悼念A(yù)aron Swartz

毫無疑問，Aaron Swartz 是個天才趁啸。
創(chuàng)造 RSS 1.0 規(guī)則，開發(fā) Web.py督惰，參與 W3C 組織不傅，創(chuàng)立 Infogami（后與 Reddit 合并），創(chuàng)立 Open Library赏胚，參與設(shè)計 Markdown 排版語言访娶。程序員，作家栅哀，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)活動家震肮。
在 26 歲称龙，他的成就足以使我們許多人掩面羞愧留拾。
毫無疑問，Aaron Swartz 是個好人鲫尊。

他的好朋友 Lawrence Lessig 說痴柔，“在他的一生中，Aaron 從未做過任何‘為賺錢’的事情……Aaron 只為公益而工作疫向，一貫如此（至少他是這樣想的）咳蔚。他聰明，有趣搔驼。一個天才兒童谈火。一個靈魂、一個良心舌涨、一個問題的源頭糯耍，他曾經(jīng)讓我百萬次問自己：Aaron 會這樣想？”
曾和他一起開發(fā)了 MarkDown 的 John Gruber 說囊嘉，“Aaron 有著非常出眾的才智 ——再說一次温技，非常聰明的頭腦——但同時也有一顆巨大的寬容心。他是一個了不起的人”扭粱。
互聯(lián)網(wǎng)先驅(qū) Tim Berners-Lee 說舵鳞，“Aaron 死了。世界上的流浪者琢蛤，我們失去了一位智者蜓堕。為權(quán)利而奮斗的黑客們抛虏，我們中的一個人倒下了。所有的父母們套才，我們失去了一個孩子嘉蕾。讓我們哭泣吧∷桑”
他為什么要決意離開错忱？在人生的最后階段，由于涉嫌非法侵入 JSTOR 論文數(shù)據(jù)庫挂据，他需要面臨政府的刑事指控以清。而在 JSTOR 已經(jīng)撤銷訴訟的情況下，政府仍然要重刑以待崎逃。
Lessig 將 Aaron 的死歸罪于美國政府掷倔，“我們的政府決定讓他坐 50 年的牢。不管怎樣个绍，我們需要超越主導(dǎo)這個時代的‘我正確因此我有權(quán)毀滅你’的道德勒葱。這開始于一個單詞：羞愧。一個單詞巴柿，無盡的淚水”凛虽。

Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz寫過一篇很有名的文章，叫做《HOWTO: Be more productive》（如何提高效率）广恢。
以下是其譯文凯旋。

如何提高效率（HOWTO: Be more productive）

肯定有人跟你說過這樣的話，“你有看電視的那么長時間钉迷，都可以用來寫一本書了”至非。不可否認(rèn)寫書肯定比看電視更好的利用了時間，但是這個結(jié)論的成立需要一個假設(shè)：“時間是可互換的”糠聪，也就是說看電視的時間可以輕松的用來寫書荒椭。但是很遺憾，事實并非如此舰蟆。

不同的時間有不同的質(zhì)量等級趣惠。如果我在走向地鐵站的路上發(fā)現(xiàn)自己的筆記本忘帶了，我就很難集中注意力寫文章夭苗。同樣信卡，當(dāng)你不停的被打斷的時候，你也很難集中注意力题造。這里還有一些心理和情感上的因素傍菇，有的時候我心情很好，愿意主動去做一些事界赔，但還有一些時候我感到很抑郁和疲憊丢习，就只能看看電視了牵触。

如果你想變得更加有效率，你必須意識到這個事實咐低，并且很好的處理它揽思。首先，你必須很好的利用不同種類的時間见擦。其次钉汗，你必須讓你的時間更有效率。

更有效地利用你的時間

選擇合適的問題

生命是如此的短暫鲤屡，為什么浪費(fèi)時間做一些沒意義的事呢损痰？做一些讓你感到舒適的事很容易，但是你應(yīng)該問問自己為什么要做這些事呢酒来？有沒有一些更重要的事等著你去做卢未？為什么你不去做那些事呢？這些問題很難回答堰汉，但是每解決一個都會讓你更有效率辽社。

這不是說你所有的時間都應(yīng)該用來做那些最重要的事。我的時間就肯定不是這樣（否則翘鸭，我現(xiàn)在就不會在寫這篇文章了）滴铅。但是，這是我衡量自己的生活是否充實的重要標(biāo)準(zhǔn)矮固。

收集很多問題

另一個很多人都知道的秘密是：如果你認(rèn)準(zhǔn)一個問題失息，投入全部精力去解決它譬淳，這樣你的效率是最高的档址。我發(fā)現(xiàn)這卻是很難實現(xiàn)的。以現(xiàn)在為例邻梆，我正在鍛煉身體守伸，喝橙汁，整理桌面浦妄，和我弟弟聊天尼摹，同時在寫現(xiàn)在這篇文章。今天一整天剂娄，我寫了現(xiàn)在這篇文章蠢涝，讀了一本書，吃了點(diǎn)東西阅懦，回復(fù)了幾封郵件和二，和一些朋友聊了聊天，買了點(diǎn)東西耳胎，改了改其他幾篇文章惯吕，備份了硬盤惕它，還整理了一下圖書列表。

有很多不同的項目讓我能夠在不同質(zhì)量的時間下做不同的工作废登。更重要的是淹魄，在你卡殼或是厭煩的時候有其他的一些事可以做。

這同時會讓你變得更加有創(chuàng)造力堡距。創(chuàng)造力就是你把自己從其他地方學(xué)到的東西能夠用到你的工作中甲锡。如果你同時做許多不同方向的工作，那你就會得到更多的想法和創(chuàng)意羽戒。

列一個清單

找一些不同的事同時做并不困難搔体，大部分人都有很多很多的待辦事項。但是如果你想把它們?nèi)浽谀X袋里的話半醉，它們就會慢慢消失疚俱。要記住所有這些事所給你帶來的心智上的壓力會把你壓垮。解決辦法仍然是很簡單：把它們寫下來缩多。

一旦你把要做的事列成了一個清單呆奕，你就可以更好的分類組織它們了。比如說衬吆，我的清單包括：編程梁钾，思考，差事逊抡，讀書姆泻，娛樂休息。

大部分項目都包括很多不同的任務(wù)冒嫡。以寫這篇文章為例拇勃，除了真正的寫作過程，還包括了閱讀其他關(guān)于拖沓的文章孝凌，考慮文章的各個部分供搀，整理語句蔫慧，向別人請教問題等等疗韵。每一項任務(wù)都屬于清單的不同部分慧域，所以你可以在合適的時間才去做某一部分。

把任務(wù)清單和你的生活結(jié)合起來

一旦你有了這樣一個任務(wù)清單片拍，你需要做的事就是時常記得它煌集，而記住它的最好方法是把它放在你能看到的地方。比如說捌省，我總在我桌子上放一摞書苫纤，最上面的那一本就是我最近在讀的。當(dāng)我想要讀書的時候，我就直接從上面拿一本書來讀方面。

對于看電視/電影我也這么做放钦。當(dāng)我對某一個電影感興趣的時候，我會把它放在電腦中一個特殊的文件夾內(nèi)恭金。每當(dāng)我想休息一下操禀，看看電影的時候，我就會打開那個文件夾横腿。

我也想過一些更深入的方式颓屑，比如說我把一些想看的文章標(biāo)記為“待讀”，當(dāng)我想要上網(wǎng)的時候就看看那些從前積累下來的未讀文章耿焊。

提高你時間的質(zhì)量

像上面那樣最大限度地利用時間還遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)不夠揪惦，更重要的是提高你自己的時間的質(zhì)量。那你究竟該怎樣做呢罗侯？

減輕身體上的約束

攜帶紙和筆：

我認(rèn)識的很多人的口袋里都有記事簿之類的東西器腋。紙和筆在很多時候都是非常有用的，你可以隨時隨刻的記錄自己的想法钩杰，我甚至通過這種方法在地鐵上寫過整篇文章纫塌。

避免被打擾：

對于那些需要集中注意力的任務(wù)，你應(yīng)該盡量避免被打擾讲弄。一個很簡單的方法是去一個沒人能打擾你的地方措左，另一個方法是告訴周圍的人未來一段時間不要打擾你。關(guān)于這點(diǎn)不要過猶不及避除。當(dāng)你在浪費(fèi)時間的時候你反倒應(yīng)該被打擾一下怎披，幫助別人解決問題肯定比坐在那里看新聞更好的利用了時間。

減輕心理上的約束

吃瓶摆，睡凉逛，運(yùn)動：

當(dāng)你感到很餓，很累赏壹，很焦躁的時候鱼炒，你的時間的質(zhì)量會很低。解決這個問題很簡單蝌借，就是：去吃，去睡指蚁，去運(yùn)動菩佑。對自己說“雖然我很累了，但我不能休息凝化，因為我必須要工作”會讓你感到自己很努力稍坯，但事實上休息之后你的效率會更高。既然你遲早都要睡覺，還不如先休息好瞧哟，來提高剩余時間內(nèi)的效率混巧。

與快樂的人相處：

跟快樂的人相處會也會讓你變得快樂，也會讓你心態(tài)更放松勤揩。也許很多人愿意躲在屋子里咧党，不與其他人接觸，埋頭干活陨亡，他們覺得這樣的話時間才沒有被“浪費(fèi)”傍衡，但事實上這會讓他們變得情緒低落，工作效率也會大大下降负蠕。

與朋友分擔(dān)你的壓力：

即使你的朋友并不是能夠感染他人蛙埂，給你帶來快樂的那種人，和其他的人一起解決復(fù)雜的問題也會讓問題變得簡單遮糖。一方面绣的，精神上的壓力大家可以互相分擔(dān)，另一方面欲账，和其他人在一起可以讓你專注于工作而不是時常分心被辑。

拖沓

上面所說的那些并不是問題的重點(diǎn)，關(guān)于效率大家最大的問題還是“拖沓”敬惦。雖然很多人不承認(rèn)盼理，但是幾乎所有人都或多或少的會拖沓。那又該如何避免呢俄删？

拖沓是什么宏怔？從旁觀者來看，你在做好玩的事（如玩游戲畴椰，看新聞）而不是做真正的工作臊诊。但問題的關(guān)鍵是：你究竟為什么會這樣？你的腦子里究竟是怎么想的斜脂？

我花了很多時間來研究這件事抓艳，我能給出的最好解釋是在大腦會給每一項任務(wù)賦予一個“腦力場”。你玩過兩塊磁鐵相互作用嗎帚戳？如果你讓它們同極相對玷或，它們就會相互排斥，你會感到他們之間的磁場力片任。你越是想要把它們和在一起偏友，越會感到它們之間的排斥力。

心智和精神上也是類似的对供。它是看不見摸不著的位他，但你卻可以感受到它的存在。并且你越是想要接近它，它會離你越遠(yuǎn)鹅髓。

你不可能通過蠻力來克服兩個場之間的排斥力舞竿，相反，你應(yīng)該做的是調(diào)轉(zhuǎn)方向窿冯。

那又是什么產(chǎn)生了“精神力場”呢骗奖？似乎有兩個主要原因：任務(wù)是否艱巨，任務(wù)是否是被指派的靡菇。

艱巨的任務(wù)

把任務(wù)細(xì)分

一個任務(wù)很艱巨的原因之一是這個任務(wù)很宏大重归。比如說你想要做一個菜譜構(gòu)造程序，沒有人能一下子完成它厦凤，這是一個目標(biāo)而不是一項任務(wù)鼻吮。一項任務(wù)是使你能夠朝向目標(biāo)更進(jìn)一步的具體概念。一個好的任務(wù)是你能夠立即拿來實施的较鼓，比如“畫一個展示菜譜的草圖”椎木。

當(dāng)你完成了上一個任務(wù)后，下一步就會變得更加清晰博烂。你將會考慮一個菜譜有什么構(gòu)成香椎，你需要什么樣的搜索機(jī)制，如何構(gòu)建菜譜的數(shù)據(jù)庫禽篱，等等畜伐。這樣你就構(gòu)建了一個引擎，每一個任務(wù)都會通向下一個任務(wù)躺率。

對于每一個比較大的項目玛界，我都會考慮我需要完成一連串什么樣的任務(wù)，并且將這些任務(wù)加入到我的待辦事項列表中去悼吱。同樣慎框，當(dāng)我做完一些任務(wù)之后我會把接下來需要完成的任務(wù)再加入任務(wù)列表中去。

簡化任務(wù)

另一個讓任務(wù)變得艱巨的原因就是它太復(fù)雜了后添”靠荩“寫一本書”這個任務(wù)會放你感到無從下手，那么就先從寫一篇文章開始吧遇西。如果一篇文章也覺得太多了馅精，那么就先寫一個段落的概要吧。最重要的是真正做了一些工作努溃，真正的有進(jìn)展硫嘶。

一旦你明確了你的任務(wù)之后，你就可以更清楚的判斷它梧税，更容易的理解它。提高完善一些已有的東西比從頭創(chuàng)建東西更容易。如果你的一個段落寫好了第队，那么一點(diǎn)一點(diǎn)積累哮塞，它會變成一篇文章，最終變成一本書凳谦。

認(rèn)真考慮它

通常來說解決一個困難問題需要一些靈感忆畅。如果你對那個領(lǐng)域并不熟悉，你應(yīng)該從研究這個領(lǐng)域開始尸执，借鑒一下其他人的經(jīng)驗家凯，慢慢的研究理解這個領(lǐng)域，并且做一些小的嘗試看看你能否搞定這個領(lǐng)域如失。

被指派的任務(wù)

被指派的任務(wù)是那些你被要求完成的任務(wù)绊诲。很多心理學(xué)實驗都表明：當(dāng)你“刺激”其他人做什么事的時候，他們反倒不容易做好那個事褪贵。獎勵掂之，懲罰等外部刺激會扼殺“內(nèi)在動機(jī)”——你對于某個問題發(fā)自內(nèi)心的興趣。人類的大腦對于被要求做的事有先天的抗拒力脆丁。

這種現(xiàn)象不僅局限于其他人要求你做的事世舰，當(dāng)你向自己分配任務(wù)時仍然會出現(xiàn)這種現(xiàn)象。如果你對自己說“我應(yīng)該好好做X工作了槽卫，這是我現(xiàn)在最重要的事”跟压，之后你就會感到X突然變成了世界上最困難的事情了。然而一旦當(dāng)Y變成了“最重要的事”歼培，原來的那個X又變得簡單了震蒋。

虛構(gòu)一個任務(wù)

如果你要完成X，那就告訴自己做Y丐怯。然而不幸的是喷好，這樣欺騙自己卻很難，因為你清楚你究竟要做什么读跷。

不要自己給自己布置任務(wù)

給自己布置任務(wù)看起來很誘人梗搅，比如對自己說“我要寫完這篇文章才去吃飯”，更糟糕的是讓別人假裝布置給你一些任務(wù)效览。但是這兩種方式都會讓你變得更沒有效率无切，事實上你還是在給自己布置任務(wù)，你的大腦只會去逃避它丐枉。

把事情變得有趣

困難的工作聽起來不會令人感到愉悅哆键，但事實上這可能就是最能讓我感到高興的事。一個困難的問題不但能讓你集中全部注意力瘦锹，而且當(dāng)你完成它的時候你會感到非常棒籍嘹，非常有成就感闪盔。

所以幫助自己完成一件事的秘密不是說服自己必須完成它，而是說服自己這件事確實非常有意思辱士。如果一件事沒有意思的話泪掀，你需要做的就是讓它變得有意思。

總結(jié)

效率的真正秘密在于“聆聽自己”颂碘，在你餓的時候吃飯异赫，在你疲憊的時候睡覺，當(dāng)你厭煩的時候休息一下头岔，做那些有趣好玩的項目塔拳。

這看起來很容易，但是社會上的一些觀念正在把我們向相反的方向引導(dǎo)峡竣。要想變得更加有效率靠抑，我們需要做的就是轉(zhuǎn)過頭來“聆聽自己”。

原文

HOWTO: Be more productive

“With all the time you spend watching TV,” he tells me, “you could have written a novel by now.” It’s hard to disagree with the sentiment — writing a novel is undoubtedly a better use of time than watching TV — but what about the hidden assumption? Such comments imply that time is “fungible” — that time spent watching TV can just as easily be spent writing a novel. And sadly, that’s just not the case.

Time has various levels of quality. If I’m walking to the subway station and I’ve forgotten my notebook, then it’s pretty hard for me to write more than a couple paragraphs. And it’s tough to focus when you keep getting interrupted. There’s also a mental component: sometimes I feel happy and motivated and ready to work on something, but other times I feel so sad and tired I can only watch TV.

If you want to be more productive then, you have to recognize this fact and deal with it. First, you have to make the best of each kind of time. And second, you have to try to make your time higher-quality.

Spend time efficiently

Choose good problems
Life is short (or so I’m told) so why waste it doing something dumb? It’s easy to start working on something because it’s convenient, but you should always be questioning yourself about it. Is there something more important you can work on? Why don’t you do that instead? Such questions are hard to face up to (eventually, if you follow this rule, you’ll have to ask yourself why you’re not working on the most important problem in the world) but each little step makes you more productive.

This isn’t to say that all your time should be spent on the most important problem in the world. Mine certainly isn’t (after all, I’m writing this essay). But it’s definitely the standard against which I measure my life.

Have a bunch of them
Another common myth is that you’ll get more done if you pick one problem and focus on it exclusively. I find this is hardly ever true. Just this moment for example, I’m trying to fix my posture, exercise some muscles, drink some fluids, clean off my desk, IM with my brother, and write this essay. Over the course the day, I’ve worked on this essay, read a book, had some food, answered some email, chatted with friends, done some shopping, worked on a couple other essays, backed up my hard drive, and organized my book list. In the past week I’ve worked on several different software projects, read several different books, studied a couple different programming languages, moved some of my stuff, and so on.

Having a lot of different projects gives you work for different qualities of time. Plus, you’ll have other things to work on if you get stuck or bored (and that can give your mind time to unstick yourself).

It also makes you more creative. Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in. If you have a bunch of different projects going in different fields, then you have many more ideas you can apply.

Make a list
Coming up with a bunch of different things to work on shouldn’t be hard — most people have tons of stuff they want to get done. But if you try to keep it all in your head it quickly gets overwhelming. The psychic pressure of having to remember all of it can make you crazy. The solution is again simple: write it down.

Once you have a list of all the things you want to do, you can organize it by kind. For example, my list is programming, writing, thinking, errands, reading, listening, and watching (in that order).

Most major projects involve a bunch of these different tasks. Writing this, for example, involves reading about other procrastination systems, thinking up new sections of the article, cleaning up sentences, emailing people with questions, and so on, all in addition to the actual work of writing the text. Each task can go under the appropriate section, so that you can do it when you have the right kind of time.

Integrate the list with your life
Once you have this list, the problem becomes remembering to look at it. And the best way to remember to look at it is to make looking at it what you would do anyway. For example, I keep a stack of books on my desk, with the ones I’m currently reading on top. When I need a book to read, I just grab the top one off the stack.

I do the same thing with TV/movies. Whenever I hear about a movie I should watch, I put it in a special folder on my computer. Now whenever I feel like watching TV, I just open up that folder.

I’ve also thought about some more intrusive ways of doing this. For example, a web page that pops up with a list of articles in my “to read” folder whenever I try to check some weblogs. Or maybe even a window that pops up with work suggestions occasionally for me to see when I’m goofing off.

Make your time higher quality

Making the best use of the time you have can only get you so far. The much more important problem is making more higher quality time for yourself. Most people’s time is eaten up by things like school and work. Obviously if you attend one of these, you should stop. But what else can you do?

Ease physical constraints
Carry pen and paper
Pretty much everyone interesting I know has some sort of pocket notebook they carry at all times. Pen and paper is immediately useful in all kinds of circumstances — if you need to write something down for somebody, take notes on something, scratch down an idea, and so on. I’ve even written whole articles in the subway.1

(I used to do this, but now I just carry my computerphone everywhere. It doesn’t let me give people information physically, but it makes up for it by giving me something to read all the time (email) and pushing my notes straight into my email inbox, where I’m forced to deal with them right away.)

Avoid being interrupted
For tasks that require serious focus, you should avoid getting interrupted. One simple way is to go somewhere interrupters can’t find you. Another is to set up an agreement with the people around you: “don’t bother me when the door is closed” or “IM me if I have headphones on” (and then you can ignore the IMs until you’re free).

You don’t want to overdo it. Sometimes if you’re really wasting time you should be distracted. It’s a much better use of time to help someone else with their problem than it is to sit and read the news. That’s why setting up specific agreements is a good idea: you can be interrupted when you’re not really focusing.

Ease mental constraints
Eat, sleep, exercise
Time when you’re hungry or tired or twitchy is low-quality time. Improving it is simple: eat, sleep, and exercise. Yet I somehow manage to screw up even this. I don’t like going to get food, so I’ll often work right through being hungry and end up so tired out that I can’t bring myself to go get food.2

It’s tempting to say to yourself, “I know I’m tired but I can’t take a nap — I have work to do”. In fact, you’ll be much more productive if you do take that nap, since you’ll improve the quality of the day’s remaining time and you were going to have to sleep sometime anyway.

I don’t really exercise much so I’m probably not the best person to give advice on that bit, but I do try to work it in where I can. While I’m lying down reading, I do situps. And when I need to go somewhere on foot, I run.

Talk to cheerful people
Easing mental constraints is much harder. One thing that helps is having friends who are cheerful. For example, I always find myself much more inclined to work after talking to Paul Graham or Dan Connolly — they just radiate energy. It’s tempting to think that you need to get away from people and shut yourself off in your room to do any real work, but this can be so demoralizing that it’s actually less efficient.

Share the load
Even if your friends aren’t cheerful, just working on a hard problem with someone else makes it much easier. For one thing, the mental weight gets spread across both people. For another, having someone else there forces you to work instead of getting distracted.

Procrastination and the mental force field
But all of this is sort of dodging the issue. The real productivity problem people have is procrastination. It’s something of a dirty little secret, but everyone procrastinates — severely. It’s not just you. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to stop it.

What is procrastination? To the outside observer, it looks like you’re just doing something “fun” (like playing a game or reading the news) instead of doing your actual work. (This usually causes the outside observer to think you’re lazy and bad.) But the real question is: what’s going on inside your head?

I’ve spent a bunch of time trying to explore this and the best way I can describe it is that your brain puts up a sort of mental force field around a task. Ever play with two magnets? If you orient the magnets properly and try to push them towards each other, they’ll repel fiercely. As you move them around, you can sort of feel out the edges of the magnetic field. And as you try to bring the magnets together, the field will push you back or off in another direction.

The mental block seems to work in the same way. It’s not particularly solid or visible, but you can sort of feel it around the edges. And the more you try to go towards it the more it pushes you away. And so, not surprisingly, you end up going in another direction.3

And just as you can’t get two repelling magnets to sit together just by pushing real hard — they’ll fling back as soon as you stop pushing — I’ve never been able to overcome this mental force field through sheer willpower. Instead, you have to be sneaky about it — you have to rotate a magnet.

So what causes the mental force field? There appear to be two major factors: whether the task is hard and whether it’s assigned.

Hard problems
Break it down
The first kind of hard problem is the problem that’s too big. Say you want to build a recipe organizing program. Nobody can really just sit down and build a recipe organizer. That’s a goal, not a task. A task is a specific concrete step you can take towards your goal. A good first task might be something like “draw a mockup of the screen that displays a recipe”. Now that’s something you can do.4

And when you do that, the next steps become clearer. You have to decide what a recipe consists of, what kind of search features are needed, how to structure the recipe database, and so on. You build up a momentum, each task leading to the next. And as your brain gets crunching on the subject, it becomes easier to solve that subject’s problems.

For each of my big projects, I think of all the tasks I can do next for them and add them to my categorized todo list (see above). And when I stop working on something, I add its next possible tasks to the todo list.

Simplify it
Another kind of hard problem is the one that’s too complicated or audacious. Writing a book seems daunting, so start by doing an essay. If an essay is too much, start by writing a paragraph summary. The important thing is to have something done right away.

Once you have something, you can judge it more accurately and understand the problem better. It’s also much easier to improve something that already exists than to work at a blank page. If your paragraph goes well, then maybe it can grow into an essay and then into a book, little by little, a perfectly reasonable piece of writing all the way through..

Think about it
Often the key to solving a hard problem will be getting some piece of inspiration. If you don’t know much about the field, you should obviously start by researching it — see how other people did things, get a sense of the terrain. Sit and try and understand the field fully. Do some smaller problems to see if you have a handle on it.

Assigned problems
Assigned problems are problems you’re told to work on. Numerous psychology experiments have found that when you try to “incentivize” people to do something, they’re less likely to do it and do a worse job. External incentives, like rewards and punishments, kills what psychologists call your “intrinsic motivation” — your natural interest in the problem. (This is one of the most thoroughly replicated findings of social psychology — over 70 studies have found that rewards undermine interest in the task.)5 People’s heads seem to have a deep avoidance of being told what to do.6

The weird thing is that this phenomenon isn’t just limited to other people — it even happens when you try to tell yourself what to do! If you say to yourself, “I should really work on X, that’s the most important thing to do right now” then all of the sudden X becomes the toughest thing in the world to make yourself work on. But as soon as Y becomes the most important thing, the exact same X becomes much easier.

Create a false assignment
This presents a rather obvious solution: if you want to work on X, tell yourself to do Y. Unfortunately, it’s sort of difficult to trick yourself intentionally, because you know you’re doing it.7 So you’ve got to be sneaky about it.

One way is to get someone else to assign something to you. The most famous instance of this is grad students who are required to write a dissertation, a monumentally difficult task that they need to do to graduate. And so, to avoid doing this, grad students end up doing all sorts of other hard stuff.

The task has to both seem important (you have to do this to graduate!) and big (hundreds of pages of your best work!) but not actually be so important that putting it off is going to be a disaster.

Don’t assign problems to yourself
It’s very tempting to say “alright, I need to put all this aside, hunker down and finish this essay”. Even worse is to try to bribe yourself into doing something, like saying “alright, if I just finish this essay then I’ll go and eat some candy”. But the absolute worst of all is to get someone else to try to force you to do something.

All of these are very tempting — I’ve done them all myself — but they’re completely counterproductive. In all three cases, you’ve basically assigned yourself a task. Now your brain is going to do everything it can to escape it.

Make things fun
Hard work isn’t supposed to be pleasant, we’re told. But in fact it’s probably the most enjoyable thing I do. Not only does a tough problem completely absorb you while you’re trying to solve it, but afterwards you feel wonderful having accomplished something so serious.

So the secret to getting yourself to do something is not to convince yourself you have to do it, but to convince yourself that it’s fun. And if it isn’t, then you need to make it fun.

I first got serious about this when I had to write essays for college. Writing essays isn’t a particularly hard task, but it sure is assigned. Who would voluntarily write a couple pages connecting the observations of two random books? So I started making the essays into my own little jokes. For one, I decided to write each paragraph in its own little style, trying my best to imitate various forms of speech. (This had the added benefit of padding things out.)8

Another way to make things more fun is to solve the meta-problem. Instead of building a web application, try building a web application framework with this as the example app. Not only will the task be more enjoyable, but the result will probably be more useful.

Conclusion

There are a lot of myths about productivity — that time is fungible, that focusing is good, that bribing yourself is effective, that hard work is unpleasant, that procrastinating is unnatural — but they all have a common theme: a conception of real work as something that goes against your natural inclinations.

And for most people, in most jobs, this may be the case. There’s no reason you should be inclined to write boring essays or file pointless memos. And if society is going to force you to do so anyway, then you need to learn to shut out the voices in your head telling you to stop.

But if you’re trying to do something worthwhile and creative, then shutting down your brain is entirely the wrong way to go. The real secret to productivity is the reverse: to listen to your body. To eat when you’re hungry, to sleep when you’re tired, to take a break when you’re bored, to work on projects that seem fun and interesting.

It seems all too simple. It doesn’t involve any fancy acronyms or self-determination or personal testimonials from successful businessmen. It almost seems like common sense. But society’s conception of work has pushed us in the opposite direction. If we want to be more productive, all we need to do is turn around.

Further reading

If you want to learn more about the pscyhology of motivation, there is nothing better than Alfie Kohn. He’s written many articles on the subject and an entire book, Punished by Rewards, which I highly recommend.

I hope to address how to quit school in a future essay, but you should really just go out and pick up The Teenage Liberation Handbook. If you’re a computer person, one way to quit your job is by applying for funding from Y Combinator. Meanwhile, Mickey Z’s book The Murdering of My Years features artists and activists describing how they manage to make ends meet while still doing what they want.

Notes

Believe it or not, I actually have written in subways. It’s easy to come up with excuses as to why you’re not actually working — you don’t have enough time before your next appointment, people are making noise downstairs, etc. — but I find that when the inspiration strikes me, I can actually write stuff down on a subway car, where it’s absurdly loud and I only have a couple minutes before I have to get out and start walking. ?

The same problem exists for sleep. There’s nothing worse than being too tired to go to bed — you just feel like a zombie. ?

Now it turns out I experience this same phenomenon in another area: shyness. I often don’t want to call a stranger up on the phone or go talk to someone at a party and I have the exact same mental field pushing me off in some other direction. I suspect this might be because shyness is also a trait that results from a problematic childhood. (See “Assigned problems”.) Of course, this is all very speculative. ?

While the terminology I use here (“next concrete step”) is derived from David Allen’s Getting Things Done, a lot of the principles here are (perhaps even unconsciously) applied in Extreme Programming (XP). Extreme Programming is presented as this system for keeping programs organized, but I find that a lot of it is actually good advice for avoid procrastination.

For example, pair programming automatically spreads the mental weight of the task across two people as well as giving people something useful to do during lower-quality time. Breaking a project down into concrete steps is another key part of XP, as is getting something that works done right away and improving on it (“Simplify it” infra). And these are just the things that aren’t programming-specific. ?

For a fantastic overview of the literature, see Alfie Kohn, Punished By Rewards. This specific claim is drawn from his article Challenging Behaviorist Dogma: Myths About Money and Motivation. ?

I originally simply assumed this was somehow biological, but Paul Graham pointed out it’s more likely learned. When you’re little, your parents try their best to manipulate you. They say do your homework and your mind tries to wriggle free and think about something else. Soon enough the wriggling becomes habit. Either way, it’s going to be a tough problem to fix. I’ve given up trying to change this; now I try to work around it. ?

Richard Feynman tells a story about how he was trying to explore his own dreams, much the way I’ve tried to explore my own procrastination. Each night, he’d try to observe what happened to himself as he fell asleep:

I’m dreaming one night as usual, making observations, … and then I realize I’ve been sleeping with the back of my head against a brass rod. I put my hand behind my head and I feel that the back of my head is soft. I think, “Aha! That’s why I’ve been able to make all these observations in my dreams: the brass rod has disturbed my visual cortex. All I have to do is sleep with a brass rod under my head and I can make these observations any time I want. So I think I’ll stop making observations on this one and go into deeper sleep.”

When I woke up later, there was no brass rod, nor was the back of my head soft. Somehow … my brain had invented false reasons as to why I shouldn’t [observe my dreams] any more. (Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, 50)

Your brain is a lot more powerful than you are. ?

So, for example, instead of writing “By contrast, Riis doesn’t quote many people.”, I wrote: “Riis, however, whether because of a personal deficit in the skill-based capacity required for collecting aurally-transmitted person-centered contemporaneous ethnographies into published paper-based informative accounts or simply a lack of preference for the reportage of community-located informational correspondents, demonstrates a total failure in producing a comparable result.”