does not translate to productivity directly, there are many other things -- motivation, rationality, networking, avoiding procrastination... -- so instead of IQ worship, let's just focus on those. |
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May 14 |
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How to master a large variety of technical literature It is definitely not true that "people are born with a natural talent for one task (say programming) and this means that you can't or shouldn't master something else". Some things come easier and some things come harder for each of us, but many people are awesome in multiple areas. Your time is limited. You can't put 10.000 hours into too many things. But you can have a few hobbies with 1.000 hours per hobby. 1.000 hours of focused practice can make you rather good. |
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May 14 |
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How can I manage several hours of intellectual work (web dev/coding) a day without getting mentally exhausted? Try taking a 20-minute nap (use alarm clock) after lunch. To me it helps a lot; it's like starting a new day with a fresh brain. |
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May 14 |
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Task estimated to be 8 pomodori, what to do? Cut the BS. Measure the results. If the results are okay, who cares about the details? If the results are bad, perhaps it wasn't BS. |
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May 14 |
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How to concentrate on only one thing? I would recommend first trying it at home. Maybe during a weekend. Or if you have enough vacation days left, think about a project, take one full week off, and do a pretend-freelancer work during the whole week. Then you will see whether that could work. -- As a freelancer, you won't have the workplace-forced distractions, but on the other hand you will have a lot of other temptations. And maybe even some specific distractions at home (neighbors, etc.). -- I tried working as a freelancer a few years ago, and I wasn't able to do much. Unfortunately, I am more productive at work. |
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May 14 |
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How to concentrate on only one thing? Possible solution: Don't read books and watch TV during work. :P |
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Jan 8 |
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Fear of failure Fear of success is rather common, in various degree. Probably a legacy of our ape ancestors, where saying "I am great" meant you wanted to fight the current leader for leadership of your tribe, which could get you harmed or killed. So unless you felt pretty sure about your victory, you rather avoided doing anything which could make the current leader feel challenged. The rest of my answer was based on impressions and guesses; some parts may not apply. I agree with your point about discipline (with online education the efect will be even stronger). But too much pressure can also break people. |
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Jan 7 |
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Isolation as a productivity 'drive' An example from my recent experience: I spent a week in a cottage, with a notebook. First four days, I was extremely productive. Next three days I was mostly bored and did very little. -- If this pattern repeats later, it means that four days in a cottage would be the optimum time for me, for this type of task. For other tasks or for other people, other values may work better. Some things you only find by experimenting. |
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Jan 7 |
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How to be a smart worker rather than hard worker to be fit for the IT industry? Important: You should understand the code samples you reuse. Otherwise, if you make an application from dozen code samples copy/pasted from Google, and something does not work correctly, that can become a problem. (I have seen this problem often; usually in PHP or JavaScript code.) With a library, reading the code would probably be an overkill, but unless it is from a very reliable source, you should test it thoroughly. Because at the end, if the library contains some bugs, it is still your problem. |
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Jan 7 |
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How do you read programming books? When I read a book to learn a new concept, I sometimes try first to solve the problem myself. Then the book makes more sense to me, because I understand better why is author doing some things. If I didn't try to solve the problem myself, some steps in the author's solution seem arbitrary. But if I did try, then I may be aware that my first simple attempt caused some problems, and this author's code is a solution for them. |
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Jan 7 |
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Do audio books help our productivity? People are offering their opinions here, but is there any research on this topic? Without a research we can know which kind of book is more comfortable; but it would be also nice to know which kind of book makes people understand or remember the topic better. |
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Oct 10 |
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Feeling of stress when I have to learn something new Did you start learning those topics, or are you just collecting them in your virtual "to do" list? Increasing your "to do" list without working on it can easily lead to anxiety. Start learning something right now, so you can also see items disappearing from the "to do" list. |
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Oct 8 |
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I feel sleepy and tired when I encounter problems during a working day, is that normal? @xmjx: In biology, it's not just "fight or flight"; there are other possible reactions including "freeze". Feeling tired and sleepy is probably how the nature triggers this reaction. However, if this is true, then "imagine how bad it will be if you don't finish the task" will only make the problem worse. (Essentially, you don't remove fear by imagining the horrible consequences of NOT removing fear.) |
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Oct 2 |
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How do you deal with “FOMO” psychologically? Everyone sees the world from their own angle, and I am the technical guy, so yes, my advice tends to be this way. Essentially, you choose "smaller good" (because it is good, d'oh) and then you don't have time left for "greater good". The only solution is to reduce the "smaller good". Yes, it hurts. But it hurts more to miss the "greater good", doesn't it? When you are in a restaurant, there are many tasty foods, but you can only pick one. In the same way, give yourself a limit of 3 or 5 events weekly, and then pick the best ones. (Also: many events gradually get boring; try to leave sooner.) |
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Oct 1 |
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How do you deal with “FOMO” psychologically? Perhaps you could re-use some of this in offline environment too. If someone invites you to an event, go. Just make sure you write down the event, name of the person who invited you, how many time did it cost you (including travel), and how useful (that includes funny etc.) it was. At the end of month, evaluate the data. Perhaps you could save 50% of your time without losing anything valuable just by deciding to reject all invites from one specific person? |
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Sep 26 |
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I end up doing something else even when I know what should I be doing I was (partially still am) in a similar situation. The encouraging thought is that once you turn off the internet, the days become looooong again, like the ones you remember from your pre-internet childhood. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. A bad thing if you don't know what to do, and you are just infinitely bored and wonder whether it's worth doing. A good thing if you have a TO DO list (a list of useful things to do when you become bored) and in a moment of boredom start following it. Start with making such list, right now. (My list: meditate, read, meet friends, fix my homepage.) |
