I also have found I am way more productive when I can do something like this, and kind of want to figure out how to do more of it. Some things that make it harder than it seems like it should be:
NDAs and such
the things I most need help thinking about are usually also ones that it feels very vulnerable/kind of scary to bring someone else into
and/or are ones where domain knowledge is important, such that I’d want to ideally work with someone who knows stuff about it
general feeling of privacy/hesitation putting another human in my workflows because my workflows feel very personal (...in part because of things like ~shame around being less productive than I’d like, which is a kind of silly self-sustaining cycle but not necessarily trivial to exit)
some ways I work around this are -
coworking with friends, with work pomos and break periods where we talk about how things are going; this is an equal relationship and not one where we can get very far into the weeds on each other’s work usually, but it helps a lot to be in a shared work zone & to have explicit social ritual around talking through how things are going, which often leads to noticing possible improvements to strategy. extra good if we are all working on similar stuff, though not required
text channels for narrating my thought process, privately or to an occasional audience (or Google docs for same but with more structure)
if I keep being stuck on thinking about a given thing, talk to a friend about it
identify specific friends who are well placed to help me with specific projects & invite them to work on that specific project together for an hour or day
effort-trading where a friend and I help each other with projects on different days
It would also be nice to be able to pay for this as a service but I haven’t quite been able to convince myself to try any of this with a stranger! very likely I’d benefit from more highly prioritizing attempting to experiment with versions of this, though.
I’d sort of naively guess doing it with a stranger (esp. one not even in your circles) would be easier on the “feeling private/anxious about your productivity” – does that feel like it wouldn’t work?
no it feels scarier! I think if I’m interacting with a real live human being in person I basically always instinctively worry about what they think of me even if there’s no strong reason to, and higher uncertainty about what they think of me is more worry-causing; with friends I can somewhat lean on “well they are continuing to be friends with me so they must not be judging me too badly”, and also friends have often disclosed similar vulnerable things to me which makes it easier (I am somewhat more hesitant to share productivity details with friends who I feel are way more productive than me). also “entirely outside my circles” is likely to come with “high inferential gap about various stuff I care about”. I don’t think this all is definitely insurmountable but surmounting it is a currently slightly mysterious first step
(I think “figure out how to tolerate talking to an LLM” might be an easier inroad actually, though that’s differently aversive for me)
I also have found I am way more productive when I can do something like this, and kind of want to figure out how to do more of it. Some things that make it harder than it seems like it should be:
NDAs and such
the things I most need help thinking about are usually also ones that it feels very vulnerable/kind of scary to bring someone else into
and/or are ones where domain knowledge is important, such that I’d want to ideally work with someone who knows stuff about it
general feeling of privacy/hesitation putting another human in my workflows because my workflows feel very personal (...in part because of things like ~shame around being less productive than I’d like, which is a kind of silly self-sustaining cycle but not necessarily trivial to exit)
some ways I work around this are -
coworking with friends, with work pomos and break periods where we talk about how things are going; this is an equal relationship and not one where we can get very far into the weeds on each other’s work usually, but it helps a lot to be in a shared work zone & to have explicit social ritual around talking through how things are going, which often leads to noticing possible improvements to strategy. extra good if we are all working on similar stuff, though not required
text channels for narrating my thought process, privately or to an occasional audience (or Google docs for same but with more structure)
if I keep being stuck on thinking about a given thing, talk to a friend about it
identify specific friends who are well placed to help me with specific projects & invite them to work on that specific project together for an hour or day
effort-trading where a friend and I help each other with projects on different days
It would also be nice to be able to pay for this as a service but I haven’t quite been able to convince myself to try any of this with a stranger! very likely I’d benefit from more highly prioritizing attempting to experiment with versions of this, though.
I’d sort of naively guess doing it with a stranger (esp. one not even in your circles) would be easier on the “feeling private/anxious about your productivity” – does that feel like it wouldn’t work?
no it feels scarier! I think if I’m interacting with a real live human being in person I basically always instinctively worry about what they think of me even if there’s no strong reason to, and higher uncertainty about what they think of me is more worry-causing; with friends I can somewhat lean on “well they are continuing to be friends with me so they must not be judging me too badly”, and also friends have often disclosed similar vulnerable things to me which makes it easier (I am somewhat more hesitant to share productivity details with friends who I feel are way more productive than me). also “entirely outside my circles” is likely to come with “high inferential gap about various stuff I care about”. I don’t think this all is definitely insurmountable but surmounting it is a currently slightly mysterious first step
(I think “figure out how to tolerate talking to an LLM” might be an easier inroad actually, though that’s differently aversive for me)