Against Productivity

https://medium.com/message/against-productivity-b19f56b67da6

by bmmayer1 • 12 years ago

329 104 12 years ago

jdimov• 12 years ago

This may be far wiser than almost anything that has ever been posted on HN, but you can't feed this shit to people who are not ready for it. It is a lesson which can not be taught. The real truths in life are not something you can read about. Real knowledge can only ever come from within. You can never lead someone to knowledge, but you CAN inspire them to seek their own - and you've done a pretty good job at that. Thank you.

awt• 12 years ago

"A decade in the lab will save you an afternoon in the library."

neolefty• 12 years ago

For sure. I'm thankful that my children and students will not have to spend my decade in the lab. If I manage to tell them in a way that they can hear.

jbranchaud2• 12 years ago

Do you know who this quote is attributed to?

misiti3780• 12 years ago

that radio tower looks like the one from the movie Golden Eye

smoe• 12 years ago

That's because it is the one from Golden Eye ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory#In_Popular_...

GotAnyMegadeth• 12 years ago

Had to listen to this as soon as I saw that photo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6hsdWGF0no

twtwtaway• 12 years ago

This is bullshit. Just continue to work 16 hours a day, increase your productivity and your startup will succeed. After that you'll be happy forever. And your investor too.

chromaton3• 12 years ago

805 million people on earth don't have enough to eat. 783 million don't have access to clean water. 1.9 million die of diarrhea every year. 176 million African adults can't read.

And this guy sits around the first world for a couple years with the back of his hand nailed to his forehead.

If he can't bring himself to do more than write a couple essays and snap some photos over a couple years, I would suggest a refreshing visit to Mozambique or Syria. People there could surely use help with the basic necessities of life.

dageshi• 12 years ago

Wouldn't you be using your time more productively by not reading HN?

whytaka• 12 years ago

Not if he convinces me that this article is a bit whiny and re-orients me towards industry for the sake of human good.

One short quip for renewed vigor. That's productivity!

chromaton3• 12 years ago

In the case of this article, yes.

ZeroFries• 12 years ago

How much productive effort goes into solving these problems versus other less necessary problems?

Let me define productivity: conscious effort to re-organize the world's energy and matter.

Am I honour bound to re-organize the world's energy and matter until it's in the ideal state (which of course is never obtainable and not even definable, since it's different for each person)?

The author has an issue with productivity for the sake of productivity. Spending time helping people in need is obviously a valuable and wise use of time, but you shouldn't feel guilty for not spending every waking moment increasing your net worth.

chromaton3• 12 years ago

<i>The author has an issue with productivity for the sake of productivity.</i>

I agree with that sentiment.

<i>Spending time helping people in need is obviously a valuable and wise use of time, but you shouldn't feel guilty for not spending every waking moment increasing your net worth.</i>

Again, I agree, but the author seems to be A-OK with goofing off for years instead of pitching in with the rest of us.

jbranchaud2• 12 years ago

The author is a woman.

calinet610• 12 years ago

In a complex system, productivity is often paradoxical. One realization or idea at the fringes of the random walk of progress can be worth the work of hundreds of millions of people on the known status quo. We need people exploring on the outskirts of reality and knowledge and life as much as we need the workers, and the people who do that are invariably the ones with a connection to their humanity and the humanity of others, like this person.

Your suggestion is sound: see the real world. Sure. But don't disparage humanism and ideation and self-discovery. It is truly our only hope.

mchusma• 12 years ago

This reminds me of PG's essay - http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

Basically, I believe Author would be better off making the claim that many people (himself included) confuse the definition of productivity.

goldenchrome• 12 years ago

the author is a woman

shaurz• 12 years ago

To be fair that Medium website doesn't exactly make it clear who is writing.

charlespwd• 12 years ago

Fantastic piece.

I believe in similar things. Here, where I currently live, we spend so much time working and being productive that we forget to ask questions. "Why am I doing this?" "What is the meaning of it?" "What is really important?" Then we end up lost, depressed and what not. Not all of us do, but some? Certainly. We do it because others do it. Because we believe that pursuing a different venue is not realistic. Others have that? Hell, I should have it too.

"I should totally run a startup."

Anyways, it happened to me. Went to SEA for four months. Dreamed. Life is amazing. I can do whatever I want. I don't need money to live. yadi. yada. Then you come back, and no one understands you. You are a hippy. I'm not.

In periods of doubt, I write things down. Then I remember what I believe. Then I remember I'm going back soon. That it is what I should be doing.

Being productive is ok. It's fun. But, in the end, it's not important. People are. At least, that's the conclusion I came to.

I guess I'm just rambling. Carry on.

Note: when I write "We", I mostly mean "I".

bonobo3000• 12 years ago

I'm a recent immigrant to USA, and while I don't presume to know everything about American culture, your comment and this article really resonate with my observations in the time I've spent here.

There is a consistent message pervasive in the culture - you are worth what you produce. You are defined by what you produce. Productivity is the currency that buys you respect in society. I've met many many people who rise above this view, but as a society, this is prevalent. Everything has to be about "winning" in some way - even if you are working out, or playing a game, you gotta "play hard", compete, kick the other guys ass, not feel sorry for yourself, not mope, just WIN. Forget about what you're winning, what or why you produce, as long as you produce more than the other guy. Other cultures may use wisdom, or age, or kindness as currencies for respect/status in society.

And then people wonder why society is becoming increasingly isolated. See, when you tie your worth to what you produce, you must give up everything to produce. EVEN IF "producing" means painting a beautiful portrait in your garage, the compulsion to produce is the problem. It makes people focus too hard on themselves and how they can improve/level-up. Too focused inward to see the people around you and their lives, and the joy that can bring. That isolation leads to addiction, depression, isolation and all manner of mental illness. Because humans have evolved to be social creatures. It is hardwired in our nature. We cannot and should not try to fight that. We should not view that as a sign of weakness or an obstacle to productivity, or money, or fame, or any other idol.

jokoon2• 12 years ago

Sometime I wonder about the "meaning of life", but the real question is "what is the purpose of civilization?".

Cynics could argue that civilization is like a cancer, thus we should make sure civilization grows as fast and as big as possible to survive a cataclysm or to make sure one's country wins a future war.

That's the only argument to have higher standards and incentives to be productive, just so that society can be fatter and faster. There is no incentive to be happier at all when you want to be the strongest. Modern, developed capitalistic societies is just about scoring money. You just can't be happy in a society like this, because everything, to economical policies to the customs, are now made towards bigger faster stronger.

Sometimes it seems that the poverty and the crisis of the 30s scared one generation, and set a whole mentality of never being poor and unproductive ever again. Economics and scoring are now the highest priority. We're not individuals, we're just scores.

SnacksOnAPlane3• 12 years ago

There used to be multiple civilizations. There still are, but there are less of them. Connecting the world is turning us into a monoculture, and as biologists know, monocultures are extremely vulnerable to diseases wiping them out.

I think we should encourage localized micro-civilizations, if only to keep the species safe. For example, capitalism has become the system that the world runs on. Pretty much all of us exchange currency for goods. But there are lots of failure modes for this system. To keep ourselves safe, we should encourage enclaves with alternative economic systems like bartering and collectivism.

Unfortunately, in the US at least, if someone suggests that capitalism might not be the best for everybody, they get labeled as a "socialist" and shunned.

lifeisstillgood• 12 years ago

Increased Pareto is a better thing to aim for than increased productivity.

Doing the one very important thing, the one thing with huge returns or leverage will outweigh all the other probably also important things that really hard working and productive people can do in a day

It however takes wisdom to know what is important and courage to trust your wisdom.

FD3SA• 12 years ago

This is an excellent post because it focuses on a central topic: mankind's behavioral predispositions.

The world today runs on profit and productivity. Morals, ethics and philosophies are irrelevant hindrances, as SV and Wall St. have demonstrated repeatedly. This is all well and good, as the last century apparently demonstrated that all ideologies and philosophies are the devil incarnate (Nazism, Leninism, Maoism, etc.)

But I do wonder one thing...did we quit on ideology prematurely? An ideology which I've always held as my own mission in life is the relentless pursuit of knowledge through science.

Throughout history, there have been times where mankind has focused intently on this goal, and the results were incredible. Sadly, most of these periods were spurred on by major wars.

What I really want to know is this:

Is it possible to built a society whose goal is the advancement of mankind's knowledge?

The profit motive and the free market are undoubtedly the best motivators for mankind, due to our evolutionary predispositions for survival and inherent need to establish status hierarchies. But could we not harness these energies, and direct them to positive-sum endavors such as science and engineering research, rather than a pure profit-driven battle to the death?

Keep in mind, the historical mean society throughout history has been oligarchy. It appears the last century was a brief respite due to massive wars and resultant existential threats. We now seem to be heading right back into the oligarchical paradigm of rich get richer, and poor stay serfs [1].

I can envision a society built around the pursuit of knowledge. The market exists and is regulated to produce needs and wants efficiently, yet without negative-sum behavior (regulatory capture, corruption, anti-competitive conduct, wage fixing, etc.) Education and research are a prime government mandate in addition to infrastructure, defense, healthcare and a social safety net. Citizens are incentivized to hone their skills and education continuously without massive financial downsides (student debt). State sponsored research institutes exist throughout the country similar to Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, JPL, etc. and serve to stimulate the economy through constant research projects, both large and small. The projects provide jobs for low and high skilled individuals (e.g. ITER, LHC). Those who enjoy pure research have a plethora of opportunities to move the state of the art forward. Those who don't, have excellent and rewarding employment.

The challenge in creating this society is a very tough one: humans are not motivated by knowledge. We are motivated by status, sex, and power, though few ever understand it or admit to it. But I hope that one day, knowledge of our inherent weaknesses will become common enough such that we can fight our destructive natures in an effort to transcend our limitations.

Till that day, I remain a dreamer.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Cen...

frozenport• 12 years ago

>But I do wonder one thing...did we quit on ideology prematurely?

In reality we quit on the idea that society can be engineered, but we nevertheless retain the notation that individual actors can be engineered. For example, we reject the notation that the communist party can build a stable society but we retain social value that you shouldn't judge people solely on wealth.

>I can envision a society built around the pursuit of knowledge.

Its hard to say what is and isn't knowledge, I shudder to think of a society based on research publications.

This goes back to my first point. Its very hard to engineer a society. We can only hope to make reasonable actors.

myth_drannon• 12 years ago

If you liked the theme of this essay you will like this book: "How to Be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson. The book starts similarly and expands the idea of idleness to trying to bring it into your life.

hliyan2• 12 years ago

And more recently, "How Much Is Enough?" by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky

ggreer2• 12 years ago

This post is full of mistakes and unclear thinking. I can't figure out what the author is arguing against or for. Is she against quantifying wealth? I'm not sure. Is she against working hard? Maybe. Does she think it impossible to quantify happiness and well-being? I get the impression she does.

First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. Her comparison used absolute instead of per-capita values. India and Canada may produce the same amount of wealth, but India has 35 times more people. Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake. That's why it's used.

Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!

Many people, especially in technology, say their productivity is changing the world, and this is irrefutable. But no one seems to know what they’re changing it into, because no one can measure the world. When no one can measure the world, how much can it really exist?

This really irks me. Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things. Maybe they're missing or underweighting a factor. Maybe they just have different preferences than the author. But to suggest that the entire enterprise is bunk is to disregard centuries of progress across a dozen fields of study.

If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right.[1]

1. http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WILSON%...

Edit: Pronouns fixed. Apologies, I thought Quinn was a male name.

antichaos• 12 years ago

The author, danah boyd, is female.

onethree• 12 years ago

medium is confusing, it was actually written by Quinn Norton. also female, so your point still stands

wodenokoto2• 12 years ago

I disagree with you. I thought it was very clear and well written.

Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake.

It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars.

Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it.

Which is what he is talking against. We are too focused on optimizing, when a lot of what it means to be a human are things that shouldn't be optimized. And secondly, long periods without productivity may actually be the foundation of later quality. And you can't optimize these unproductive periods.

ggreer2• 12 years ago

It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars.

I didn't want to sidetrack my comment by getting into PPP and other adjustments[1], but suffice it to say that economists have been aware of these issues for over a century.

We are too focused on optimizing, when a lot of what it means to be a human are things that shouldn't be optimized. And secondly, long periods without productivity may actually be the foundation of later quality. And you can't optimize these unproductive periods.

Even if your hypothesis is true (which I doubt), it still makes sense to measure and improve leisure. I think the old quote from Steven Levy's Hackers[2] is worth remembering:

At one point in the discussion, Sussman told Minsky that he was using a certain randomizing technique in his program because he didn't want the machine to have any preconceived notions. Minsky said, "Well, it has them, it's just that you don't know what they are." It was the most profound thing Gerry Sussman had ever heard. And Minsky continued, telling him that the world is built a certain way, and the most important thing we can do with the world is avoid randomness, and figure out ways by which things can be planned. Wisdom like this has its effect on seventeen-year-old freshmen, and from then on Sussman was hooked.

Our time on this planet is short, and there are no do-overs. There are certainly diminishing returns to improving aspects of one's life, but giving little thought to them or leaving things to chance is a great way to ensure we don't make the most of it.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...

arvinsim• 12 years ago

Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!

I am pretty sure that the agricultural, traditional type lifestyle of Okinawa(which is the region which has the famed life expectancy) is nowhere near the same as the lifestyle in Japan's urban cities where that workaholic ethic is.

pron6• 12 years ago

This really irks me. Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it.

In Notes from Underground the hero attains his own measure of happiness through spite, i.e. self harm, i.e. misery. Any measure of human happiness is contradictory, or it wouldn't be human. Try to imagine the most perfect utopia you can, where any measure you come up with is maximized, or optimized (to use the SV parlance). Then think if people would really be happy in such a place. Even if your measure includes just the "right amount" of misery, it would still be wrong, because, by virtue of its reality, it will no longer be optimal.

If I were pressed to come up with one ultimate measure for human happiness, it is this: people are happy when they have what they don't have. Now optimize this. Of course, under this measure, people's happiness is constant at zero, but there are other (smaller) terms in this formula that basically amount to compromise :)

I am sure you can appreciate the constant inner conflict of the human condition. Apparently you can't measure soul.

eli_gottlieb2• 12 years ago

You can have my Humanity Card, because that's a complete load of crap. You don't need to always drive yourself to misery wanting what you don't have, especially because, if you know you're not going to enjoy it when you get it, you can simply stop wanting it.

Bloody hell, give me three months of vacation time to spend at the beach and I can make a solid start on coming up with an ideal way to spend the rest of my life. It's just a matter of resources.

SnacksOnAPlane3• 12 years ago

I would say that people are happy when they have what they want. The great thing is, there are 2 variables there, and you can control either one. Most people try to change the "what you have" variable, but it's easier to change the "what you want" variable.

courtf• 12 years ago

Chiefly, the author is arguing against productivity as an ends to itself, but also against the reduction of human endeavors down to more easily digestible quantities. In essence, against measuring out our lives with coffee spoons.

The author also argues that time she had previously considered wasted ended up being more fruitful than the prevailing culture would have us believe possible. This is, I think, the important message. The mind is often working when we are not consciously aware of it, and to discount leisure time not spent checking tasks off a todo list as having been wasted is not only tediously anal but also simply false.

I was reminded of Peter Higgs' statements from around when he was awarded the nobel peace prize: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-b...

rcyn• 12 years ago

Nice reference to Prufrock

DennisP• 12 years ago

Note that the author partly justifies it by the writing she produced later, which wouldn't have happened without her "unproductive" time.

Applied to programming, it seems to me the author is against measuring lines of code per day, and in favor of going for long walks and letting solutions pop into your head that don't require so much code. Or longer walks that cause you to realize the whole program is bunk and you ought to be building something different. It's pretty difficult to measure the productivity of this sort of thing (except perhaps after a lot of hindsight), but it can have a huge effect on your long-term results.

Richard Feynmann wrote about this. He got burned out trying to be scientifically productive, started screwing around, got curious about the physics of something trivial, and ended up figuring out something important.

cicatriz• 12 years ago

See also Rich Hickey's Hammock Driven Development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

calinet610• 12 years ago

If you're attempting to find a productive rhetorical truth in a piece about shedding productivity as a focus, you're missing the point.

In fact, you're arguing that she should 1) be able to quantify happiness, 2) consider life-expectancy as a proxy for life quality, and 3) pursue optimizing life by quantifying and measuring it. I think you're missing many points.

The whole idea—the wisdom, if you will—is that you lose an extremely precious thing by focusing on measurement and optimization and increasing quantity and productivity. She has an extremely clear and valid point, which lucidly carries so much truth in it, and is not particularly hindered by slight rhetorical mistakes or lack of clarity. It's that true.

In fact, the clarity and style and beauty of this piece remarkably matches almost exactly how it feels. It's so confusing and seemingly contradictory and paradoxical, yet we know it's true. Even so, no one knows what, exactly, to do with it; so we call it unproductive and go on trying to live our highly productive lives. It's so much bigger than we are, this thing, and resistance seems futile.

And this is when you begin looking into Zen, and things become clearer and muddier at the same time, but you have a fleeting chance, at least, of converging on the ability to hold a thing in your head that's both true and false at the same time, and come just a bit closer, thereby, to the reality of things.

lionhearted• 12 years ago

And this is when you begin looking into Zen, and things become clearer and muddier at the same time [...]

I hope you take this the right way, but this position is very California-ized pseudo-Zen. Many of the most well-regarded Zen practitioners and teachers very much would have savaged it, EX:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuin_Ekaku#Opposition_to_.22D...

"One of Hakuin's major concerns was the danger of what he called "Do-nothing Zen" teachers, who upon reaching some small experience of enlightenment devoted the rest of their life to, as he puts it, "passing day after day in a state of seated sleep". Quietist practices seeking simply to empty the mind, or teachers who taught that a tranquil "emptiness" was enlightenment, were Hakuin's constant targets. In this regard he was especially critical of followers of the maverick Zen master Bankei. He stressed a never-ending and severe training to deepen the insight of enlightenment and forge one's ability to manifest it in all activities. He urged his students to never be satisfied with shallow attainments, and truly believed that enlightenment was possible for anyone if they exerted themselves and approached their practice with real energy."

Hakuin, who is pretty damn amazing and certainly lived an amazing life by almost anyone's standards, wrote that after achieving some basic glimpses enlightenment, you ought to be out helping people and doing good things.

You'll see that in non-priest Zen practitioners, too. Miyamoto Musashi's ink paintings show such a depth of clarity and a sort of both sad and beautiful aliveness:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Kobokumei...

In any event -- I think Hakuin, Musashi, Dogen, etc all would reject "clearer and muddier" intellectualism in favor of actually practicing and doing worthwhile things:

Dogen: "To practice the Way singleheartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment or zazen and daily life."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Dgen

Anyway, I mean this with all the most respect. The Zen practitioners that really stand the test of time and made a difference in their communities are ones that saw it less as an intellectual orientation, and much moreso as a very actionable way of life.

wyager3• 12 years ago

and is not particularly hindered by slight rhetorical mistakes or lack of clarity. It's that true.

Clearly it is hindered by bad writing and rhetoric, because here we are not agreeing with it.

It's so confusing and seemingly contradictory and paradoxical, yet we know it's true.

Speak for yourself.

converging on the ability to hold a thing in your head that's both true and false at the same time

That's not impressive. It's called "being inconsistent" and sometimes "being an idiot". A more impressive ability is being able to simulate multiple outcomes in your head without necessarily believing in them, and that has nothing to do with whatever religious dogma you're preaching.

Do you reject the Principle of Excluded Middle?

hrktb• 12 years ago

The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!

There is a huge unbalance between men and women (which traditionnaly don't get the same chances to work in high pressure environments, and are less subjected to karoshi) and as someone else point Okinawa people won't have the same life expectancy as Tokyo area people.

This is a factor in the juxtaposition of workaholism and high quality of life in the same country.

Htsthbjig• 12 years ago

"Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!"

I had seen as many workaholics in the USA as in Japan. For different reasons, and in different ways.

In the US you are supposed to do it because of ambition, in Japan you do it because of social pressure or constriction of the environment.

Oh, never mind, in the US they have this beautiful two words that describe everybody: Loser or Successful, that does wonders to social pressure people to work more, but thinking "they actually want it", like in Japan, anyway.

But food is much better in Japan. They also eat a lot of fish that before Fukusima, was the less toxic or industrialized food you could eat. No artificial feed(until recently), no genetically modified, no antibiotics, no hormones like US loves so much.

Cthulhu_3• 12 years ago

The US doesn't love it, the food industry does because it allows them to produce higher volumes of food and sell it for lower prices, which (by extension) the consumer loves. I'd like to think people in Japan care more about the quality of their food, not so much the quantity per $ like I see in the US ($1 cheeseburgers and such). Another possibility is that the Japanese have more expendable income (also because of 12+-hour workdays), thus more budget for food, thus less of an inclination to buy the cheapest products.

But, off topic.

zhte415• 12 years ago

I believe the article is full of astute thinking.

First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP.

A common theme of the article is measurement, value, and the measurement of value. Does Canada create the same 'value' as India? The notion seems preposterous, as how can a country 1/35th the size of another produce the same value - the author directly questions what 'value' is, as a measurement of something called 'productivity'. The entire article is a critique of what productivity is.

The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!

It is not disparaged, quite the opposite. The author highlights that Japan measures (again, a theme of measurement) the number of deaths by overwork, and pretty explicitly and bluntly states that some other countries do not (and sarcastically concludes it must therefore not exist in those countries).

Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things.

I agree. I believe the author is questioning what needs to be optimised and what is optimal. Before that, measurement has no scope, and what is currently optimised for 'productivity' may not be productive (excuse my pun).

dashboardfront• 12 years ago

I feel like many Americans (assuming you're American) have a knee jerk response when they're told that money cannot buy them happiness. They get defensive as our society constantly reinforces us with the idea that money does in fact purchase happiness. This is a great message to keep us productive and increase GDP, but is it really true? You've presented that journal article as evidence, but looking past the catchy title, it still does not show that money = happiness. It says that money, when used to purchase experiences or help other people, brings about happiness. If anything, this seems to imply that experiences and helping others brings about happiness, and money is a means in which we can help others or experience things. However, excess wealth is hardly a pre-requisite for experiences nor helping others. Certainly, there exists a baseline; if you're struggling to get food, you probably can't focus on helping others, but there's nothing stopping you from deciding to quit your job, emigrate to a foreign developing country, and start working at a non-profit (sans debt obligations, of course, which tends to be the result of a horrible education system and/or rampant consumerism). I remember meeting an Australian engineer in Montreal who worked for a year and then took two or three off to go travel around the world. He especially liked to snowboard. Yes, productivity and wealth were necessary for him, but it was a means to an end; so that he could purchase experiences that made him happy. I feel like many people in our world would look at him and say "but what about your career progression? Dear god man, don't you have any ambition? You'll never become CTO like that!" I feel like our society has gotten sucked into a rat race, where it treats productivity and the accumulation of wealth as the end itself rather than the means to happiness. Nothing better signifies this than our obsession with GDP.

I do, however, agree with you that the article is poorly organized, rambles in random directions, and fails to present any actual argument.

JoeAltmaier2• 12 years ago

As Weird Al wrote, if money can't buy happiness then I guess I'll have to rent it.

Chinjut• 12 years ago

Re: "If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right", that's the cheeky title of the article you link to, but not really the content of it. The article discusses how to get the best bang for your buck when spending your money. It may still be the case, however, that the best happiness bang for your buck is to do something with your free time other than seeking above all else to maximize your income in the first place, and the article is not intended to exclude this possibility.

sgentle• 12 years ago

I liked this essay, but it's also important to point out that GDP is very strongly correlated with health outcomes like life expectancy. It might be that we are starving our souls, but let's not forget about the fairly serious consequences of starving our bodies.

I don't mean to say that I disagree with the conclusion, just that I think the historical context is missing something. We didn't become productive out of greed, we became productive out of hunger. That attitude has run its course, absolutely, and we need to ask: we're not hungry anymore, so what now?

But let's not denigrate how we got here on the assumption that it was never a good idea. We might have climbed past the lowest rungs of the ladder, but that doesn't mean we didn't need them. Indeed, there are many who still do.

6t6t6• 12 years ago

Then how you explain the fact that USA has one of the lowest life expectancy among the developed world?

I think that what the author tries to explain is that, in some places, societies have gone too far in the seek of productiveness and, ironically, people there is less happy and healthy.

I guess finding the good balance is more important than trying to be the number one.

quonn• 12 years ago

Why is this downvoted? Given that the US is as economically powerful as it is, why _is_ life expectancy lower [0], compared to other _developed_ nations? Check out Canada, Australia, Japan and West-Europe on the map.

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Life_Exp...

johnloeber• 12 years ago

Even though some valuable ideas are expressed in this piece, there's a lot of conflation of highly distinct social phenomena that goes on. The author looks at the notion of "productivity", judges that people blindly rush from birth straight to the grave in the pursuit of being "productive", somehow lops that in with GDPs (not per capita, not at PPP?) and the weird way in which we have industrialized pleasure, and concludes... what, exactly?

Regardless, the author expresses a valuable point that suffers from her conflating topics.

I think that point is that there's a certain industrial culture -- a focus on productivity and structure -- that dominates our lives, whether in work or in leisure (see e.g. tourism). I don't think this is necessarily bad, but it's important to be aware of it.

Some people do indeed wear blinders as they race through life, being as productive as they can -- not for themselves, but maybe for society. Or for their boss. Or for someone else, whose interests are not necessarily aligned with their own. Maybe that's a good reminder to carefully define productivity for yourself, however you see fit. The idea here is to have a notion of productivity to strive for that is well-aligned with doing things that make you feel good for the time invested. And then we're right back down to those age-old platitudes, so obvious and ubiquitous that we forget their truth: "spend your time wisely."

prawn• 12 years ago

"...not for themselves, but maybe for society. Or for their boss."

A lot of things (like this) remind me that we are often barely different to bees and ants. Even down to our queens.

perfunctory• 12 years ago

"and concludes... what, exactly?"

Use your own imagination.

mcdougle• 12 years ago

I don't really know why you're getting downvoted. That's a great answer to the question.

The article is about how we over-analyze and over-optimize and look for a distinctly obvious purpose in everything in an effort to ensure productivity. I think it's funny that most of the comments here are doing exactly that with the article -- trying to analyze it, refute it, and determine the exact conclusion the author is trying to state. Should we stop being over-productive? Be less productive? Try to find balance? Maybe we should simply continue to pursue productivity, but at least understand what we're doing, rather than pursuing it blindly?

Honestly, it's probably some combination of the above -- and it's probably subjective and dependent on the reader. The author doesn't simply state the conclusion -- because there is no obvious conclusion to the article. It's just a bunch of observations that allow the reader to reach a conclusion him/herself.

hliyan2• 12 years ago

"Above all we become interesting [sic] in measuring ourselves. Word count/day, lines of code/day, hamburgers served/hour, steps taken/day, test questions/100, money earned/field’s average salary. We got quarterly reviews, job evaluations, and tested certifications."

I've a dilemma:

I've come to believe that this really is a bad thing, not just because we're suboptimizing output at the expense of quality of life, but also because you get what you measure: you can totally get more LOC/day without actually getting anything useful.

BUT, what's the alternative? People need to be rewarded for output; different individuals' outputs are different; still, should we reward them the same? Or should we make it dependent on output (therefore, reward merit, not need)? If so, should the measure be subjective or objective? Can you make it objective without turning it into what the author is talking about? Can you make it subjective while keeping it fair? No matter how much I try, when I try to be fair in rewards/compensation, I find metrics raising their ugly head.

calinet610• 12 years ago

Just remove the individual metric. We know they don't work.

Incentivize the entire company for the success of the company. Pay people fairly in an uncomplicated way. Align all the incentives and don't reward anything that is not directly connected to the clear and well-communicated success of the company.

nindalf• 12 years ago

So even if I do the bare minimum at work, I should be rewarded the same as someone who worked his pants off? Sure, that's fine. Just one thing, that guy who was working his pants off no longer has the incentive to work hard because his reward is tied to how the company as a whole does. He will begin to do the bare minimum, and the company suffers.

He will eventually become jaded with this and leave to some place that will recognise and reward his extra output.

esfandia• 12 years ago

I may somewhat agree with the author's case against productivity, but I think it's important not to confuse it with a case against production. At the end of the day (or life) I think you do want to look back and think of what you've produced (rather than consumed), and how you did it. Was it fun? Satisfying?

I think it's fair to want to rebel against production/time. It's not bad to think instead of something along the lines of satisfaction/production.

Xcelerate• 12 years ago

Why am I productive? No other reason than I dislike boredom. I had the unusual situation growing up of having completely free summers (including college). To do absolutely and whatever I wanted. Well, long story short, I basically wasted them and didn't get anything accomplished. And I definitely wasn't happy with that much useless free time.

So now I do things because I find them interesting. I "measure myself" and try to improve at things because it's a fun game for me. The results don't really matter in the end, but it keeps me entertained.

erikb2• 12 years ago

Okay we should spend more time wasting more time. But how to pay your bills in that time? As long as this question is not answered all this discussion is meaningless in my eyes.

Cthulhu_3• 12 years ago

How about a regular 40 hour / week or part-time job for a decent wage? It's what the vast majority of people do.

erikb2• 12 years ago

Maybe I misunderstood the article? I understand that he wants to go to other countries, walk around, watch the rain and think about life in general. Maybe you can do that if you are a museum security guard, but in most jobs that's not possible. And at least I am quite tired after working 40 hours plus taking care of the basics needs I have (buying grocieries, cooking, cleaning) and my family has (spending time together, solving problems of other family members). I'm quite happy if I can manage to squeeze in 7 to 8 hours of sleep.

lovemenot• 12 years ago

The article states that Karoshi is death by productivity. This is generally not correct. Karoshi is death from over-work.

The distinction concerns quantity of output. Many Japanese will work long hours with little impact on output. Such people are therefore hard-working yet unproductive.

Japanese business culture tends to respect effort more than result.

simonh• 12 years ago

America is also the country that gave us 'stick it to the man', 'tune in, turn on, drop out', 'make love, not war'. America is a big country, big enough to find a space somewhere to l9ive your life almost any way you like and pobably find others who want to do the same too. In fact I'm hard pressed for think of any other nation on the entire planet that is more diverse. Anyone care to name one?

I speak as an outsider (a Brit) that's visited the US several times and has many friends and acquaintances there.

ondrejzabojnik• 12 years ago

You wrote about the time when you weren't beating yourself for not being productive enough and you described that past experience in a way that seemed to me like you were happy. What made you want to become productive? What did you imagine 'productive' looks and feels like? Could you track down your most internal motives?

MrDosu• 12 years ago

This is the major problem when you do things for reasons other then you love to do it. Stop trying to do whats "hip" and find your passion. A lot of the thoughts given in the article have the slight taste of the author wanting to do them because they are intellectual/trendy/response from society. Do what you love, simple as.

Work will never feel like work again.

sergiosgc• 12 years ago

Stop trying to do whats "hip" and find your passion.

Don't. Don't go overboard with the passion thing. If your passion is origami, you are in for a very rough ride trying to live off selling folded paper on the street.

Find a balance. What's difficult is that life is not black and white, it's in shades of grey. Find something that the market needs and that you like doing. Not something that you absolutely love doing and that nobody ever wants, nor something that the market absolutely wants and that you loathe doing.

Virtue is found in the middle.

barbudorojo• 12 years ago

Trying to summarize the post: Free time can increase your wisdom and is necessary sometimes for higher order thinking. Too much productivity, that is not having time for your mind wandering, produces a bad effect in society. To compose that post has taken the author four months.

I think that every great writer has been many times in his life waiting for inspiration. But inspiration only occurs when you are inviting inspiration to come by working a lot, your mind has to be struggling with the problem, at least in a subconscious level, and then, suddenly, inspiration comes to your rescue.

shoover• 12 years ago

What really devastated my generation was the spiritual malaise inherent in Taylorism's perfectly mechanized human labor. But Taylor had never seen a robot or a computer perfect his methods of being human. By the 1980s, we had. In the age of robots we reinvented the idea of being robots ourselves. We wanted to program our minds and bodies and have them obey clocks and routines. In this age of the human robot, of the materialist mind, being efficient took the pre-eminent spot, beyond goodness or power or wisdom or even cruel greed.

Ouch.

We are productive without price. Not because people aren't dying, they surely are, uncounted lives and families are smothered with despair. There is no price because there's no measure to quantify what we are losing.

This makes me wonder how history will look on our mental health issues, as we look back on alcoholism in early 20th century America.

For those sympathetic to the views of the article, I can't recommend enough Matthew Crawford's book Shop Class as Soulcraft for a fuller and prescriptive discussion of the history and philosophy of these issues of work and meaning and mental health.

damon_c• 12 years ago

I have always considered productivity to be a measure of production over time where time is the duration a person works at a task and not a constant.

So a highly productive person gets a lot done in a small amount of time.

People who get a lot done and work all the time aren't really high productivity people; they just work a lot.

I see nothing wrong with striving for productivity if this is how it is defined.

saeguaiga• 12 years ago

Besides tax contribution topping, and market protection (what's this siphon to p-shares that trade in microseconds doubling my concern's trade overhead, and where is it rubbing the walls;) and citizenship (why is there a regulatory forbidden level where we may want our customers;) it's hard to say there is a forum; and that you don't rent there. Pretty sure I missed it.

Against Productivity

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