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Productivity and velocity danluu.com/productivity-v

A common topic of discussion among my close friends is where the bottlenecks are in our productivity and how we can execute more quickly. This is very different from what I see in my extended social circles, where the consensus is that velocity doesn't matter. In online discussions about this, I frequently see people go a step further and assign moral valence to this, saying that it is actually bad to try to increase velocity or be more productive or work hard (see appendix for more examples).

The top reasons I see people say that productivity doesn't matter (or is actually bad) fall into one of three buckets:

* Working on the right thing is more important than working quickly
* Speed at X doesn't matter because you don't spend much time doing X
* Thinking about productivity is bad and you should "live life"

I agree that working on the right thing is important, but ...

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Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

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@danluu

Really enjoyed this, Dan, particularly the footnote on the ? of asynchrony of typing/thinking while writing. I'd love to instrument this for myself. I type at 110WPM; writing a ~5k word essay (involving original ideas) consistently takes me 5-6hrs, or 13-18WPM.

7:44 PM · Oct 15, 2021Twitter Web App

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and

I probably rewrite most sentences at least once, often two or three times, but that's still far below the 110WPM. I don't think I really can "think while typing." Typing is probably just "dead time"; if so, and if I rewrite ~2x, then I burn 90m "just typing."

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Oct 15, 2021

And so if I could increase my typing speed from 110WPM to, say, 150WPM, I could reduce that 90m to 50-60m. The whole thing is still taking me circa 5 hours. One thing I notice is that doing this roughly consumes "a day's creative work"—i.e. I can't do *another* thing afterwards.

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and

I agree that typing speed isn’t really a bottleneck, but I have wondered if a slow typing speed can reduce the fluidity (or increase the friction) to a degree that meaningfully affects the output.

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and

Did you do anything specific to train to type at 110 wpm, or is it just years of experience? I measured myself, and I’m at ~60 wpm, so I’m wondering how to improve that

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Nov 14, 2021

Nothing specific. Did Mario Teaches Typing as a kid and then spent many thousands of hours typing. Probably reached this speed around age 16. But I think proactive exercise could have gotten me there much faster.