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Comment by bedobi | Hacker News Reader

Very refreshing to see content like this. Personally I'm VERY sick of the whole productivity hustle and the people who spout it.

They prey on insecurities, make you feel like unless you're employing some kind of productivity system, you're cheating yourself or your employer. In reality however the very systems they tout steal away more productivity to maintain the productivity system itself than any benefit for actual work derived from it. I've found this true everything from pomodoro to note taking to Anki flashcards etc etc.

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I'm reminded of a story. This is going to date me. When I was in graduate school, the university computer store put out a pamphlet, to help you decide if you should get your own computer. The one memorable comment was:

Don't expect your computer to organize you. If you have a messy desk, you will have a messy computer.

It probably also applies to note taking, to-do lists, etc. I am living proof of this.

Whether my desk or my computer is messy is not obvious to me. I mean it's clearly both. It almost always works perfectly for what I need, and it's ... kind of a mess.

Both in reality and on my computer there is a top surface, and things get bounced from there to lower-priority spots when they deserve less attention. Some folders are very specific, others are as specific as "things I've done with money" or "Downloads".

But I do vastly prefer org-roam (or when I'm in the mood, Semantic Synchrony) for letting me put things in more than one place, and keeping all relevant backlinks correct.

To mention Anki in this context, as if its developers or its community were trying to prey on anybody, is utterly ridiculous.

The fact that any particular system gets mentioned among those who presumably spout productivity hustle neither implies that those who do so represent such system accurately (never mind properly use it) nor that such a system has any kind of association with those who mention it.

Alternate take: you don't face the problem these tools were designed to solve.

My personal organization/productivity methods mitigate some very real (and common) weaknesses. Most were recommended by a neuropsychologist after some rigorous testing. Categorically dismissing them makes no more sense than assuming they're universally beneficial. Vitamin C supplements remain beneficial to many despite snake oil salesmen posing them as rhinovirus-proof forcefields.

By all means share ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be clear, I'm not saying taking notes etc is never beneficial - I do it all the time, mostly for stuff that I need rarely enough to not remember by heart but often enough to justify making a note so I don't have to waste time relearning it every time. My "system", if it can even be called that, is simply creating a gist.md in GitHub Gists, sending an email to myself, or putting something in Google Keep.

The point is I no longer agree with anyone telling me that all aspects of my life must be "optimized" for "productivity", or that without some formal elaborate system I'm hopelessly lost, or that if I do use something I'm n times more productive, better at remembering etc etc, like the productivity hackers and hustlers seem to want everyone to think.

> “… I no longer agree with anyone telling me that all aspects of my life must be…”

My heart goes out to you for feeling so much social pressure from a blog post. I feel the pain here.

Personally, I quickly tune-out posts which i feel bent on preaching to me. I hear your anguish, and I just want to say, ‘turn the page’.

I guess I’m sometimes missing out on catching the “best waves”, or the “bleeding edge” of technological and social change.

I do have strong feelings about ridiculous social situations. Right now I’m positively mental about customer support people (and by extension SO, Reddit, etc) who don’t answer your direct questions.

What are you going to do? Mindfulness training.

Anki helped me build vocabulary during language learning. Never heard of it used for productivity though. It actually took a bit of time to build my deck, so I thought never thought of it as saving me time compared to paid tools. Rather just something more custom.

It’s also a procrastinators trap. Hey I’m getting stuff done - I’m looking for the ideal app and format to take notes!

Eh. Different things work for different people. I wrote in paper notebooks for years before switching to Logseq, primarily because I couldn't search my notes or even quickly find something. I now use it extensively for drafting documents, research, and remembering quick snippets.

Totally. All of this crap mounts up to being a form of prosperity gospel.

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