What's More Productive: Counting Hours or Tasks Accomplished? - Deepstash
Productivity Systems

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Productivity Systems

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Constraints and productivity

If you make work a scarcer quantity, you’re more likely to use time wisely and get things done than if it feels like an endless to-do list.

And you cand do this by restricting your hours or restricting your workload.

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Time vs workload

  • Restricting hours: set aside a certain chunk of time for work and don’t work outside of it. For example, the Pomodoro technique for working in short bursts of time.
  • Restricting workload: instead of deciding on a set number of hours, you decide on a set number of tasks. 

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Constraining time

The biggest advantage of constraining time is that it’s always unambiguous. If you decide to work for three hours and then stop, there’s no confusion there.

Disadvantage: time constraints can encourage a sloppier attitude towards work. For example, you might decide to spend all day studying in the library—but without tasks to constrain your productivity, you end up checking your phone.

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When time constraints work best

  • It’s unclear the time and effort required to complete the task.
  • The work itself is ambiguous and may require a lot of trial-and-error.
  • The work is continuous and can’t be easily divided into discrete chunks.

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Constraining tasks

The advantage of constraining tasks is that it focuses directly on the object of productivity: whatever you’re trying to accomplish: you can't fool yourself into believing you’re working hard but you’re not actually accomplishing much.

Disadvantage: tasks can often be ambiguous or hard to predict. If you fail to predict properly you might create to-do lists that are unachievable or those that are trivial.

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When task constraints work best

  • Tasks are discrete and fairly predictable.
  • You might be tempted to fill up time without making real progress
  • The tasks are frequently repeated, and therefore easier to estimate.

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