How To Increase Productivity: Stop Fiddling
I am a fiddler. No, not the kind with strings, I fiddle with my work setup constantly. Maybe it’s the inner geek in me, or maybe just the desire to maximize my working methods. Whatever is behind it I know it’s an obsession, and not usually a productive one.
I work at my computer over 8 hours a day, and I am constantly fiddling with my setup to make it “just a little more productive.” I swap the screen layout around, reconfigure core apps to display things a little bit differently. I try new utilities and programs as soon as I hear about them just in case one is that “killer app.”
My infidelity to a given web browser is legendary, as I swap them around with abandon. I may use Firefox one day, followed by Safari the next, and Google Chrome after the others. I usually use a different browser on OS X than I do on Windows. It’s a tinkerer’s heaven.
Being platform agnostic has a lot of benefits, not the least of which is it provides me with multiple operating systems to tinker around with. If I ever perfected one of my setups to the point it could not be further improved, I’d still have one or more OSes to fiddle with. It’s a rather brilliant strategy for an obsessive-compulsive fiddler.
The truth is — what is really productive is to leave everything alone. My system at any given time is pretty darn efficient, and I almost always spend more time with the fiddling than I gain by any improvements. I can honestly state that those weeks I just do the work at hand and don’t fiddle with my arrangements are generally my most productive weeks. They are definitely my most peaceful ones. Sometimes it makes more sense to just get to work, not try to make it better.
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I’m sitting here trying to get my projector working with my Linux box and reading your post and I think I can relate.
My last notebooks served me for five years. The amount of tweaking I did to it over that time was something I simply could not replicate on my new system. Be as it be, I decided to “keep things simple”.
On my old setup I had at least 100 shortcuts on my desktop. On the new machine I decided to consolidate those into 3 folders. Finding things is just as easy, but at least now I have a wallpaper (dream scene) to enjoy!
When it comes to windows itself, I do little to it initially. But the mass of updates and application updates over time do add up. With the apps I use, I generally set them up once after install and then rarely tinker with them. Of course, if I learn a new trick I will apply that very quickly.
The only time I really get into “fiddling” with my system is when something goes belly-up. It’s usually those times I find myself inside control panel, device manager, msconfig and regedit, all at the same time. Granted, Vista’s ability to diagnose problems is FAR better than the endless crashes and BSOD’s XP gave me. While I’ve never had the need to reinstall XP in 5 years of use on my old notebook, I’m glad those days are over.
Another one of the reasons I just work in a browser as much as possible and keep it simple. My environment rarely changes this way. :)
As a full-time system administrator, I can’t help but constantly tinker with setups. I have dozens of exported registry settings exported to a “Super Tweaks.reg” file that I’ve compiled over the years along with a series of batch files that use command-line functions to optimize system performance… it’s important to me to know how to get every last bit of performance from my systems, and since I standardize on a particular model every year, I get plenty of chance to test and tweak.
However, my toolkit of applications is fairly standardized in terms of software and configuration, and I change it only out of necessity… I’m more of a “best of” type of user based on what’s going to make my work and supportability for users easier.
But your job is to write about it so “we” know what works
For the pejorative ‘tinkering’ read curiosity, creativity, mental stimulation, a necessary break from working the coal face, something that stops you becoming stale and fatigued and ultimately improves your work rather than detracting from it. Let the robots smugly shake their heads, humans have more fun! Of course you can always have too much of a good thing :-)
I could have written that myself, about myself … Every sentence, every word … But do I feel bad about it? Only very occasionally. And the rest of the time I enjoy the fiddling enormously :-)
And there it is in a nutshell. It’s just so much fun tinkering with everything. :)
James,
I think it is the fact that you tinker, change, experiment and play with your gadgets, which gives you the ability to write your articles to the degree of success you currently do. the thing is that your work greatly involves the need to find out about technology but you also use the same technology to produce something constructive e.g. writing the articles we readers enjoy. I can understand that sometimes the experimenting and tinkering may overlap the time that you feel you should be writing your reports/articles but remember that it can easily be the other way around and your articles could grow stale as a result.
I know it’s easier said than done but i believe the trick is to generally balance the two out but not to the degree where your strict about your time keeping. Of course you will spend more time experimenting with something thats new and interesting but remember that us humans grow bored quickly and you will find that the extra hours you put into playing with a new gadget/app will give you the ability to write a great in-depth article about it for readers to enjoy when that boredom kicks in :)
Yay! Another case for more tinkering. :)
I think it all comes down to the fact that people can’t multitask. We can task switch fairly efficiently at best, but even then the constant switches of attention will have anyone working far far below what they could be doing with focus. Basically, we need to re-learn how to just do one thing properly at a time instead of the ADHD-like approach that’s just not working as well.
For a person writing about tech perhaps there needs to be tinkering time and then focus while actually writing about them, who knows, but most of us would do well to work on focus, I think.
my tinkering allows me to understand and answer all of the problems that people at work and home are stuck with. We tinkerers work things out so that the majority can leverage our experience (pay us for:)). and we drive the manufacturers and developers to work harder to incorporate what we find. always tinker:)
But Croft we are not all the same. Some of us have minds that like to flit and I reckon it enriches life as much as it ham-strings productivity. Talking of ADHD check out the ‘Hunter vs Farmer theory’. Perhaps James has something of the Hunter in him, restlessly scanning the horizon for woolly mammoths to chase when he ought to have his head down ploughing yet another darn furrow.
I have, in the past, spent hours researching some boffo piece of software I just had to have. Sometimes it was worth it, once it led to a spectacular crash that took me hours to figure out (this was in the Mac days of extension conflicts). It always involved too much time! So I am completely sympathetic to the fiddler point of view. I’m currently trying to figure out ways to work more productively and am reading a preview copy of a book to do just that: “Master Your Workday Now” by Michael Linenberger. (He wrote a big book on using Outlook, too — I don’t use that program, though.) You’ll like it because he teaches about new ways of sorting tasks, so you know what’s really important and what’s not, and you avoid false emergencies and urgencies. Plus the book teaches about a new way of listing tasks so the most important ones are visible and doable. I like lists (and have wasted more time than I can comprehend on finding the best system) — so this is great for me!. You fiddle on system, and I fiddle on software. It’s a sickness sometimes…