Why I Don’t Consume Productivity Content Anymore | MIT PhD Candidate, ADHD

[@JordanHarrod]

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[@benmwaba2735]

I stopped reading self help and productivity books for three reasons: 1. As a Zambian, I found most of the content overly specific to American situations. 2. I often felt like the writers are often communicating from place of privilege, without realizing it. 3. I often find them unrealistic.

[@SaImanKayani]

Hello, Ben. Sorry for the late comment, but how do you find Robert Greene's books?

[@Lean-zj1nl]

As a Greek student, I agree with you on all 3 points. You can't possibly "timeblock" your day when your bus one day decides to show up 15min late. You can't keep your phone on silent when your siblings depend on you, for example (I'm an only child but I've met people like that).. So yeah. Thanks for the comment

[@RazorSkinned86]

The sheer volume of self help books is a uniquely American phenomenon and the history of how the trend came to be is much more interesting than the genre itself. Needless to say, the origins of it are rather dark and tied to a group of east coast industrialists seeking to reshape the culture of the American working class. If as an American you have ever taken a job in France, Spain, or Italy... the differences in working class culture (and what jobs are considered working class) is stark when compared to the US.

[@ratmatz]

This almost sounds like it could be an episode on Behind the Bastards

[@JordanHarrod]

wait this is literally my favorite podcast and I'd love to see Robert cover this if it warrants an episode

[@davidchess1985]

Excellent; this seems very wise. Most of these books are written by people with lots of confidence, and sometimes interesting experiences, but little or no qualification to generalize their own thoughts and experiences into truths for anyone else. Search within! :)

[@ninasmith-pd8fv]

I would adore a video on tips to be productive with ADHD in the sciences with an emphasis on post-secondary schooling! Love your content.

[@dmystfy]

I’d like this too!

[@DampeS8N]

I feel like a lot of people -- especially very productive and accomplished people -- think they could be doing more and try to end-round their own biological limitations with self-help and productivity enhancements. They stress about how they choose to spend their free time, or the fact that they aren't totally productive all day or every day. It is ok to slow down. It is ok to take care of yourself. Sometimes your brain just needs to be doing other things and while you can work against your natural activity levels on the short term; in the end the piper comes to collect. My life got a lot happier and ironically more productive when I gave up on trying to accomplish more than I can. And somehow along the way I became a lead developer and am about to self publish a novel. I even managed to write that novel in less than a year, sometimes only writing 1000 words a week.

[@emperorchopchop7726]

I had a self-help book phase too and i realized that they ended up having almost the opposite effect. Reading them just reinforced the thought I needed to help myself and over the long term it ended up errording my self confidence. It also tricks you, like you think 'I've bought this book, so I'm making myself better' and you've just tricked yourself into thinking you've made progress. The reality is that everyone already knows the best way to improve themselves. Get more sleep. Get more exercise. Eat good food, but not too much. Don't drink too much. Tell your friends and family that you love them. Keep learning. If you get those things all squared away and you still think you need to improve, then go ahead and get a book...but nothing in a self help book will do anything better than those points.

[@RandomDays906]

I've found the best "self help" books are the one written by people with real world experience in actually working hard to succeed in their field. Sports Psychology books are very good for this type of content since usually most of these books are written by people w/ decades of experience in their field and they bring up great stories of how top athletes pushed through their struggles to pull out a successful outcome. Two great examples are The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey and Mind Gym by Gary Mack. What these books do differently from traditional self-help books is that they don't force any sort of rigorous formula for being successful but rather showing how there are different ways of being successful.

[@smidgenofsass7721]

I found this video because I was looking for more ADHD aimed productivity vids. LOL For me I’ve found that there is no 1 productivity system that will work for me that’s part of the ADHD in me. I neeeeed change. A routine burns me out, gets boring and makes me feel frustrated even though originally I thought it was the best thing ever!! I end up using productivity tools, videos, books to help spark motivation and ideas when I get to that point. I find it gives me enthusiasm even if it’s for a short time. I just had to learn to stop fighting when it eventually wears off. that being said I do find it frustrating that we don’t have more options that are more aimed at adhd. thanks for discussing the issue with a lot of these self help things!!

[@Neferfifi21]

I don't like self help books in general and I don't think I ever read one that is about the productivity specifically (though I was tempted to read atomic habits) because from a writing standpoint they are just boring. It's like they have a few points that they somehow manage to stretch into hundreds of pages and I can't stand that. If you hear about a good self help book, you can probably search on youtube and you will find a video of someone giving you the outline in 3 minutes.

[@Dave-cg9li]

I also have ADHD and also spent a lot of time last year watching productivity content. I ended up procrastinating watching it and sometimes the methods they suggested ended up making me slower because it just wasn't my style of working/studying. But in retrospect, I started taking organised noted for the first time (in Obsidian). And zotero has significantly helped me organise my academic reading lists, so I would say I ended up being better off in the end.

[@skybluskyblueify]

Not sure if this "productivity" but the book How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing - by KC Davis is a book written by an autistic person that is kind of the opposite of hustle culture in certain ways. It starts off saying that care tasks are morally neutral. Each chapter is about two pages and the book is only ~150 pages.

[@JordanHarrod]

I have a similar book called Cleaning Sucks!

[@skybluskyblueify]

@@JordanHarrod I just bought a used copy. Thanks for the idea.

[@BrooksMoses]

Also along those lines: _The Joy of Leaving Your Sh*t All Over The Place_, by Jennifer McCartney. According to my partner, it looks sort of like it's just a spoof on the surface, but there is actually a lot of real advice in it -- and, beyond the advice, real justification for why being "messy" is something that can have value.

[@pollyhasanasbo]

Self help content rubs me up the wrong way because it feels kind of... exploitative? Like "buy my book so you can learn how to be successful like me!!" When really they're successful bc of privilege and luck not bc they wake up at 4am and eat a whole raw egg or whatever

[@EveLaRiccia]

Since you mention multiple burnout periods, does that mean you have methods that helped you recover repeatedly? Would you share them in a video sometime?

[@ezasokotela7523]

Burnt out a lot as well. Would be nice to hear about how others recover. I try to sleep hard, consume alcohol while watching movies to get me to sleep. Hard to recover especially when you can't get a week off.

[@JordanHarrod]

The short answer is a lot of therapy, the long answer would probably be a 40 min video lol

[@thePronto]

Isn't 'productivity content' a recursive oxymoron? You can save time by not wasting time on it.

[@AJAZZist]

Thanks for the video and Oi from Brazil!

[@MichaelSchwarzbacha]

I guess you changed your mind about Ultralearning? ;p For real though, it's great to take a step back and recognize whenever you've learned a lesson or skill to actually apply it instead of trying to re-learn the lesson or skill. It can be hard to recognize when to step out and learn from direct experience instead of osmosis.

[@JordanHarrod]

Nope! I actually still like Ultralearning because of its focus on meta-learning

[@ItsMePhoebe]

I also have Adhd, I was wondering (if it's not too personal), do you take medication? Hahah I (ironically, based on this video title) would be really interested to hear what productivity hacks you've mainly taken away from those books and what has worked for you (since you also have Adhd) ^^

[@JordanHarrod]

I used to, but these days I don’t! I also have a ton of control over my schedule though, so it makes it a lot easier to function without meds.

[@ItsMePhoebe]

​@@JordanHarrod Do you mind if I ask how long you've been without medication? (Haha I'm currently planning on watching the other productivity videos you have on your channel and am unmedicated myself (couldn't have Adhd medicine due to clashing with other conditions so I have never tried medicine)). Thanks for your previous reply btw! ☺

[@JordanHarrod]

About six months? I was taking meds for a little over a year, but they were causing insomnia which made my depression way worse so my psychiatrist took me off of them

[@SilkNeon]

I also have ADHD if you want additional experience. I didn’t know until I was about 28 (4 years ago) and medication started 2 years ago. Medication for me has been almost perfect. It’s like a headache I didn’t know was there is now gone. Was on adderall but switch to concerta due to potential blood pressure concerns (false alarm but I think I prefer concerta). It also negatively affects my sleep so I alternate taking it every other day and take caffeine the other day. I try to have a day without either every once in a while to verify I’m not sleep deprived, it’s hard to notice otherwise. There were a whole bunch of behavioral tricks I picked up before medication that only became more powerful afterwards. The behavioral tricks are how my therapist identified the ADHD. It’s kinda really hard to recommend the books that led to the system I have built over the years. Some of them are outdated or toxic now that I look back. And my system itself is now very tailored to me. Support what I’m weak at and get out of the way where I don’t need it. If you’re having trouble doing anything at all (which happened to me and is what started my system building), possibly Getting Things Done could be a good read. Lots of interesting tools to externally track what you want to accomplish. Even so, it took a good therapist to really help me. I would find a “good system” and then it would get overloaded and eventually collapse under its weight and I’d have to start over with a new system. Therapist helped me “practice flexibility” and also helped me identify my dissociative tendencies (I would “other” my “lazy” self). Also, meditation helped a lot, though I don’t know if I could’ve picked up the habit without medication (and also the book “the Mind Illuminated” which really explained what I was trying to do).

[@dmystfy]

@@SilkNeon thank you for the detail. I’m getting tested for adhd in two weeks

[@benb4824]

Hey Jordan, Sry to bother you but I really like your sweater! I suffer from migraine myself, so would be very nice to know where you bought it. Thanks for the content :)

[@JordanHarrod]

My sweater is from seethewayisee.com/ !

[@benb4824]

@@JordanHarrod Thank you very much!

[@GBlunted]

Crazy that a firetruck passed my open window @3:35 and I didn't hear what was said for at least 10 seconds; which would have been fine, except for the fact I noticed a special effect had been implemented in post in which black bars inserted around the border on all sides had sightly reduced the overall effective viewing size of the video, for maybe 5 of the 10 seconds I couldn't hear the TV but not knowing what you were saying that had warranted the nifty VFX edit, I just had to rewind the video to @3:35 and hear what you were saying there lol... 🤔🚒🙉🔈🚨⏪😒

[@Chymistry]

I feel the same way

[@JoshuaKimbrough]

Soon, Dr Harrod??

[@JordanHarrod]

😂 Not for another two years or so

[@whotfisliz]

am three moths late to this, but i LOVE this video!

[@SilkNeon]

Cal Newport is an author I’m really happy I started with. Feels like he’s often going where I need to be. He’s been talking regularly about “slow productivity” lately and after having a bad addiction to work I’m all for the slow productivity. He’s not perfect by any means. His partnering with Scott Young, whom is super hustle culture, is a bit annoying. I’ve been working on my productivity system as well. Trying to be good about doing all my important “maintenance” things (including fun) every day and have been working on purely positive reinforcement. I’ve become a mentor in my profession now and one of my mentees described me in a way that I really adore, “a gentle, pleasant breeze always encouraging me to be who I want to be.” I’m hoping to be that on purpose, even to myself. I also have ADHD and actually learning how to do things like others “just do it” is a goal. I’ve kinda figured out some good coping strategies. Good enough that I’ve guided some mentees to a more workable state, I think. I also try to let them know I’ll be understanding. Tell them how I used to watch KZbin all day and not understand why. That I won’t fire or judge them for it if they have similar things they may be scared or uncomfortable sharing.

[@_Bianca]

🌟

[@psikeyhackr6914]

Productive at what? How does this society really work anyway? The Screwing of the Average Man (1974) by David Hapgood

[@bigsarge2085]

👍👍