Alan Turing's Best Productivity Tricks

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/08/alan-turings-best-productivity-tricks/

by ColinWright • 13 years ago

43 23 13 years ago

lifehacker.com.au

jgrahamc• 13 years ago

Trick #0: be a genius.

Also, missing from this is "Talk to the Teddy Bear": http://blog.jgc.org/2010/05/talking-to-porgy.html

laumars4• 13 years ago

Being clever is only half the battle. Turing (amongst many others) had the perseverance to apply their intellect. Plenty of smart people - including geniuses - are happy to glide through life on their intelligence while applying the minimum effort they need to.

As for Porgy, I "met" him in person earlier this year when visiting a Bletchley Park. I was oddly surprised at just how humble that teddy looks in real life. I found it a great reminder just how hard times must have been during WWII and how much industry and technology have advanced since. Which is odd because you'd think the Bombe et al would be enough of a reminder itself. But I guess being a nerd I've grown up fascinated by those early machines so struggle to equate the wider development of society using the evolution of computers as my yardstick. But I'm digressing massively now :)

wslh6• 13 years ago

I am going against this HN mantra in this special case: if you are a genius like Turing, I mean a genius of genius of genius of ..., someone who is a genius at another scale. Then you don't need too much effort to move forward or the effort flows and you don't need to transpirate it.

Afal• 13 years ago

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hatu2• 13 years ago

Nikola Tesla's top 10 CSS tips

Einstein's favorite MVC framework

sp332• 13 years ago

E = M V_c ^ 2

michael_nielsen• 13 years ago

Turing was very good at finding good problems, and then had the courage to work on them.

The Lifehacker list is amusing, at best. I quickly run out of fingers and toes if I count the mathematicians I know who are runners, have messy desks, and break big problems down into small problems. Few, if any, of them are near to having Turing's influence.

coldtea• 13 years ago

On the other hand, they ARE mathematicians. Presumably with Phds. Working at some university.

That's enough accomplishment for a Lifehacker reader.

droob• 13 years ago

Alan Turing's Best Bio Paragraphs That Can Be Turned Into Posts To Meet Your Quota

hatu2• 13 years ago

This reads like some bubbly day-time entertainment news piece. "You don’t accomplish all that without some clever productivity tricks." There are so many important things you can write about Turing but this is not one of them.

mathattack• 13 years ago

"I asked [Turing] one day why he punished himself so much in training. He told me, ” I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by running hard.”"

I like that. The level of exercise has to be higher than the stress at work in order to drive it away. No 20 minutes walks on a treadmill...

Alan Turing's Best Productivity Tricks

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