I'm awake about 17 hours a day. Of those I'm being productive maybe 10 hours a day.
My working definition of productive is in the direction of: "things that I expect I will be glad I did once I've done them"[1].
Things that I personally find productive include
Chores
Work
Eating
Cooking
Reading a good book
Watching TV with my Wife/Kids
Playing with the kids
Socialising with friends
But not
Doomscrolling
Watching TV alone
Playing most computer games
Sitting on the couch doing nothing
Reading a book I'm not particularly interested in
etc.
If we could find a magic pill which allowed me to do productive things 17 hours a day instead of 10 without any side effects, that would be approximately equally as valuable as a commensurate increase in life expectancy. Yet the first seems much easier to solve than the second - we already have some drugs which get pretty close (caffeine, amphetamines).[2]
Now obviously the correct thing to do is both, but in the same way as we want a Manhattan project for anti-aging, we should also advocate for a Manhattan project for focusing/willpower.
The point of this definition is to include things like working on a project which failed, but exclude things like playing a computer game which I enjoy at the time but leaves me feeling drained afterwards.
actually there are dozens of ADHD type stimulants with meaningfully distinct properties that have prescribed (or studded) in humans. Far from having picked the low hanging fruit, the FDA just... stopped picking. For example, before Ketamine was approved, the last time the FDA approved an antidepressant with a new mechanism of action, was over 50 years ago.
I'm awake about 17 hours a day. Of those I'm being productive maybe 10 hours a day.
My working definition of productive is in the direction of: "things that I expect I will be glad I did once I've done them"[1].
Things that I personally find productive include
But not
etc.
If we could find a magic pill which allowed me to do productive things 17 hours a day instead of 10 without any side effects, that would be approximately equally as valuable as a commensurate increase in life expectancy. Yet the first seems much easier to solve than the second - we already have some drugs which get pretty close (caffeine, amphetamines).[2]
Now obviously the correct thing to do is both, but in the same way as we want a Manhattan project for anti-aging, we should also advocate for a Manhattan project for focusing/willpower.
The point of this definition is to include things like working on a project which failed, but exclude things like playing a computer game which I enjoy at the time but leaves me feeling drained afterwards.
I imagine "throw away your phone" will get me 90% of the way there.