As someone with a various cocktail of (admittedly well-managed) mental illnesses, I actually find this post very helpful! I’ve often observed a lack of correlation between the pain someone is enduring and their overall productiveness/life enjoyment/etc. I think this is a really useful way to address that the reason this doesn’t correlate is because there really isn’t a correlation.
I wonder if you have any thoughts on better units of effort to use instead (either convoluted ones to ponder or Quick Tricks that could be quickly implemented into one’s mental framework) ?
For activities that feel effortful, I mostly measure effort by time put in, usually in units of 25-minute Pomodoros. I think correcting “I will work on this until I feel unhappy/tired” as the standard for satisfaction to “I will work on this for 2 Pomodoros” is a big step.
To answer that question, it might help to consider when you even need to measure effort. Off the cuff, I’m not actually sure there are any (?). Maybe you’re an employer and you need to measure how much effort your employees are putting in? But on second thought that’s actually a classic case where you don’t need to measure effort, and you only need to measure results.
As someone with a various cocktail of (admittedly well-managed) mental illnesses, I actually find this post very helpful! I’ve often observed a lack of correlation between the pain someone is enduring and their overall productiveness/life enjoyment/etc. I think this is a really useful way to address that the reason this doesn’t correlate is because there really isn’t a correlation.
I wonder if you have any thoughts on better units of effort to use instead (either convoluted ones to ponder or Quick Tricks that could be quickly implemented into one’s mental framework) ?
For activities that feel effortful, I mostly measure effort by time put in, usually in units of 25-minute Pomodoros. I think correcting “I will work on this until I feel unhappy/tired” as the standard for satisfaction to “I will work on this for 2 Pomodoros” is a big step.
To answer that question, it might help to consider when you even need to measure effort. Off the cuff, I’m not actually sure there are any (?). Maybe you’re an employer and you need to measure how much effort your employees are putting in? But on second thought that’s actually a classic case where you don’t need to measure effort, and you only need to measure results.
(Disclaimer: I have never employed anybody.)