这是一篇Aaron Swartz很早时写的一篇博文，叫做《HOWTO: Be more productive》（如何提高效率）。这篇文章写得实在是太好了，我看了好多遍，很赞同作者的观点。

另外，如果不知道Aaron Swartz，请自行百度。

先来一篇中文翻译，再来一篇英文原文。

《如何提高效率》

有人跟我说：“你花在看电视上的时间足够用来写本书了。”毫无疑问，把时间花在写书上花在看电视上更好。但这里隐含了一个假设，即时间是“可互换的”。也就是说，看电视的时间可以轻松地用来写书。但悲催的是事实并非如此。

不同的时间有不同的质量等级。如果我正走向地铁站而且忘带笔记本了，我就很难写什么文章。同样，如果你不停地被打断，也很难集中注意力。另外还有些心理和情感上的因素：有时候我心情不错，就愿意去主动做一些事；也有些时候我心情郁闷，就只能看看电视了。

如果你想变的更加有效，你必须意识到这个事实，并很好的处理它。首先，你得利用好不同类型的时间。其次，你得提高时间的质量。

1. 更有效的利用你的时间

1.1 选择好问题

生命是如此的短暂（别人这么告诉我），为什么浪费时间去做那些没有意义的事呢？做一些让你感到舒适的事是很容易的，但你应该不断地问自己为什么要做这些事呢？有没有更重要的事情等着你去做呢？为什么你不去做那些事呢？这些问题很难回答（如果你遵循这个规则，慢慢地你就不得不问自已为什么没去做那些世界上最重要的事了），但是每一个小小的进步都会让你更加有效。

这不是说你所有的时间都必须用来做那些最重要的事。我的时间肯定就不是这样的（毕竟，我现在还在写这篇文章呢）。但这是我衡量自己生活的明确标准。

1.2收集很多问题

另一个公开的秘密是：如果你认准一件事并集中精力只做这一件事，你的效率就是最高的。但我发现这是很不现实的。就以现在为例吧，我正在调整坐姿，锻炼身体，喝水，清理桌面，和我弟弟聊天，同时还在写这篇文章。今天一整天，我写了现在这篇文章，读了本书，吃了点东西，回了几封邮件，和一些朋友聊了聊天，买了点东西，改了改其他几篇文章，备份了硬盘，还整理了一下图书列表。在过去的一周里，我做了好几个不同的软件项目，读了好几本书，学习了好几种不同的编程语言，等等。

有很多不同的项目能让我能在不同质量的时间下做不同的工作。而且，在你卡壳或是厌烦的时候有其他的一些事可以做（你可以给你的大脑一些时间来放松）。

同时这会让你变得更有创造力。创造力就是把你自己从其他地方学到的东西用到你正在做的工作中。如果你同时做许多不同方向的工作，那你就会得到更多的想法和创意。

1.3列出清单

找一些不同的事同时做并不困难，大部分人都有很多很多事要做。但是如果你想把它们全部记在脑袋里的话，它们很快就会消失的。想记住所有这些事给你带来的心理压力会把你逼疯的。解决办法很简单：把它们写下来。

一旦你把要做的事列成清单，你就可以更好地进行分类组织了。例如，我的清单包括：编程、写作、思考、跑腿、阅读，聆听、观看等。

大部分项目都包括很多不同的任务。以写这篇文章为例，除了纯粹的文字写作外，还包含阅读其他关于拖延的文章，构思文章的结构，润色语句，写邮件向别人请教问题等。每一项任务都属于清单的不同部分，所以你可以在合适的时间再去做。

1.4把清单和生活结合起来

一旦你有了这个清单，你就要经常记得看它。记得看它的最好方法是把它放在你能看到的地方。例如，我总是在桌子上堆一摞书，最上面的那一本就是我最近在读的。当我想要读书的时候，我就直接把最上面的那一本抓过来。

我看电视和电影时也这么做。如果想看某部电影，我就会把它放在电脑中一个专门的文件夹里。当我想休息一下看看电影的时候，我就会打开那个文件夹。

我也想过一些更强制性的方法，比如说我想查看博客，会弹开一个页面，列出我“待读”文件夹里的文章。或者当我不小心犯了错时，就弹开一个窗口，提出工作建议。

2 提高你时间的质量

像上面那样最大限度的利用时间还远远不够，更重要的是提高你自己的时间的质量。大多数人的时间都被上学、工作之类的事情吃掉了。如果你属于其中之一，你必须停下来。但你还能做什么呢？

2.1 减轻身体上的约束

2.1.1 携带纸和笔

我认识的很多人都有随身携带笔记本之类东西的的习惯。纸和笔在很多时候都是非常有用的，你可以给某人写点什么东西、针对什么做点记录、写下自己的想法等。我甚至在地铁上写过一整篇文章。（我以前是这样的，但我现在只用带智能手机。它不用让我给人物理信息，但可以一直给我提供读的东西，我可以把笔记直接写在收件箱里）

2.1.2避免被打扰

对于那些需要集中注意力的任务，你应该避免被打扰。一个很简单的方法是去一个没人能打扰你的地方，另一个方法是告诉周围的人“关门的时候不要打扰”或“我戴耳机时给我发消息”（然后你在有空的时候再看消息）

这一点不要做过了。当你浪费时间的时候你反倒应该被打扰一下，帮助别人解决问题肯定比坐在那里看新闻更好的利用了时间。所以可以达成一个专门的协议：当你没有集中精力的时候你可以被打扰。

2.2减轻心理上的约束

2.2.1吃、睡和锻炼

当你感到很饿、很累、很焦躁的时候，你的时间的质量会很低。解决这个问题很简单，就是：吃、睡和锻炼。但我有时候做得不好，虽然觉得很饿了，但我还是一直工作而不想吃东西，结果最后实在太累了都没法吃东西了。

对自己说“虽然我很累了，但我不能休息，因为我必须要工作”会让你觉得自己很努力，但事实上休息之后你的效率会更高。既然你迟早都要睡觉，还不如先休息好，再来提高剩余时间内的效率。

我锻炼其实不多，所以不好给出建议，但我仍尽力做好。我躺着读书时，我就做仰卧起坐。我要步行去什么地方时，我就跑步。

2.2.2 与快乐的人谈话

减轻精神负担是很难的，与快乐的人做朋友可起到帮助。比如，我在和Palu Graham或Dan Connolly交谈后总是更乐于工作，他们总是释放正能量。也许有人愿意关在屋子里埋头苦干，不与其他人接触，他们觉得这样时间才没有被“浪费”，但事实上这会让他们变得情绪低落，工作效率也会大大下降。

2.2.3 分担压力

即便你的朋友不能给你带来快乐，和其他人一起做事也会让难题变简单。一方面，精神上的压力大家可以互相分担，另一方面，和其他人在一起可以让你专注于工作而不是时常分心。

2.3拖延和精神力场

上面所说的那些并不是问题的核心，关于效率大家最大的问题还是“拖延”。虽然很多人不承认，但是几乎所有人都会或多或少拖延，不只是你。但这不意味着你不必避免它。

拖延是什么？从旁观者来看，你在玩（如玩游戏，看新闻）而不是在做事，这让别人以为你很懒、很糟糕。但问题的关键是：为什么会这样呢？你的脑子里究竟是怎么想的？

我花了很多时间来研究这件事，我能给出的最好解释是你的大脑赋予每项任务一种“精神力场”。你玩过两块磁铁相互作用吗？如果你让它们异极相对，他们就会相互排斥，你会感到他们之间的磁场力。你越是想要把它们合在一起，越会感到它们之间的排斥。

精神上也是类似。你看不见摸不着它，但你却可以感受到它的存在。你越是想要接近它，它会离你越远。

你不可能通过蛮力来克服两个场之间的排斥力，你一不用力了它们就会转过来。我也从来没有通过纯粹的自制力来克服这种精神力场。其实，你不应该强制，你应该悄悄地调转方向。

那又是什么产生了这种精神力场呢？似乎有两个主要原因：任务是否艰巨，任务是否是被指派的。

2.3.1 艰巨的任务

2.3.1.1 把任务细分

一个任务很艰巨的原因之一是这个任务很庞大。比如说你想要做一个菜谱构造程序，没有人能坐下来就完成一个菜谱构造器。这是一个目标，不是一项任务。任务是使你能够朝向目标更迈进的具体步骤。一个好的任务应该类似于“画出展示菜谱的屏幕的模型”，这是你能够立即做的。

当你完成了一个任务后，下一步就会变得更加清晰。你将会考虑一个菜谱由什么构成，你需要什么样的搜索机制，如何构建菜谱的数据库，等等。这样你就构建了一个引擎，每一个任务都会通向下一个任务。

对于每一个大项目，我都会考虑我需要完成一系列什么样的任务，并且将这些任务加入到我分类的待办事项列表中去。同样，当我做完一些任务之后，我会把接下来需要完成的任务再加入任务列表中去。

2.3.1.2简化任务

另一个让任务变得艰巨的原因就是它太复杂了。写书这个任务会放你无所适从，那么就先从写文章开始吧。如果一篇文章也觉得太复杂了，那么就先写一个段落的概要吧。最重要的是真正做了一些工作，真正的有进展。

一旦你明确了你的任务之后，你就可以更清楚的判断它，更容易的理解它。完善现有的东西比从头创建东西更容易。如果你的一个段落写好了，那么一点一点积累，它会变成一篇文章，最终变成一本书。

2.3.1.3认真考虑它

通常来说解决一个难题需要些灵感。如果你对那个领域并不熟悉，你应该从研究这个领域开始，借鉴一下其他人的经验，慢慢的理解这个领域，并且做一些小的尝试看看你能否搞定这个领域。

2.3.2被指派的任务

被指派的任务是那些别人要求你做的任务。很多心理学实验都表明：当你“刺激”其他人做什么事的时候，他们反倒不容易做好那个事。奖励，惩罚等外部刺激会扼杀“内在动机”——你对于某个问题发自内心的兴趣。（这是社会心理学中最完全重复的发现之一了——70多项研究发现奖励会减弱任务的兴趣） 。人类的大脑对于被要求做的事有先天的抗拒力 。

奇怪的是这种现象不仅局限于其他人要求你做的事，当你向自己分配任务时仍然会出现这种现象。如果你对自己说“我应该好好做X工作了，这是我现在最重要的事”，之后你就会感到X突然变成了世界上最困难的事情了。然而一旦当Y变成了“最重要的事”，原来的那个X又变得简单了。

2.3.2.1虚构一个任务

如果你要完成X，那就告诉自己做Y。然而不幸的是，这样欺骗自己也很难，因为你清楚你究竟要做什么。所以你必须悄悄地做。

一个方法是让别人给你分配点什么事情。最著名的例子就是毕业生必须要写篇论文才能毕业，这是一项很难的任务，为了不做这件事，研究生结果做了很多其他很难的工作。

这项工作必须看上去非常重要（不做就不能毕业）也非常艰巨（你最好的工作写上百页），但实际上没那么重要，放下来也不会成为什么灾难。

2.3.2.2不要自己给自己布置任务

给自己布置任务看起来很诱人，比如对自己说“好吧，我要把这些放在一边，坐下来将这篇文章写完”。更糟糕的是给自己一些奖励，比如“如果我写完这篇文章，我就吃点糖果。”最糟糕的是让别人假装布置给你一些任务。

这些方式都很诱人——我自己完成了——但是这些都会让你变得更没有效。在这三种情况下，你还是在给自己布置任务，你的大脑只会去逃避它。

2.3.2.3 把事情变得有趣

困难的工作听起来不会令人感到愉悦，但事实上这可能就是最能让我感到高兴的事。一个困难的问题不但能让你集中全部注意力，而且当你完成它的时候你会感到非常棒，非常有成就感。

所以帮助自己完成一件事的秘密不是说服自己必须完成它，而是说服自己这件事确实非常有意思。如果一件事没有意思的话，你需要做的就是让它变得有意思。

我最开始认真考虑这这个问题是我在大学与论文的时候。写论文不是一个特别难的任务，但的确是被分配的。谁愿意去写什么两本毫无关系的书有什么关系呢。所以我开始将论文编到我自己的小把戏中。比如，我决定每一段都写出自己的小风格，尽力去模仿各种形式的演讲。

让事情更有趣的另一个方法是解决元问题。不要去构造一个WEB应用，而是构造一个WEB应用框架，将之作为一个示范应用。这种任务不但更有趣，而且更有用。

3 总结

高效有很多神话——什么时间是可替换的、集中精力是好的、奖励你自己是好的、艰巨的工作是不爽的，拖延是不自然的——但它们都有一个共同的主题：真实的工作违反了你内心的倾向。

对大多数人在大多数工作中，这也许成立。你没有理由写无聊的文章或归档无意义的纪要，如果社会强迫你做，你需要学会关闭你头脑中让你停止的声音。

但如果你正在做一些有意义的有创造性的事情，关闭你的大脑就是错误的。效率的真正秘密在于“聆听自己”，在你饿的时候吃饭，在你疲惫的时候睡觉，当你厌烦的时候休息一下，做那些有趣好玩的项目。

这看起来太容易了。它不包含任何花哨的缩写、或自制力、或个人的成功经验。但是社会上的一些观念正在把我们向相反的方向引导。要想变得更加有效，我们需要做的就是转过头来聆听自己。

《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 youshouldbe 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: youcanbe 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 itmucheasier. 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, buteveryoneprocrastinates — 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.

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.)5People’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 tellyourselfwhat 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.7So 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 thanAlfie Kohn. He’s writtenmany articles on the subjectand 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 upThe Teenage Liberation Handbook. If you’re a computer person, one way to quit your job is by applying for funding fromY Combinator. Meanwhile, Mickey Z’s bookThe Murdering of My Yearsfeatures artists and activists describing how they manage to make ends meet while still doing what they want.