Productivity

“Many people (by which I meant me) seem to feel as if they start off each morning in a kind of "productivity debt", which they must struggle to pay off through the day, in hopes of reaching a zero balance by the time evening comes. Few things feel more basic to my experience of adulthood than this vague sense that I'm falling behind, and need to cl

Optimization alone can't get you novelty or interestingness.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. – Anne Lamott

"We see these examples time and again, that the setting in which you try to do your most smart, creative, cognitive work really matters. And if that setting is the same place that you do shallow work (where you do your taxes and your emails and your zooms) your mind is going to have a hard time getting into the deep work mode. The answer is to have

“if I have to work, I find it preferable (and less painful) to work intensely for very short hours, then do nothing for the rest of the time assuming doing nothing is really doing nothing), until I recover completely and look forward to a repetition, rather than being subjected to the tedium of Japanese style low-intensity interminable office hours