A few weeks ago I saw Cory Doctorow speak for the third time about his latest book release for Picks & Shovels. As always, I came away with a renewed sense of admiration for the man and motivation to do good.
Doctorow is principled and intellectually honest. He constantly fights for the left and causes I believe in, like stopping enshittification and fighting against monopolies. And he is just so adept at breaking down complex ideas into easily digestible explanations while also often finding novel vulnerabilities in corporate or oligarch power that I don’t see discussed anywhere else.
A small shoutout for the book, which reflects these abilities as well — I’m about halfway through it, but it’s the best I’ve read so far of his Martin Hench novels. The book is set in the early 80s but constructs a narrative that weaves in a plausible early version of the mass enshittification we see today along with many of the other social problems still present in tech.
Since I’m always on the lookout for productivity tips (i.e., tweaking my system > using it to do the work), I’ve been dwelling on this meta blog post he did on the fifth anniversary of his current blog, pluralistic.net, where he talked about some of his media consumption habits. And then I’ve slowly been trying to incorporate them because, as with all things I read of Doctorow’s they are grounded in truth without him embellishing for effect or hiding privileges that give him more hours in the day than the rest of us.
He admits up front that he, too, sometimes gets sucked into doomscrolling, and explains that he keeps his routine to avoid losing control of his time because it sucks.
So far, I’ve developed the habit of any time I get a notification on my phone I think about whether I really want that notification to be able to interrupt me if I’m in a flow or focused state, and if not, I disable it. I already try to audit my push notifications, but his quote
Doctorow is principled and intellectually honest. He constantly fights for the left and causes I believe in, like stopping enshittification and fighting against monopolies. And he is just so adept at breaking down complex ideas into easily digestible explanations while also often finding novel vulnerabilities in corporate or oligarch power that I don’t see discussed anywhere else.
A small shoutout for the book, which reflects these abilities as well — I’m about halfway through it, but it’s the best I’ve read so far of his Martin Hench novels. The book is set in the early 80s but constructs a narrative that weaves in a plausible early version of the mass enshittification we see today along with many of the other social problems still present in tech.
Since I’m always on the lookout for productivity tips (i.e., tweaking my system > using it to do the work), I’ve been dwelling on this meta blog post he did on the fifth anniversary of his current blog, pluralistic.net, where he talked about some of his media consumption habits. And then I’ve slowly been trying to incorporate them because, as with all things I read of Doctorow’s they are grounded in truth without him embellishing for effect or hiding privileges that give him more hours in the day than the rest of us.
He admits up front that he, too, sometimes gets sucked into doomscrolling, and explains that he keeps his routine to avoid losing control of his time because it sucks.
So far, I’ve developed the habit of any time I get a notification on my phone I think about whether I really want that notification to be able to interrupt me if I’m in a flow or focused state, and if not, I disable it. I already try to audit my push notifications, but his quote
Do people really allow their devices to interrupt them on a random reinforcement schedule? I mean, no wonder the internet makes people go crazy.
really solidified the framework test I want to apply when deciding what notifications to allow.
I’ve also set up an RSS feed as he recommends. The RSS feed allows me to more confidently trust that I won’t miss anything by disabling any push notifications about content, it gives me a mechanism to read things on my time (still trying to incorporate this habit into my routine), and it lets me read things without being exposed to the temptations of any algorithmically produced feed.
And then I guess this blog post fits into his “Memex method” of blogging about the things you read to build up an inventory of knowledge and to turn yourself into an active participant with the media you consume.
Next is to try to incorporate his ideas about using email as the main communication medium because it is asynchronous and, thus, more friendly to you remaining in control of your attention.
I’ve also been going deeper into the rabbit hole of reading what Doctorow has said in the past about his productivity routines — most of the interviews where he talks about it are more than a decade old. But basically he has a Getting Things Done system that he tries to keep as simple as possible. I have one as well but it’s been out of use for a few months. I’m feeling inspired to resurrect it though for this endeavor.
The two main things that I’m trying to make stick from his GTD routine are:
1. He drops tasks if they aren’t going to cultivate growth in at least two areas of his life. Any actually successful productivity system or philosophy recognizes that the bulk of the problem of life is you can’t do everything you want to do (Oliver Burkeman talks about this in Four Thousand Weeks), so then the problem becomes “How do you know when to drop something?” I find Doctorow’s test of “How many parts of your life are touched?” to be an accurate and emotionally easy heuristic to apply.
2. He keeps a daily “tick list” of all the things he does, which ChatGPT helpfully described as a list of items to do to “unblock the day.” I found the “unblocking” terminology to be a helpful hint, because I have tried to maintain a list of routine tasks in the past but I’ve had trouble with it growing larger and larger until it crowds out the things I actually want to do. The unblocking test allows me to keep the list minimal.
Additionally, I’ve been thinking about why I sometimes have trouble with unblocking tasks, and it’s because I often leave tasks like making kids’ lunches or taking out the trash for the end of the day, when my self-control is weakest. I think there’s a strong argument for waking up early and doing these unblocking tasks first thing that could really help improve my bedtime procrastination at the end of the day.
I hope you found some insight in my Doctorow deep dive. I’m certainly not perfect with these habits and try not to make Cory Doctorow my standard, since he’s been doing a lot of these things his whole life, but I figure they are as honest a set of productivity tips as I will find, so I’ll try to keep updating and improving my process. Will try to keep you updated for accountability.