[TeMPOraL]

I don't think that going "holistic" is the future of productivity. Something something dilution of focus.

My personal view: the next big improvement should come from tackling emotional self-management.

This is derived mostly from my own experience of ~15 years of struggling with personal productivity (and going through every trick in every popular book), as well as observing others close to me. In recent years I came to the conclusion that it's all about emotional state.

The planner, the TODO list, the Pomodoro timer, the Inbox & Someday/Maybe folders, the bullet journal - those are all complexity management tools. They address the problem of having too many things taking your attention, making you unable to focus. They don't address the problem of not being able to focus at all, not being able to open your TODO list, not being able to work on a task for more than 30 seconds before either feeling distressed, or beginning to question your life priorities. Conversely, when you're feeling really good and pumped about the thing you're doing, you don't need a complicated system to keep you focused - a notebook and some pens, or an open text file, is enough to keep the complexity manageable, and you'll figure out an effective enough system on the fly.

I've only begun exploring the space of emotional self-management, and so far, I haven't found any neat hacks or effective methods. A big problem is that the brain adapts to attempts at cheating it - like e.g. there was a time where I could control my emotional states through the choice of music, but it stopped working after I started exploiting it to make myself work on things. Similarly, all attempts at self-gamifying fail because I know I'm just manipulating myself.

But if anyone can crack that problem - effective emotional self-management - I'll happily shower them with all the money I can spare.

[hedberg10]

Have you heard 'State not story' (sometimes 'Story follows state')?

This comes from trauma therapy, specifically Polyvagal Theory. Patients have their life story and often think of it as the reason for their current problems, when in reality a huge portion of that might be their body, ie the state of their nervous system, informing a story they tell themselves, making mental illness an infinite loop.

So for self management: Get into a happy state and you'll be productive.

Body:

-sleep

-food

-water

-sun

-posture

-exercise

Mind:

-well basically "Learned Optimism" by Martin Seligman

My main point being: How we learn what hard work is (the Hollywood version), and how work needs to feel (Stress! Panic! No sleep! Hustle! Endless To Do lists!) is very wrong and gives you anxiety => puts your body into a bad state.

And if you are in the bad state and unproductive, people usually resort to "I'm not doing this right, I need to put me into the bad state harder!". See the endless tools you listed. The problem lies elsewhere.

[TeMPOraL]

I've heard of the concept, but not under this name.

I also have mixed feelings about it. It feels nice at a surface level, but I'm not sure if the details follow. Are our brains really that bad at interpreting signals from the body? When I scrape my leg, I just feel that my leg hurts - but if I have lower but more persistent pain, my brain doesn't flag it as a leg issue, but instead starts telling me I hate my job?

More than that, I don't like how this view is typically used to peddle what I dubbed as "fuck off" advice. Take e.g. the "Body" list you've attached: essentially "sleep, diet, exercise". Aka. things that are often given as generic advice to solve one's mental problems. My personal experience (both of applying the advice on myself, as well as observing people) tells me that these do not work beyond fixing some extreme deficiencies - but they're the perfect thing to tell someone so they go away. They waste a year trying and failing to fix their problem, constantly blaming themselves for failing to stick to good sleep schedule / diet / exercise regime, but through that year they don't bother you anymore.

Even if these interventions did work like that - which I doubt they do - they're usually impractical. Getting into a perfect shape and sleep schedule is a years-long effort requiring sacrifices few people can make without throwing most of the nice things in their life away (it's not like they can cut out their job, so it's the personal time that gets sacrificed), and results are high-maintenance. So it isn't a good answer for the modern lifestyle, unless it brings order-of-magnitude improvements. Which we know it doesn't (otherwise everyone even moderately successful would be also fit and sleeping well).

[guitarlimeo]

I think hedberg10 and all these 'fuck off' advice guys have a point. It's just really hard to achieve that.

Don't take this wrong, but I noticed that your last paragraph could've been one of mine, and that it reads like defeatism (which I admit I practice a lot). It's a bad habit to have, and I'm struggling to get rid of mine.

It's that habit that makes me not want to start going into the gym in the first place to fix my body and my daily routine. That habit makes me think that gyms are full of people, commuting sucks, it takes time out of my already full schedule and because it takes years to get a perfect body it's not going to fix my daily life now, so why bother?

I've been trying to fix my productivity for a while and this realization of my self-defeatism inspired me to actually go jog after I post this comment. And for what it's worth, if it does not work, at least I've tried it.

Hopefully this can act as a mirror for you as well, as your comment acted for me. Good luck getting your emotions in shape.

[hedberg10]

Well now youre doing exactly what I described. You make my suggestions into a to do list and feel bad.

The point is to feel better. Thats the start of everything. Not "I have accomplished all tasks, now I can feel good".

Notice how I didnt even define what a "good" sleep pattern is and what you made of it, then proclaiming that to be unreachable, feeling worse. Maybe a good sleep schedule for you is to sleep during the day? Who cares. Its whatever makes you feel good. The second you judge yourself, you lose.

[TeMPOraL]

Perhaps. To be clear, my complaint isn't directly against you or your advice. But you asked if I heard about this concept, so I commented on what I've heard of it, and what advice I've heard that follow or are adjacent to it.

[guitarlimeo]

Thanks for writing this, you managed to describe my situation perfectly for the first time ever in the internet.

[fblp]

Hey friend - I don't want you to shower with money but i do want to share some things I've learnt about emotional-self management:

1. The body stores emotions and simple movement and body awareness can shift feelings. Read "Body Keeps the Score" for more.

2. Animals often shake and shudder out emotions, we've unlearnt that. Try shake it out.

3. There's some clinically backed programs that help with emotional regulation. My favorite is the Mindfulness Based Self Compassion Course https://centerformsc.org/. A key enphasis of the course is accepting emotions, that suffering is part of life. Unnecessary suffering is often caused by the resistance of the emotion.

Hope that helps! Email me samdup at gmail com if you'd like to discuss more!

[joncrane]

I know this is going to sound controversial, but I think some of the most successful people in the world are the ones with the most stable emotions. Some people are able to harness what emotions they have, and damp the rest (or damp them most of the time). The most successful and "happy" people I know are the people that remain the most neutral (with slight positive affect).

Also I think this is why sociopaths are so successful. I believe they are not subject to the strong ebb and flow of emotions like myself and the person I am responding to.

Also I'd like to state that some exceptions are entertainers/sportspeople as many of them are notoriously mercurial but overall they are still largely successful enough at "harnessing" their emotions to profit from it.

[konschubert]

I could not agree more.