<story><title>On the slow productivity of John Wick</title><url>https://calnewport.com/on-the-slow-productivity-of-john-wick/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nosefrog</author><text>Very interesting essay. Reminds me of how Donald Knuth describes his job:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don&amp;#x27;t have time for such study.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu&amp;#x2F;~knuth&amp;#x2F;email.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu&amp;#x2F;~knuth&amp;#x2F;email.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s an aspiration for how I want my career to go, though I haven&amp;#x27;t been very effective at moving in that direction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>underdeserver</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s really not an attainable career for almost anyone. Not even the vast majority of professors, who juggle the actual research with grant writing, mentoring students, lecturing, organizing and participating in conferences.</text></comment>
<story><title>On the slow productivity of John Wick</title><url>https://calnewport.com/on-the-slow-productivity-of-john-wick/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nosefrog</author><text>Very interesting essay. Reminds me of how Donald Knuth describes his job:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don&amp;#x27;t have time for such study.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu&amp;#x2F;~knuth&amp;#x2F;email.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu&amp;#x2F;~knuth&amp;#x2F;email.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s an aspiration for how I want my career to go, though I haven&amp;#x27;t been very effective at moving in that direction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>RcouF1uZ4gsC</author><text>&amp;gt; I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don&amp;#x27;t have time for such study.&lt;p&gt;Then there are the next level of authors who digest The Art of Computer Programming into simpler books for people who don’t have time for such study. Then there are those who digest the books into blog posts. And finally there are those who digest the blog posts into HN comments.</text></comment>