The Productivity Paradox#
Week 11. The lecture the course has been apologising for in advance.
Sold as productivity#
A faster workflow, fewer keystrokes, a machine tuned to your hand. Does any of it survive the arithmetic?
Do the sums#
The keybinding that saves two seconds a day, set up over an afternoon, pays for itself in roughly eight months. Assuming you never touch it again. Which you will, on the following Tuesday.
8 months
to repay one afternoon spent saving two seconds a day, if you never touch it again
Procrastination that feels like work#
The customised desktop is the most elaborate method ever devised for not doing any work, and its genius is that it feels exactly like working.
The point is not guilt#
It is to say clearly what the hours bought: the ones that will pay themselves back, the ones that bought only pleasure, and the ones that were procrastination in a terminal.
Before next week#
Reconstruct, as best you can, how many hours this semester’s setup has cost you. Bring the number, however alarming, to the lab.