[kendalk]

Productivity can't be measured by hours because a single thought can change the course of a company, or a life... but that thought can take months or years to develop in order to be "thought."

For example, there is a running joke here on Hacker News about HN being a time-sink. I disagree. Some of the comments here have altered my thinking about startups. A single comment can change the course of a life.

Paul Graham's "Beating the Averages" has influenced how many programmers to pick up Lisp? One essay can change a life, or a company.

Productivity does not accumulate with X hours. It grows in starts, jumps, leaps and crawls. For those who work with their brains, accomplishment is not lines of code written, or the number of pages in your business plan.

Productivity is a result of thought, and thought often comes through a lost art called "leisure."