<story><title>Productivity Is About Attention Management</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/smarter-living/productivity-isnt-about-time-management-its-about-attention-management.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>netwanderer3</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a general misconception between being productive and being effective.&lt;p&gt;One can fill their days by completing many mindless tasks and consider themselves as productive, but in the end hardly any of those tasks really matters.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, another person may only complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day but these were critical tasks that could generate much higher values. This subsequently makes the person more effective than their peers.&lt;p&gt;The output values must be weight in determining if one is really productive. Effectiveness triumphs mindless productivity.&lt;p&gt;This is quite similar to the cognitive and decision fatigue principle which indicates that each of us only has a limited pool of cognitive resources and so we must be very selective in choosing what activities we engage in.&lt;p&gt;To remain highly effective, not just being productive, particularly for a project manager, it&amp;#x27;s imperative to spend time only on tasks that require critical decisions to be made, and to delegate the rest. When you take on more tasks than you can handle, like some are misunderstanding this may help them appear as productive, it will undoubtedly affect the quality of each of your decisions and the project will suffer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tylerhou</author><text>&amp;gt; This is quite similar to the cognitive and decision fatigue principle which indicates that each of us only has a limited pool of cognitive resources and so we must be very selective in choosing what activities we engage in.&lt;p&gt;Watch out — many of the studies which displayed “cognitive fatigue” (I assume you actually mean ego depletion) have not been replicated successfully.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.slate.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;health_and_science&amp;#x2F;cover_story&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;ego_depletion_an_influential_theory_in_psychology_may_have_just_been_debunked.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.slate.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;health_and_science&amp;#x2F;cover_story...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Productivity Is About Attention Management</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/smarter-living/productivity-isnt-about-time-management-its-about-attention-management.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>netwanderer3</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a general misconception between being productive and being effective.&lt;p&gt;One can fill their days by completing many mindless tasks and consider themselves as productive, but in the end hardly any of those tasks really matters.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, another person may only complete one or two tasks in a very short time during their day but these were critical tasks that could generate much higher values. This subsequently makes the person more effective than their peers.&lt;p&gt;The output values must be weight in determining if one is really productive. Effectiveness triumphs mindless productivity.&lt;p&gt;This is quite similar to the cognitive and decision fatigue principle which indicates that each of us only has a limited pool of cognitive resources and so we must be very selective in choosing what activities we engage in.&lt;p&gt;To remain highly effective, not just being productive, particularly for a project manager, it&amp;#x27;s imperative to spend time only on tasks that require critical decisions to be made, and to delegate the rest. When you take on more tasks than you can handle, like some are misunderstanding this may help them appear as productive, it will undoubtedly affect the quality of each of your decisions and the project will suffer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>war1025</author><text>Reminds me of when I was a kid and raced the same track over and over something like 1000 times on a game to get enough money to buy the fanciest car in the game rather than building my skills enough to do races where I would actually make decent money on each race and only have to do 5 or ten to buy said car.</text></comment>