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> For instance, would you really want to speed up time spent with your loved ones?
First of, do you really think about productivity when doing the positive thing you imply here? But also, for some less pleasant activities with your loved ones - yes, of course you want to speed it up to have more time for something better!
Make money? It’s gone eventually. Be remembered? I’ll eventually be forgotten. Be REALLY remembered? I’ll be forgotten in a few thousand years. Become immortal? All entropy in the universe eventually dissipates.
What I can do though, is have a good time with the people I love.
I’ve heard it said that the meaning of life is to plant trees for shade that you will never personally be able to enjoy.
You definitely can measure team output over time and have some idea. Compare team to what they did in last 6 months and you have your measure for having idea how much can be achieved next month. But you cannot not plan like what can be achieved in longer period just next sprint or two.
This said you cannot compare teams like that.
To make personnel decisions who to fire or give bonuses it doesn’t work. Just as lines of code don’t. If any of those indicators is lacking you have to dig deeper.
What lazy managers want is a single number they don’t have to dig into to make decisions. Lines of code, story points, bug counts.
To plan work for next sprint having last 6 months of stats gives quite good idea what can be achieved. But story points or stats are not useful for telling if specific features will be developed in specific timeframe.
Even if the customer tells you they bought your product because you added widget x you can't really be sure.
So much of this stuff is emotional rather than rational.
What we'd need instead is concerted simplification. But that ain't gonna happen.
Not doing something is much faster than doing it fast. Sit on your ideas, think them trough, dismiss early, or choose to move to implementations.
Productivity is impossible to define when you don’t know where you’re going.
A lot of companies and teams are finding out real fast they have zero clue where the fuck they’re trying to go or what they want to achieve. Just a bunch of people running in random directions before the funding runs out.
Pick a direction. Then go fast.
I think the author conflates productivity with meaningfulness.
But perhaps a better title would be "Productivity Isn't (Only) About Going Faster"
Productivity, prioritization, efficiency, control, purpose, happiness...
I'll just rant about one: Control.
> you can’t decide to kick the ball, nor score a goal, or much less win the game; you can only decide to move your leg.
If you couldn't control how you win the game, why the f is Messi Messi?
You can see what the field is doing. Where the other team is moving, pointing, gaps in the defense, where your team is currently, how to utilize your next move of run, pass, or kick. You do decide to kick the ball, score a goal and win a game by fighting with everything you have because the opposite is true. You can absolutely throw a game by actively sabotaging everything.
The spirit of what is written about Control is "don't worry about what you don't control, one being the result. Just worry about and do what you can" (which i agree with) but it's said so poorly.
My disdain towards this article... Why are we accepting cat posters on Hnews homepage?
Because it's still miles better than the majority of AI slop being posted here (see current FP which has "Why code in Python")...
We've reached a point in humanity where even empty platitudes is still more profound than the majority of essays being created.