How efficient/ productive are you?

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alex123711
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How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by alex123711 »

I know some people that try to be 100% efficient/ productive - working/ learning etc. But I don't really think that's achievable, even people that claim to work 100 hours a week (Musk etc) seems unrealistic to me - they might be counting business lunches and travel as working. But how efficient can you be consistently with little to no downtime (t.v/ hobbies etc) and is it worth it? For example something like studying to be a dr while working full time would probably require a lot of time and have a pretty good payoff?

7Wannabe5
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

If you want to consider efficiency and/or productivity within the context of system(s), you need to clearly define your terms. I think what you are considering here is Dollars per Waking Hour? The most obvious solution is to accumulate some capital (beyond the not insignificant capital represented by your own body/brain) and leverage the labor of other humans. For simple example, save up some money, use it to buy some professional lawn equipment, hire other humans to mow lawns. The mathematics of conventional economic theory are pure bunkum. In the real world, productivity of labor applied to capital does not decline as in textbooks, so you can pretty much just keep expanding this process forever* until you take over the whole world with your monopolistic dynasty.

*Or to the extent that humans conceive of themselves as cogs and consumers rather than citizens.

Smashter
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by Smashter »

I'd say I'm mildly efficient/productive at my main job. But I can be very efficient/productive when focusing on a goal I really care about.

I also like to keep in mind that some of the most productive people do not coerce themselves into working long hours.

Recent fields medalist winner June Huh is an example of someone who doesn't work a ton, but when he does he's casually revolutionizing the field of graph theory (https://www.quantamagazine.org/june-huh ... -20220705/)

A fun quote from the article:
On any given day, Huh does about three hours of focused work. He might think about a math problem, or prepare to lecture a classroom of students, or schedule doctor’s appointments for his two sons. “Then I’m exhausted,” he said. “Doing something that’s valuable, meaningful, creative” — or a task that he doesn’t particularly want to do, like scheduling those appointments — “takes away a lot of your energy.”

To hear him tell it, he doesn’t usually have much control over what he decides to focus on in those three hours. For a few months in the spring of 2019, all he did was read.

IlliniDave
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by IlliniDave »

Hmm, at this juncture I'm fundamentally neither. Compared to the population as a whole I'm probably efficient when it comes to using money, but less so than I was in the past.

The only thing I'm trying to produce is a good life for myself. And it's more of a meandering leisurely stroll, wandering, mindful sort of process rather than sweaty turning of the crank with furrowed brow. It's the reason I retired.

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Viktor K
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by Viktor K »

If referring to time spent on tasks that play into my overall goals, I average 8-9 hours/day.

Some things still count towards that e.g. brushing my teeth, showering, commuting - not all things are tracked. But the activities that repeat themselves or take solid chunks of time to be meaningful, I try to track.

For example, I won't track a quick 5-10 minute improv session on the guitar when used as a distraction. But if my intent is to create, and I sit for 30-60+ minutes, record, write music, or practice something specific, then I count that.

This is in the last month or two of time tracking using an app called "ATracker" on iPhone.

The top 5 categories by time spent in the last month are:
- work
- partner
- eating healthy
- soccer
- talk to friends

The top 5 "goals" or categories in the last month are:
- self-help
- financial
- productivity
- income
- social

ertyu
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by ertyu »

Not very. Efficiency and productivity aren't among my strengths, I do better structuring my environment and letting it shape my actions than making goals and to-do lists and pursuing them in a focused manner

2Birds1Stone
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Not very efficient/productive. Apply the Pareto principle to many aspects of life.

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fiby41
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by fiby41 »

I was 63% productive during the 134 hours and 25 minutes spent in front of laptop screens this month.

zbigi
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by zbigi »

alex123711 wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 9:05 am
I know some people that try to be 100% efficient/ productive - working/ learning etc. But I don't really think that's achievable, even people that claim to work 100 hours a week (Musk etc) seems unrealistic to me - they might be counting business lunches and travel as working. But how efficient can you be consistently with little to no downtime (t.v/ hobbies etc) and is it worth it? For example something like studying to be a dr while working full time would probably require a lot of time and have a pretty good payoff?
An hour of one task does not equal an hour of another one. I've read of a (research) mathematician who works 3 hours a day, but, if he has do something on the computer (some modelling etc.) he counts every hour as only 30 minutes, because it's half as tiring as thinking about mathematics.

In general, the more cognitive load the quicker people tire. That's kind of a problem with programming BTW, because even if you know what algorithm etc. a given piece of the program uses, you still need to analyse it meticolously line by line every time you want to make a change to it (unless you've touched it recently and still have a precise mental picture of how everything works) - so it never gets easier in terms of cognitive load really.

prudentelo
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by prudentelo »

Very "inefficient"

but also, have some of the best ideas when "not working" so mileage can vary

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mountainFrugal
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by mountainFrugal »

My productivity is clustered/punctuated. I work on a handful of projects at any one time. Multiple projects tend to all come to fruition around the same time. This drives linear thinking friends/managers/collaborators nuts! They cannot deny the results though. Smoothed over time output is greater on average and of higher quality than working on a single project for me. Sometimes it is best to get to 99% on a project and take a week and think about it in the background. The last few pieces added/subtracted after thinking about it can polish the final product (writing, art, program, etc.). The exception to this would be if I am learning something and have to produce something based on what I learned immediately. In this case complete focus is better because I have not internalized all the components yet.

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Sclass
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by Sclass »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:23 am
If you want to consider efficiency and/or productivity within the context of system(s), you need to clearly define your terms.
Yeah. I was kind of confused about what the OP really is asking.

I think he’s mixing up efficiency with duty cycle too. Working all the time (100% duty cycle) can mean a number of things. You can be 100% consumed at a bullshit task.

I like to think of efficiency in terms of thermodynamics. Useful work extracted/Heat input. Most people waste motion. Efficiency depends on the definition. Like bullshit jobs - they don’t produce much but if efficiency is defined as $$$/useful work you’re highly efficient.

I guess I like to use this efficiency in terms of investment as well. How much capital do I put in/return. It’s pretty easy to define efficiency there.

Am I efficient? Am I productive? Well I’ve engineered my life so that I don’t have to work that hard to survive. My rate of money out is pretty low relative to my income. But maybe that’s inefficiency too…I built too big a money machine for my current needs. Depends how I do the accounting. I could have retired ten years earlier had I realized I needed half of the income that the machine throws off. I slaved a lot at t<0 to get to t=present. This is what my physics degree was useful for. :lol:

I think by the op’s definition I’m not efficient. I’m also not productive.

But again, I don’t really like to get off my couch, even to pick up the phone, if I cannot see anything good coming from it.

Speaking of which I have all my calls go to voicemail which converted to text via Google voice and emailed to me. It’s faster to read and delete once a week than actually pick up the phone and listen. Is that efficient or inefficient? I dunno.

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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by jacob »

Quo vadis OP?

Personally [I'm] very efficient, sometimes to a fault. I can be effective but I prefer to outsource [effectiveness] to the environment.

The answer you're seeking very much depends on your lens/worldview. Your lens determines what's effective and what's efficient. How to look at it and all that. That said, the cult of productivity still reigns supreme, so I understand where the question is coming from---and what the preferred answer is, but ...

Read this: http://onesystemonevoice.com/resources/ ... 5B1$5D.pdf

Exercise for the student: Are your goal-oriented metrics quantitative or qualitative? Are they complex, complicated, chaotic, or plain simple? Is being goal-oriented even a schmart idea? See what I did there...

7Wannabe5
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

TomStewart35 referencesthecaseofagroup of marines taken to the New York Mercantile Ex- change in 1995 to be taught and to play with sim- ulators of the trading environment. Naturally the traders won each time. But when the traders visited the Marine Corp’s base in Quantico and played war games against the marines, they won yet again. What they realized is that the traders were skilled at spotting patterns and intervening to structure those patterns in their favor. The Marines, on the other hand, like most business school graduates, had been trained to collect and analyze data and then make rational decisions. In a dynamic and constantly changing environment, it is possible to pattern un- order but not to assume order.
In the ordered domain we focus on efficiency because the nature of systems is such that they are amenable to reductionist approaches to problem solving; the whole is the sum of the parts, and we achieve op- timization of the system by optimization of the parts. In the domain of un-order, the whole is never the sum of the parts; every intervention is also a diag- nostic, and every diagnostic an intervention; any act changes the nature of the system. As a result, we have to allow a degree of sub-optimal behavior of each of the components if the whole is to be optimized
http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~brooks/storybiz/kurtz.pdf
Last edited by 7Wannabe5 on Sun Aug 21, 2022 8:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

jacob
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by jacob »

@7wb5 - You should read viewtopic.php?p=261608#p261608 ... and maybe the book and especially the link in that post. It's interesting seeing that because Boyd was running around Quantico about 15(?) years before teaching what's in that link to whoever cared to hear it. They were known as the "reformists" but from the sound of your quotes, the lessons didn't stick?

7Wannabe5
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob:

Oops, I added the link to the article I was quoting. It's by the creators of the Cynefin framework "simple, complicated, complex, chaotic" , which you referenced in previous post. The Simple context in this framework towards sense-making is where considerations of efficiency are most appropriate. Since human beings are Complex, imposing an extreme efficiency regime upon onself is likely to push the system towards the plateau drop into Chaos.

OTOH, the Just In Time process is representative of transferring knowledge from the Complex context to the Complicated context.

Another thought I had is that the Complex/Chaotic contexts roughly align with "feminine" energy and the Simple/Complicated contexts roughly align with "masculine" energy. Learning the art of "relaxing in your strong feminine energy" is kind of like the leadership style suggested as most appropriate for Complex context. This could, obviously, be due to the fact that human females have not traditionally and/or physiologically held the power necessary to constrict a Complexity into a Complication or command/control Chaos into KISS "just the facts, M'am" rules and relationships unto which efficiency becomes relevant.

I will take a look at the paper by Boyd you linked.

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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by jacob »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Aug 21, 2022 9:20 am
Oops, I added the link to the article I was quoting. It's by the creators of the Cynefin framework "simple, complicated, complex, chaotic" , which you referenced in previous post. The Simple context in this framework towards sense-making is where considerations of efficiency are most appropriate. Since human beings are Complex, imposing an extreme efficiency regime upon onself is likely to push the system towards the plateau drop into Chaos.
If I had to, I'd say

complex: efficient but ineffective
complicated: efficient and effective
simple: inefficient and but effective
chaotic: inefficient and ineffective

The black/white statements could be tempered, e.g. "tends towards" or leans.

I define effective and efficient much like Sclass. Effective is work output. Efficient is work output/work input.
IOW, effective is "work harder" and efficient is work smarter".

Toska2
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by Toska2 »

I asked a date to help split and stack wood for a family that would feed us and allow us to use their paddleboards. She declined and I did it myself.

So I worked for two, ate for two and had fun for two.

Myakka
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by Myakka »

PHAEDRUS: And yet, Socrates, I have heard that he who would be an orator has nothing to do with true justice, but only with that which is likely to be approved by the many who sit in judgment; nor with the truly good or honourable, but only with opinion about them, and that from opinion comes persuasion, and not from the truth. (From Plato's dialogue of the same name)
If we take productivity in the popular sense whereby getting as much done in a day as humanly possible, then my answer will be one thing.

If we take productivity in a more positive sense whereby one does enough of the right things to yield a life of contentment, then my answer will be another thing.

It is challenging with the continued daily indoctrination that the first way is the altar on which I ought to be sacrificing myself to never have thoughts in that direction, but clearly the first is a false god and the second is truth.

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grundomatic
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Re: How efficient/ productive are you?

Post by grundomatic »

When I first started teaching, I worried about being efficient with instructional time--"Every minute matters" from Teach Like a Champion. I hurried, I rushed, I tried to jam in everything from my scripted curriculum. It was stressful for me and probably for the students as well. I realized I was focusing on the wrong thing--trying to fill every minute with instruction. I decided what really mattered was that the kids learned the material. My hypothesis was that if I made class fun, they would like coming to class, were more likely to listen, and therefore more likely to learn. Say what you want about "edutainment", it was effective. Those first graders loved math, and a (totally biased) 2nd grade teacher told me my students knew their math way better than the previous teacher's students. Looking back at things I wrote last year, I was approaching ERE like my new-teacher self, trying to fill every minute with productivity. I am still trying to find what really matters so I can focus on that instead.

In my restaurant management days, I had a conversation with a colleague about trying to get staffing levels right. He had previously managed a call center, where it was easy to measure employee productivity. He said the sweet spot was about 80% time utilization--much more than that and employees started burning out. Pareto strikes again.

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