Thursday, November 5, 2015

How People Work: A love/hate relationship with productivity porn


There is far too much on the internet written about productivity. All over the place. I've even written and sold some articles about it, regurgitating unoriginal ideas and hoping someone would be desperate enough for content to buy it - I'm not proud of it, but you'll do what you need to when it pays.

This particular type of article is one I both love and hate. This is specifically from Lifehacker and their "How I Work" series, but there's almost a pocket industry on many sites of people talking about what people do to be productive. I find it to be one of the most inane types of articles, with people going on and on about things that work for them. That's why it's trouble - it works for them. It will not work for everyone, because not everyone is them.

But it's also something that I love. I like seeing what it is that people do to try and get things done. Mostly, though, I'm looking for why they do the things that they do. If I'm going to get any value out of it, it's in the reasons why they do certain things, trying to untangle why those things work for them and what about their discovery process can be relevant for me.

These articles are probably stupid and inane, but sometimes they're things that are hiding valuable information. It just requires digging and reading between the lines to get something actually useful out of it. Unfortunately, it never feels like they're written for that, which is why I find myself so conflicted about them. 

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