For instance, the context-switching cost is very true. It's better to focus on one thing at a time, and multi-tasking is endemic to our society. If you can focus on one thing for a few days with no distraction you can really accomplish mountains especially compared to the usual email/social media distraction dance that is seemingly normal for anyone with a smart phone these days.
However on the flip side, compressing learning that is intended to be absorbed over a few months into a couple weeks of sleepless nights is a surefire way to make sure your retention is absolutely squalid. We used to call this cramming, it allows you to pass an exam, but it's well-known that it doesn't lead to much in the way of long-term learning.
Learning in a compressed time-frame can be highly effective. The problem with college kids is they stop learning and practicing right after the exam.
If they kept spending a few hours each week for the next few months they would retain a large chunk of it.
To be frank, you sound just as hard-lined against this guy's idea as he is hard-lined for the idea.
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I find it odd that we seem to be taking so long as a species to develop a useful, simple and broadly agreed-upon idea about the peaks and troughs on the productivity landscape. Yes, it's better to focus than to multi-task. But it's also good to show up every day and make a little progress. You want to do the "minimum effective dose" each time.
To use his ladder analogy, climbing a quarter-rung a day gets you nowhere, but a rung a day is superior to 4 rungs in one day and then no more rungs for a week.
Aren't there more interesting things we can discuss about the nuances of productivity than "here there be dragons"? Or is this really just chest-beating bravado that we all do from time to time to make ourselves feel better about our choices, and I should get back to work?
For instance. I can apply the author's method to my house cleaning. Just wait until it's been scheduled, and knock it out fully in a manic cleaning session every other month for a few hours. Afterwards my house will be dazzling, and it will be great for a few days. Then I can do nothing for a while and it will turn into a mess over time again, and a couple months later I can make it dazzling again.
Unfortunately my goal is not to sometimes have a sparkling house - its to have a clean house because I find it peaceful. Bursty productivity is at odds with this goal. Rather, the overall result of spending 5-10 minutes a day cleaning stuff, with the occasional deep clean meets this goal better. Therefore it's more productive - the average state of the house is much much cleaner.
However, I recently built a patio at the same house. I had started it 3 years ago with the goal of "work on it a bit every weekend til it's done". After a couple weeks, it didn't progress anymore. So I set aside the weekend earl this summer and knocked it all the way out. Done, complete, usable and the goal is met. Basically the author's method. Bam goal met, in 1/150th of the time I spend trying the other way. Unbelievable productivity!
Of course I can come up with code analogies from my work too - but these are simpler but still illustrative examples :)
So it seems there is at least one axis of consideration for productivity - the maintenance vs one-shot axis.
Another thing that comes to mind related to this: personal development. I find that sometimes it feels like I'm not progressing at all - this is my skill set, this is what I'm capable of, thats all. Then one day I find that bam - I'm writing a bit of code that I know would have struck me as impossible a few months prior. Example: I remember about a year ago, I tried to grasp the dragon book. I gave up because it was too over my head on a lot of topics. I set it aside as as something to grapple with later. The other day I had to write a parser to handle an input file format that had the underpinnings of a DSL. I went and found a parsing library, and wrote a working parser using decent technique. In the interim I didn't really even explore that stuff - mostly I was focusing on unrelated goals. But somewhere in there I "leveled up".
In fact "leveling up" is a productivity related analogy I like a lot - it seems sometimes that I'm just grinding out things, and not making any progress, but in the background my brain is doing things - tiny imperceptible things, and then one day suddenly something clicks and they whole of the changes is noticable - I leveled up. Just like in an RPG when you grind out some battles do some boring side quests, and generally don't notice major differences. Then you get the level and have a new power and it's exciting again. This is productive, but in a different way: the end result is being able to accomplish more, but there's not a really good way of discussing it, the language isn't there.
Another under-explored topic is that of a concept I call many-tasking. It isn't multi tasking. It isn't single-tasking. It's more related to priortization and task ordering. Find a task that is blocking a few other tasks, and get it done, freeing up lots of other things to do. Similarly (much related but not exactly like David Allens context notion) there are often many very similar tasks related to bigger projects. Grouping them can be much more productive than not doing so. For example this morning I'll sequentially work on: some tasks for ops - making our services easier to deploy, some tasks for testing that will take advantage of some of those ops improvements, and a few changes to our core algorithm that will make it stabler. They all are related to the same handful of modules, so I group them together rather than put them as the independent tasks they are. There is still some context switching, but it is light-weight as I'll already have loaded the code into my head. I'll accept the overhead of context switching rather than the much bigger overhead of reloading that code 3 times this week. So that's a nuance axis I guess too: it isn't multi tasking or single tasking - there's a continuum there that has various tradeoffs.
Finally though, there's the very real issue that different people are different. Different ideas of what matters, different ideas of how to get into flow state, different ideas of how to group things, etc. It adds a layer of complexity to these discussions, because it seems a lot of people don't realize that the small differences between people can lead to big differences in style of work - they assume they have a lock on the right way.
Where do you personally find the optimums of productivity? For me it's all about having enough projects going that when I get tired of one, I can switch to another and feel fresh about it.
To make good progress both methods need to be used together.
Look at dieting. It is very easy and painless to eat 150-200 calories below maintenance per day (as an average sized man). You just eat a little bit less. E.g. If you normally get a large meal at McDonalds then get a medium instead. But over a year that adds up to 15 odd pounds of fat!
Or you can go on a hardcore diet and lose 3-4 pounds a week! If you are smart you will do it for 3-4 weeks and then taper off onto the slow and steady method for the rest of the year.
The problem is people see a huge amount of progress in those 3-4 weeks and think "If it works for 4 weeks I'll keep it up until I have a 6-pack". Then they crash and put it all back on.
I've found I can do an hour of study every working day without adding any stress to my life. I currently do half an hour in the morning when I wake and another half an hour during my lunch break.
Twice a year I also do 30-40 hours/week for four weeks. I basically put my life on hold and do nothing outside of work and study.
If I spent any more time in sprint mode then I would not be putting the effort I should be into my wife, my kids, my family, my friends, or my work. I also wouldn't be able to relax and enjoy myself.
Were you intentionally trying to make the reverse point? 'Cause this may be the worst possible example, otherwise: it's clearly not easy and painless to eat 200 calories below maintenance every day, given the huge obesity problem we have.
People don't stick to it because the results aren't very visible and they aren't fast. Not because it is difficult.
If you are 60 pounds overweight and somebody tells you to simply eat a little less and in 4-5 years you will be a healthy weight is that really going to motivate you to change?
In a similar vein I suspect one of the key behaviors driving productivity might be not spending much time writing about productivity on the internet.
Irony of posting this understood obv, but then I make no claims to productivity, quite the opposite.
I will happily read or reread a productivity book just to be inspired to get my game on.
I am all for finding out your personal way of doing things, but don't call things bullshit just because they don't work for you.
If you see each task as a large do or die task that needs sacrifice and extended concentration to complete otherwise there is no point even starting it... you don't start it.
That said, I do agree with this type of thinking and believe many other people do too which is why procrastination is such a widespread problem! My broader take is that you need gears and know when to change up/down. Sometimes you are going up hill and sometimes downhill. Sometimes you need to brake and sometimes steering is more important than speed. Ahhh car metaphores...
I think it is important to find what works to motivate you on a personal level. Sounds like OP made a step in that direction but may be over applying the advice to other people.
I started a company when I was 23 and found product-market fit almost immediately. But, being young, naive and completely unexposed to "real" entrepreneurship, I tried to grow the company organically, customer by customer, market by market (in my case, TV markets) rather than raise money. I woke up every day, hit my cold call targets, and spent the rest of the time coding, dealing with other IT issues, recruiting, managing employees, bookkeeping, etc.
While I was busy gathering rinky-dink customers in one corner of the country, my competitors raised money, expanded nationwide, and completely ate my lunch.
While this may be of the "well, that sounds like a personal problem" variety, I believe the following holds true when a new "gold mine" (i.e. as yet unrecognized market opportunity) is discovered by one or more companies:
"Even if you're growing, if you're not growing like crazy, you're falling behind, comparatively."
For example, let's say there's a company competing with Uber that's growing by 2x per year. In a vacuum, that's great, right? But not in reality. Uber is growing at like 100x per year and will eventually destroy that company.
So yes, I completely agree with OP, a least in terms of startups.
Next week rolls around....
No OP was wrong! {Other conventional wisdom} is better than {one conventional wisdom} because of their personal story!
