Productivity

2010-03-15

My favourite productivity resources:

• I find twogoalsapp incredibly helpful for concentrating my focus when I'm experiencing distraction. If I realise I'm procrastinating when I have specific small tasks to perform I put two of them in the app. Having them in plain sight helps me avoid continuing distraction. For example, once when I had to buy groceries, but was not yet dressed and continuing to procrastinate I entered "Get dressed" and "Go to Sainsburys"!
• An essay on the right way to procrastinate
• Reading productivity blogs is self-defeating. This one does not suffer from that weakness, but instead provides a frank message which is essentially what productivity comes down to: http://www.doitfuckingnow.com/
• (An Onion article along the same lines)[http://www.theonion.com/content/news/study_finds_working_at_work]

Comments on TED: Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory

2010-03-14

Daniel Kahneman speaks about the contradiction between the experiencing self and the remembering self. Although interesting, and I can see what he talked about reflected in my own life, some of what he said does not reflect my experiences at all.

2:15: One of Kahneman's friends was listening to a symphony he enjoyed, but reported that at the end a loud noise spoilt his enjoyment of the experience. Kahneman puts this down to a discrepancy between the experiencing self and the remembering self. I have a simpler explanation: part of the enjoyment of an experience is the continued experience of enjoying it after it has finished. After listening to the symphony the friend may have expected to continue the enjoyment through whatever biochemical processes regulate this kind of thing. The loud noise halted this process of enduring enjoyment, thus preventing the full enjoyment the friend had expected to receive.

9:40: Kahneman claims that the remembering self overrules the experiencing self when choosing, for example, where to take a holiday. This is counter to some of my experiences of the matter. Often I feel inhibited from taking a holiday because I know my experiencing self will dislike the stress involved in booking it, arriving at the airport on time, travelling etc.. Although I know there's a very good chance I will look back on the holiday with fondness I still feel discouraged from organising it.

11:40: I don't buy Kahneman's argument that refusing to accept a good experience that is not remembered is evidence that the remembering trumps the experiencing. If I had been offered some specific reward in return for suffering some specific negative experience, then being told I wouldn't remember the bad experience afterwards would not make me more likely to accept the offer. Failure to remember any significant life experience is a scary prospect and I think this introduces a confounding factor into the thought experiment – all other things are not equal.

17:10: I was fascinated by the reference to a Gallup poll that indicates that increasing income above $60,000 does not increase happiness. I'd like to see the original report or further analysis.