Which unproductive activities are typically mistaken for productivity?

Comments

[Maegan Wilson]

Reading about “how to be more productive”

[Ben Halpern]

That's a good one

[Jacob Herrington (he/him)]

Writing code.

Frequently adding more code to a project is exactly the wrong way to solve a problem.

No code solutions should be celebrated more often in my opinion.

[Charles Landau]

kelseyhightower / nocode

The best way to write secure and reliable applications. Write nothing; deploy nowhere.

No Code

No code is the best way to write secure and reliable applications. Write nothing; deploy nowhere.

Getting Started

Start by not writing any code.

This is just an example application, but imagine it doing anything you want. Adding new features is easy too:

The possibilities are endless.

Building the Application

Now that you have not done anything it's time to build your application:

Yep. That's it. You should see the following output:

Deploying

While you still have not done anything it's time to deploy your application. By running the following command you can deploy your application absolutely nowhere.

It's that simple. And when it comes time to scale the application, all you have to do is:

I know right?

Contributing

You don't.

View on GitHub

[Andrew Bone]

That looks complicated, I don't have time to learn anooootttthhhheeeerrrr framework

[Todor Todorov]

BTW, Charles, I have seen an opinion for the most secured system:
Unplugged from electricity!
:)

[simonhaisz]

Weeks of coding can save hours of planning - Wise Developer

[Michiel Hendriks]

"The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take." - Roy Carlson

[combinatorylogic]

Exactly! I wish more people could understand it!

[Luke Garrigan]

Dev.to 😂😂 sorry

[Ben Halpern]

Anybody who spends too much time here is being less productive than they could be. I agree 😄

Everything in moderation.

[Oliver]

dev.to is my lunch break activity haha

[Dan Conn]

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

It has certainly used up a lot of free time recently. But I am also learning things so I guess it is productive still!

[Jean-Michel Plourde]

The biggest/most frequent might be: checking emails and other notifications (slack precisely)

[Rachel Soderberg]

Scrolling social media! It's so easy to lose track of time and think you've spent your day being productive, only to realize 2 hours was spent on looking at cats and 30mins was spent on a feature (but the brain tricks you to think the opposite!) Also the people who complain they're the busiest seem to be the most active on social media.

I'm guilty of this too and I'm considering taking a week or two long "social media vacation" soon.

[Ben Halpern]

I read recently that if you stare at your phone while "on a break", it negates most of the restorative qualities of that break.

This makes perfect sense to me, but is hard to pull off. That little rectangle is addictive af. Social media can be really awful for our collective mental health.

[Rachel Soderberg]

It totally can be - I've noticed I've found myself being more short with my partner lately and have been wondering if the root cause could be all the social media consumption. I've heard it can affect mood along with other mental health.

[Dan Conn]

I've been using an app called Freedom on Android which blocks my phone from certain apps I choose for a given time period. If I try to go into an app during the time I set then it just kicks me out. If I want to stop the time period after it's started I have to phone their tech support so I don't break it "just this once".

I've found it to be pretty awesome so far.

[Oliver]

That is amazing, I tried a similar app before but you could easily go into settings and shut it off so it never panned out for me.

[Dan Conn]

Take a look and see what you think. I was so impressed I took out a year subscription with it. freedom.to/

[Rachel Soderberg]

I'll look into it, but I'm more a "cold turkey" kind of person so I may just end up logging out of all of my social media for a couple of weeks to make the "barrier to entry" a little higher. Thanks for the recommendation, Dan!

[Dan Conn]

No worries! Whatever works for you 😃

[TKDMzq]

I did it when changing phone. Still only logged to whatsapp and messanger. Thats one of best things.

[Andrew Brooks 👨‍💻]

Unpopular opinion is the pomodoro timer technique. It does more to distract me than anything. 🤷‍♂️

[Jacob Herrington (he/him)]

I tend to be someone who can focus intensely for a few hours before getting exhausted, but I'll accidentally find another task to do if I take breaks every half hour.

An extended version of Pomodoro tends to work better for me.

[Andrew Brooks 👨‍💻]

This makes sense to me. I work in multiple hour bursts much better so maybe an extended version of pomodoro is a good idea for me to try. 🤔

[Ryan Smith]

I agree with this. I found that the short breaks in Pomodoro were interrupting focused work and it was too stressful to try to do anything during that short break because of the work timer coming up. I know you can adjust the times in Pomodoro, but there didn't seem to be an effective combination for me.

I found the better way is to have set intervals during the day to check email/Slack (as opposed to having them open at all times) and times take a break. Not frequent and not in cycles, but just 3-4 reminders on a calendar. There tend to be times of day where emails pile up or you aren't feeling development, so it feels more natural to set reminders for when those times typically arise and step back from focused work.

[Justin Poiroux]

This is interesting. I've found it to be so helpful. I think it depends on your work flow and how your concentration cycles go.

[Rachel Soderberg]

It helps me too, but only at certain times. I definitely don't exclusively use it because sometimes I prefer a more free-form style of work time management.

[Justin Poiroux]

I dont use it religiously, definitely depends on how adhd I'm feeling that particular day.

[Danny Pule]

For me, 25 minute chunks of time feel way too short. I prefer to do 45 minute bursts of focused work a then a short break.

[Ryan Smith]

Meetings without a clear purpose or end goal. I think that these are "feel good" meetings that sometimes have a place, but should not be 100% of all meetings. These are the meetings that stray off the path of being productive into venting about the current state of something or exploring "it would be great if..." scenarios that are unreasonable to do. Everyone feels good because they get to talk about these things, then nothing happens from that discussion. If the topic is too broad, that is all that really can be done.

I think the way to avoid it is:

• If you are calling a meeting, create an agenda with a clear purpose and product (could be a key decision or follow up tasks/assignees) that you want to leave the meeting with and send it out ahead of time.
  • If you aren't sure, you can also survey the people who will be in the meeting to see what they would like to get out of it and create the agenda based on that.
• Review the agenda at the meeting.
• Ensure that product is met and create any follow-up action items.

[jeikabu]

Meeting agenda ftw.
And someone with the power/authority/cohones to enforce it. Whether it's a "producer"-type or tech lead that plays the "bad cop" here, once the agenda is finalized at least one person in the room needs to be able to keep it. Follow up meetings are a sane way to truncate tangents, convoluted discussion, etc.

[Cécile Lebleu]

I’m learning to use React-Gatsby and using it to re-build my website. During research, I found the book The Great Gatsby for $0 on kindle. I’m not 100% sure if reading it counts or not as research, but it’s a really fun book so far.

[Gayan Hewa]

Long meetings

[Michiel Hendriks]

Or meetings with more than 5 people.
Or meetings without clearly defined agendas or goals.

[Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard]

Trying to be productive instead of trying to be effective.
Learn the difference:
If you can resolve more jira tickets in a single day, you are being more productive.
If you learn to choose what are the right things to work on, that will have the biggest impact on your project, you are being effective.
It's mostly about getting into the habit of asking "why is this thing important?"