11:30 AM

GND

What’s the deal with all these fucking ‘Productivity’ blogs? How have we come up with an entire caste of productivity gurus, each with their own foolproof 13 step ‘how to get things done’ system? Who, more to the point, would possibly put their faith in some idiot on the internet whose only demonstrable labor is utterly useless blog posts? These people are hardly the Buckminster Fullers of our generation; their only activity is churning out omphaloskeptic ((Zenhabits, which I had the good fortune to get linked to by Reddit, has actually reached such levels of content-free living that they have begun an extensive series of interviews with other productivity bloggers.)), entirely self-unaware (and poorly written) drivel about how they organize their socks (and, of course, about blogging). I leave out entirely the fact that GTD and its numerous brethren are, as a rule, simplistic, ineffective, and anyway ill-suited to anything but a life whose only meat is wall-to-wall trivia and minutiae.

Except Merlin. He’s cool.

And I mean, Jesus! Who the fuck cares, anyway? Where is the mass of people so fucking dull that they spend their free time pining, “If only I could be more productive! If only someone could provide me with simply daily habits, so I could answer my email faster, and save 3 minutes every time I go to the fucking supermarket!” What waste of human potential feeds this particular industry, whose chief value in life is productivity, who every day refresh their newsfeeds for new ways that their employers can squeeze more work and money out of them, being as they are obviously good for very little else?

I imagine a lot of it comes from the fact that there are so many legions of boring, undeveloped office workers (who nevertheless 15 years ago imagined themselves to be intellectuals, or at least have some talent or flair beyond accounts management), with a hard-on since childhood for technology and no actual interests, who cling desperately to the programming class they took in highschool, or maybe never took at all. Now there is an entire industry devoted to doling out the kind of ‘handy time-savers’ heretofore relegated to the back pages of Reader’s Digest, and these poor saps get to pretend that they are really ‘hacks’. They’re not ‘hacks’. They’re tupperware party fodder. You do not become a programmer, or an engineer, by making more efficient use of your toothpaste tube any more than you become a writer or a great intellectual light (or close personal friend of that eternal hack, Scoble), by demonstrating that all the wisdom you’ve accumulated in life can be summed up in 6 handy tips and posted to the 3rd spot, for 6 hours, on del.icio.us.

67 Comments

Comments

  1. You sound like a miserable prick.

    Mike on

  2. […] Man, Fuck Productivity. (apodion.net) […]

    reddit.com: what's new online on

  3. Amen, brother. 13, or 6 or 3 steps are for losers …. just see “Reach Your Goals More Easily Using One Simple Step”

    Alex on

  4. Agreed. And there are also way too many stupid ass tutorials for doing basic shit in linux or css. How to change your Ubuntu desktop wallpaper in 15 easy steps OMG!

    PENIX on

  5. This post deserves this song:

    http://bahbeck.vox.com/library/audio/6a00cd978cc23af9cc00d4141cde4e685e.html

    natron on

  6. I’m so unproductive it HURTS. AHHHH THE PAIIIN

    Shii on

  7. Well, I was not going to take this blog seriously but now that you have use the F- word liberally, I am forced to. Thank you. (not that I have anything against the F-word..whatever that means).

    Fergus on

  8. Finally a blog post that makes some sense :P Keep up the bitching it saves me hours a day from doing it myself.

    gregf on

  9. Thank you. I’ve been wondering why all the GTD crap out there was bugging me, but it hasn’t clicked until I read your post today. As if relaxing and enjoying life at a slow, easy pace makes one less of a person. Quite the contrary.

    ben on

  10. […] Delicious Rant GND What’s the deal with all these fucking ‘Productivity’ blogs? How have we come up with an […]

    Today's Delicious Rant « Mike Cane’s Blog on

  11. only drones worry about productivity procrastination is where it’s at, baby

    Jack.Walsh on

  12. Getting Nothing Done: An Open Response…

    A blogger named Z.D. Smith recently posted an entry to his blog titled “GND” (which, I can only assume, means “Getting Nothing Done”) where he (eloquently, albeit with a healthy dose of bitterness) lambastes GTD/productivity blo…

    The Cranking Widgets Blog on

  13. It’s called trolling. When you have nothing left to do with your life, you just start picking on the other guys that you see, the picking itself giving you a brand new identity and motivation. This is all there is behind this post. I don’t know the person and I’m not judging him, I onlly consider his attitude.

    Although I haven’t had the honour to be quoted in this ratholing post, I consider myself a GTD’er. Yes, I am a manager. Yes, I own my own company, which hapens to be internet related. Yes I have employees but I never teached them GTD by brute force. Only if they asked me to. And yes, wining a 3 minutes pack at the supermarket can be extremely important for me, as I consider those 3 minutes a win for my family time. And yes, my business benefits from the last 7 months of GTD. “My miserable blog” is only making 200 feed readers a day, but my network of websites (which are not even in English, oh, blasphemy!) is making a good deal of 1.000.000 (one milion) unique visitors each month. And I’m not doing porn. Although, if I had to do this, I would made it with GTD. It helps even here my friend ;-)

    Dragos on

  14. All bitching about problems and no solutions. being cynical doesn’t make you smart. I dare you to give a damn.

    healthbolt.net on

  15. Nicely done.. sometimes instead of shaving minutes off this or that task, perhaps people can ponder whether its worth doing altogether.. The fixation with the clock and calendar is pervasive..

    hrmnk on

  16. Well, you certainly did manage to say “fuck” a lot. So you’ve got that going for you.

    JS on

  17. Tip: to keep your superscripts and subscripts from screwing up your line spacing, set the line-height attribute of the sub/superscript to zero in your stylesheet.

    Frank on

  18. fuck yeah…

    duncan on

  19. Here Here!

    And to healthbolt: he did give a solution, well, demonstrated that one isn’t necessary.

    The solution is that it’s not that important to eek a tiny bit more productivity out of your life using moronic and overly simplistic sets of steps. And such extra productivity isn’t gonna make you a better programmer/writer/burger flipper.

    -dr

    dickrebel on

  20. Productivity is being yourself.

    Shaun Apple on

  21. Amen! It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who thinks this current trend of “work harder and faster and be HAPPY about it!” is a bunch of bullshit.

    The I.T. Slacker on

  22. Dude, you’re patehtic… you use a word like omphaloskeptic, it’s not even in my encarta dictionary. Pretentious asshole.

    Wouter on

  23. Been thinking along similar lines recently: Check out this post:

    http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/a-productivity-filled-day/

    It’s along the same lines without all the vitriol.

    John Wesley on

  24. And yes, wining a 3 minutes pack at the supermarket can be extremely important for me, as I consider those 3 minutes a win for my family time.

    If you consider 3 extra minutes a “win for your family time” then you have some serious problems regarding your family time!

    All bitching about problems and no solutions.

    A solution to what? He showed that the problem is NON-existent. In fact, he argues that the so-called “solution” (GTD) is what constitutes the real problem.

    foljs on

  25. Props man, I fucking hate whiney middle-aged people who complain that their lives suck.

    Phil on
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