If you ever find yourself stressed, overwhelmed, sinking into stasis despite wanting to change, or frustrated when you can’t respond to new opportunities, you need more slack in your life. Here’s how slack works and why you need more of it.
How to make Slack less bad for you | Robert Heaton
Slack claim to be in the business of "making your working life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive". We’re about to be cynical, so let’s acknowledge that this claim is probably at least par...
The Psychology of a Billion-Dollar Enterprise App: Why Is Slack So Habit-Forming?
Slack isn’t just another office collaboration app. The company has been called, “the fastest-growing workplace software ever.” Recent press…
Why efficiency is dangerous and slowing down makes life better | Psyche Ideas
The urge to do everything faster and better is risky. Far wiser to do what’s good enough for the range of possible futures
Getting Ahead By Being Inefficient
Inefficient does not mean ineffective, and it is certainly not the same as lazy. You get things done – just not in the most effective way possible. You’re a bit sloppy, and use more energy. But don’t feel bad about it. There is real value in not being the best.
How to be more productive without forcing yourself
Imagine you could work more and be wildly productive. And you wouldn’t need to force yourself to work.
Slack is not where 'deep work' happens
How did you start your day today? Probably reached for the phone. Turned off the alarm. Glanced at the time. Scrolled through the Slack...
Laziness Does Not Exist
Psychological research is clear: when people procrastinate, there's usually a good reason
Slack is the opposite of organizational memory
The internet is not a dumptruck and neither am I
Less stress, more productivity: why working fewer hours is better for you and your employer
There’s always too much work to be done on software projects, too many features to implement, too many bugs to fix. Some days you’re just not going through the backlog fast enough, you’re not producing enough code, and it’s taking too long to fix a seemingly-impossible bug. And to make things worse you’re wasting time in pointless meetings instead of getting work done. Once it gets bad enough you can find yourself always scrambling, working overtime just to keep up. Pretty soon it’s just expected, and you need to be available to answer emails at all hours even when there are no emergencies. You’re tired and burnt out and there’s still just as much work as before. The real solution is not working even harder or even longer, but rather the complete opposite: working fewer hours.
To Anyone Who Thinks They're Falling Behind In Life
You don't need more motivation. You don't need to be inspired to action. You don't need to read any more lists and posts about how you're not doing enough. There's a magic beyond us that works in ways we can't understand.
Doing nothing at work
Many engineers should be doing less work. I don’t necessarily mean producing less code or fewer changes, but literally working fewer hours in the day. When they do work, they should be working at a slower pace. I like to aim to be running at 80% utilization by default: unless I have a high-pressure project going on, I spend 20% of my workday away from the computer.
Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible - …
I combed through several years of my private notes and through everything I published on productivity before and tried to summarize all of it in this post. If you’re unproductive right now Here’s what you should do if you’ve been procrastinating for an entire day: Accept that you won’t do anything today and try not to get angry at yourself Set the alarm for the time you will be preparing to go to bed today No, really. Do it. It will take 20 seconds Procrastinate for the …
The solution to (nearly) everything: working less | Rutger Bregman
Excessive work and pressure are status symbols. But overtime is deadly. If we worked less we’d make fewer errors, address inequality and have a better life
Harnessing Frustration: Using LLMs to Overcome Activation Energy
One of my biggest weaknesses as a software engineer is procrastination when facing a new project. When the scope is unclear, I have a tendency to wait until I feel I’ve “felt out” the problem to start doing anything. I know I’ll feel better and work much faster when I get “stuck in” but I still struggle with that first step, overcoming the “activation energy” required to engage with the details. LLMs have been a game-changer for me in this respect: I can just throw a couple of sentences at them with the shape of the problem. This leads to one of two outcomes: The LLM comes up with a good solution, usually in a slightly different way than what I was thinking. I realize “oh wow the solution is much simpler than I thought”. Straight away I start thinking about the consequences of implementing and improving what the LLM suggested. The LLM comes up with a solution that I intuitively recognize as “wrong”. My immediate reaction is frustration (“How could it get it so wrong”) which leads me to go back and forth with the model, explaining to it why its solution could not possibly work. But in the process of arguing with the model, my brain is churning away and generating variations or different approaches that could work. After a while, even if the AI is still on the wrong track, the debate will trigger a moment of inspiration where suddenly the solution will come to me. I’ll excitedly start up a new conversation and start working through it with the model. The key is the emotional reaction I have immediately to the LLM’s response, either excitement or frustration. By harnessing this immediate feedback loop, I get my brain out of its passive, procrastination mode. It’s almost like a jolt: either I’m thrilled because it’s simpler than I thought, or I’m spurred to action by the urge to correct a perceived ‘wrong’ answer. This forces me to engage with the problem in a meaningful way.
Slack's rapid growth slows as it hits 1.25M paying work chatters | TechCrunch
Slack is still growing fast, about 33% in daily users and paid seats in the last 5 months. But not as fast as before, when it saw 50% DAU growth and 63%
Opinion | The Tyranny of Convenience (Published 2018)
All the personal tasks in our lives are being made easier. But at what cost?
