“Learning a new language” is not a tiny habit! It takes tons of practice, reading, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation… maybe it’ll boost productivity 10 years down the line but I can’t see what this has to do with boosting productivity in the immediate future.
The rest seems like self care things to do, not sure how a documentary about dolphins will help me in accounting 😅
in my experience in the more shortish term regularly doing like, vocab repetition for something like trying to learn a language helps with keeping your longer term memory sharp. But yeah, it's gonna take you like, two years minimum to be even close to conversational in a new language, maybe you can do less if the languages are really similar but probably not.
That’s true, at the very beginner level it tends to mostly be about vocab. But it soon adds up and to stay on top of this you’d need to revise the old vocab, learn the new, apply it in context of eg a story, test yourself to establish good recall etc
I imagine what the author of this list meant was “just do some Duolingo” but that’s not a substitute for an actual language class.
Anki is a free tool that helps a lot with that since it dynamically adjusts to what you are good at memorizing and what not to make sure that you're mainly reviewing what you're bad at remembering. But that's all predicated on you either finding a good deck that covers what you want to focus on, or making one yourself.
And you really can get a decent sense for grammar through just vocab training and enough exposure to the language. But yeah, there's no getting around that you're gonna have to sit down and do some amount of actual studying besides rote-memorization and watching tv without the subtitles on.
Tho I'd argue that if you're just doing it for the secondary benefits, you don't have to actually master the language. Sure it's nice, but honestly if you just have a good vocab you can probably get by in a pinch so long as you don't mind being instantly clocked as foreigner and getting some confused looks.
Watching a documentary on phossy jaw, arsenic poisoning, and the rise of human rights abuses in the industrial revolution had opened my third eye to the reality that nothing's meaningfully changed in the workplace over the last 150 years. So then my third eye cried too. Enlightenment sucks.
I'm a polyglot (an actual one, not like those posers on YouTube). German native speaker; CEFR level C2 in English only because there isn't any higher level 🙃 took me about 15 years to get there, another five or so to finally lose my humongous German accent; C1 in Finnish (never took the official test, but a Finnish school/college/uni degree (= taught in Finland, all courses/classes taught in Finnish) counts as "proof of C1 proficiency") after having lived in the country for over 20 years, still have that humongous accent, but at least I managed to stop sounding specifically German a few years in (thank you, dear phonetics prof at my old university).
Learning a new language is a huge task. Unless, of course, you're content with getting allllll the way to A1, a.k.a. "tourist heavily relying on phrasebook".
That’s so cool you can speak so many languages! What was learning Finnish like? My friend looked into it once but it sounded so very different from other languages (I think Hungarian comes to mind in terms of uniqueness!)
I learned the basics of Finnish (seriously, barely beyond A1) in an evening class before moving here. I came to Finland as an exchange student for one year. That was 1994/95 and I somehow got stuck 🤣 Once you're in a country, learning the language becomes easier, because (if you're taking a class or working your way through a book) you can just go out and practice this week's lesson. And you do get a lot of practice with the little things (asking what kind of train ticket you need to go to xyz, buying ice cream, etc.). Incidentally, at some point the hard part won't be the grammar or vocabulary anymore but dealing with people who stubbornly try to change the language to English because "we have to help those poor hapless foreigners, what with the Finnish language being impossible to learn" or whatever. Even in situations where it should be obvious that you know how to say the thing you're trying to say even in Finnish.
Finnish and Hungarian are actually (distantly) related! Knowing Hungarian won't help you when learning Finnish (and vice versa) vocabulary-wise, but their grammar is similar. (However, very different from the languages we Westerners typically learn. That's one of the things that make learning Finnish and Hungarian so difficult for us.) So, once you've wrapped your head around Hungarian grammar, there'll be a lot of things that'll feel sort of familiar when you start learning Finnish. Or another language with similar typology that's not related at all, such as Turkish.
Finnish vocabulary is fun. Finnish doesn't borrow a lot of words; instead, it likes to create loan translations or coin entirely new terms. Sure, "ketchup" is ketsuppi and "virus" is viirus, but "computer" isn't *kompuutteri (as you'd expect phonologically) but tietokone ("information-machine"), and the word for "bra" isn't even remotely like "bra"/"brassiere" but rintaliivit ("breast-vest"). There are also lots of derivations, such as puhelin "telephone", lit. "machine for talking"; kahvila "café", lit. "place where there is coffee", kirjasto "library", lit. "book collection", etc. Once you have some basic vocabulary, you'll be able to guess a lot of things, even things you won't find in the dictionary (mummola "where Granny (mummo) lives", and I call my guinea pigs' cage a marsula because "guinea pig" is marsu in Finnish). (Still, I can knock Finns (who aren't/weren't linguistics majors) off their feet by pointing out that avain "key" is actually avaa+in "instrument for opening". Puhelin "telephone", lit. "machine for talking"? Obvious. Luistin "skate (ice or regular)", lit. "instrument for gliding"? Obvious. Elin "organ", lit. "instrument for living"? Mind. Blown.)
Finnish only has one inflection class (well, two; one for nouns and one for verbs). No confusion about whether this particular word is A class or O class or consonant class or whatever. There are some sound changes that may happen inside a stem in certain very well-defined situations, but they are easy enough to remember.
So, to return to your question: What was learning Finnish like? Tons of fun. Then again, this may be because I'm a linguist and also easily amused 🙃
I figured that was the point. Too many people don't understand that productivity is linked to general well-being as well and without the latter, the former will drop
The food for thought suggestions are fine individually, but this functions horribly as a flowchart. Pragmatically, I'm only going to get a few minutes to actually spend on one or two of these between work shifts if I'm lucky.
I mean, most of these are good habits to try and develop I guess. I disagree with the notion of doing this to improve "productivity" though, these are just things that will improve your mental and physical health, enrich your life, and overall develop more skills to help you do whatever it is you want to do with your time. If you are able to do any of these things and you find that doing so makes your life better, then good. But don't do all this just so you're better at producing value for the ruling class, do this because it makes you happy.
Does anybody actually journal? Genuinely asking for tips. I've tried it, but I always end up quitting after like three entries because I end up writing the same things over and over again. Honestly think part of that might be current life circumstances. My life is pretty stagnant atm (despite my best efforts to change that) so, like...what's the point? It's not like I'm going to go back and reread it to relive the most miserable time of my life to date. At a certain point it just becomes an excuse for me to waste money on a pointless but ever growing stationary collection. Seriously, it's a problem for me. I don't even like writing, or drawing, but I collect pens and notebooks like I'm going to use them for something other than collecting dust in a drawer somewhere.
I have found junk journaling to be a good way to use them up, just a helpful tip! I'm also a fanfic writer, and sometimes making collages/vision boards for fics gets me out of writer's block.
It's basically just scrapbooking with bits and bobbles! It's basically like "collecting stray bits of receipts, tickets, wrapping paper, ect and using them for scrapbooking". This website explains it well, I think.
i journal more when I'm having low points in mental health, not something I think about otherwise. maybe the real issue is that you feel guilty or pressured to do something that you don't want to do. Try to journal a little about that. Maybe work out why you feel the need to make use of your stationary collection. Is your hobby any more wasteful than someone else's?
They are already made, already bought: you got the part you enjoyed out of it by shopping and picking it out and getting it. If you genuinely think you need to journal to feel better, then idk- journal about ways to shake your life up? Is the issue that you want a life worth journaling about? Make plans, brainstorm, dream...
...or maybe just explore why you are pushing yourself to do what you don't want to do. If your collection was full of entries, what would be different about it? Are you able to admire your collection for what it is? Are you able to sell or give away the ones you like least?
I think I just see everyone always talking about how helpful journaling is, and I feel frustrated/guilty that it just doesn't do anything for me, especially after my previous therapists were so adamant about it, like "have you tried journaling?" "I thought you were journaling?" "Why haven't you been journaling?" "I think you'd benefit from and see a lot of progress with journaling!" And I was always like, "how is a useless emotional word vomit I'll never look at ever again supposed to help me?" I think maybe a Jungian journaling method could work, once I get around to actually reading Jung's work lol.
Psychology techniques are only helpful when they are helpful. Take what helps, leave what doesn't. If it gives you stress, if it's hard to do, it's no longer helpful. There are other means of therapy... journaling is just nice because it's free and self-guided, etc. But there are more structured workbooks and things that are just as good. Sometimes a little structure is what we need to be creative again.
I highly recommend Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Book by Steven C. Hayes. Not for everyone, no size fits all. Just like journaling isn't always what's best for us. Maybe one day you return to the journal... maybe you have jounral to have nearby as you read a workbook... maybe you find that you don't need to journal at all. maybe you just need less self judgement and more self love. it sucks when we guilt ourselves about things we don't need to do.
I would love to do all of these but severe depression from a lack of hope for a future in a destabilizing world makes it hard. My brain chemicals are completely fried. All these things are just escapist bandaids on a wound that needs addressing with a tourniquet.
The vast majority of these "habits" are not even remotely "tiny." And if someone is doing ALL of these things "habitually," when do they have time to be productive?
The point is it's an unrealistic expectation being set. "If you just do these 50 different things sequentially you'll be more productive!" ignores that mental health and our lived experience are most influential on productivity, and that you could do all 50 and still feel depressed and unproductive. Which isn't an obtainable goal to make it even decent advice. Additionally, I think something doesn't need to be touated as a cure to fit this sub.
L post fr. I too, am willing to do none of the things on this list of generally good advice and expect something to change. In fact, I'll be cured tomorrow. I'll start it all tomorrow...
*goes into the rabbit hole of family history research, watches a documentary on how pencils are made, takes a nap, folds laundry ,assembles some ikea furniture (probably counts as "building a puzzle")
I applied 5 tips out of 50, why am I not more productive at my desk job? 😭
honestly so many of these tips look like fun ways to procrastinate instead of doing the stuff you're supposed to be productive at
These things massively vary in difficulty and have no coherence. I imagine it's ai generated. You should really put the easiest ones first then build to harder things. That's growth. Also, guy who's read 39 books this year here: books are cool but they're not magic like people think they are although OOP probably wants you reading self help books and not Naked Lunch
I want to see a version of this written for someone that is renting and working 3 jobs just to pay the interest on the credit card they have that is mainly used for diaper purchases.
Am I supposed to do these in a row? I can read a book I guess but learning a language seems slightly more difficult and time consuming than making a grocery list. Also that one’s more immediately useful, surely I should do it first.
Reflect on how much you’re procrastinating using your phone being at number 50 on a list is great
It seems you've won the game of life. Congrats!
“Learning a new language” is not a tiny habit! It takes tons of practice, reading, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation… maybe it’ll boost productivity 10 years down the line but I can’t see what this has to do with boosting productivity in the immediate future.
The rest seems like self care things to do, not sure how a documentary about dolphins will help me in accounting 😅
The fact that it's number 2 is killing me
Just going to do a bit of Chinese to be more productive 😵💫😅
in my experience in the more shortish term regularly doing like, vocab repetition for something like trying to learn a language helps with keeping your longer term memory sharp. But yeah, it's gonna take you like, two years minimum to be even close to conversational in a new language, maybe you can do less if the languages are really similar but probably not.
Quick hack: Just learn the swears.
swearing is actually a vital part of language yeah, so learning them early is genuinely not a bad idea.
That’s true, at the very beginner level it tends to mostly be about vocab. But it soon adds up and to stay on top of this you’d need to revise the old vocab, learn the new, apply it in context of eg a story, test yourself to establish good recall etc
I imagine what the author of this list meant was “just do some Duolingo” but that’s not a substitute for an actual language class.
Anki is a free tool that helps a lot with that since it dynamically adjusts to what you are good at memorizing and what not to make sure that you're mainly reviewing what you're bad at remembering. But that's all predicated on you either finding a good deck that covers what you want to focus on, or making one yourself.
And you really can get a decent sense for grammar through just vocab training and enough exposure to the language. But yeah, there's no getting around that you're gonna have to sit down and do some amount of actual studying besides rote-memorization and watching tv without the subtitles on.
Tho I'd argue that if you're just doing it for the secondary benefits, you don't have to actually master the language. Sure it's nice, but honestly if you just have a good vocab you can probably get by in a pinch so long as you don't mind being instantly clocked as foreigner and getting some confused looks.
Watching a documentary on phossy jaw, arsenic poisoning, and the rise of human rights abuses in the industrial revolution had opened my third eye to the reality that nothing's meaningfully changed in the workplace over the last 150 years. So then my third eye cried too. Enlightenment sucks.
That’s great but the real question is…. Did it make you more productive? 😉
Nope lmao
I’ve been learning Spanish for a decade(since I was a little kid) and I’m nowhere NEAR fluent. It is not easy, it is not tiny.
Damn, you beat me to it.
I'm a polyglot (an actual one, not like those posers on YouTube). German native speaker; CEFR level C2 in English only because there isn't any higher level 🙃 took me about 15 years to get there, another five or so to finally lose my humongous German accent; C1 in Finnish (never took the official test, but a Finnish school/college/uni degree (= taught in Finland, all courses/classes taught in Finnish) counts as "proof of C1 proficiency") after having lived in the country for over 20 years, still have that humongous accent, but at least I managed to stop sounding specifically German a few years in (thank you, dear phonetics prof at my old university).
Learning a new language is a huge task. Unless, of course, you're content with getting allllll the way to A1, a.k.a. "tourist heavily relying on phrasebook".
That’s so cool you can speak so many languages! What was learning Finnish like? My friend looked into it once but it sounded so very different from other languages (I think Hungarian comes to mind in terms of uniqueness!)
I learned the basics of Finnish (seriously, barely beyond A1) in an evening class before moving here. I came to Finland as an exchange student for one year. That was 1994/95 and I somehow got stuck 🤣 Once you're in a country, learning the language becomes easier, because (if you're taking a class or working your way through a book) you can just go out and practice this week's lesson. And you do get a lot of practice with the little things (asking what kind of train ticket you need to go to xyz, buying ice cream, etc.). Incidentally, at some point the hard part won't be the grammar or vocabulary anymore but dealing with people who stubbornly try to change the language to English because "we have to help those poor hapless foreigners, what with the Finnish language being impossible to learn" or whatever. Even in situations where it should be obvious that you know how to say the thing you're trying to say even in Finnish.
Finnish and Hungarian are actually (distantly) related! Knowing Hungarian won't help you when learning Finnish (and vice versa) vocabulary-wise, but their grammar is similar. (However, very different from the languages we Westerners typically learn. That's one of the things that make learning Finnish and Hungarian so difficult for us.) So, once you've wrapped your head around Hungarian grammar, there'll be a lot of things that'll feel sort of familiar when you start learning Finnish. Or another language with similar typology that's not related at all, such as Turkish.
Finnish vocabulary is fun. Finnish doesn't borrow a lot of words; instead, it likes to create loan translations or coin entirely new terms. Sure, "ketchup" is ketsuppi and "virus" is viirus, but "computer" isn't *kompuutteri (as you'd expect phonologically) but tietokone ("information-machine"), and the word for "bra" isn't even remotely like "bra"/"brassiere" but rintaliivit ("breast-vest"). There are also lots of derivations, such as puhelin "telephone", lit. "machine for talking"; kahvila "café", lit. "place where there is coffee", kirjasto "library", lit. "book collection", etc. Once you have some basic vocabulary, you'll be able to guess a lot of things, even things you won't find in the dictionary (mummola "where Granny (mummo) lives", and I call my guinea pigs' cage a marsula because "guinea pig" is marsu in Finnish). (Still, I can knock Finns (who aren't/weren't linguistics majors) off their feet by pointing out that avain "key" is actually avaa+in "instrument for opening". Puhelin "telephone", lit. "machine for talking"? Obvious. Luistin "skate (ice or regular)", lit. "instrument for gliding"? Obvious. Elin "organ", lit. "instrument for living"? Mind. Blown.)
Finnish only has one inflection class (well, two; one for nouns and one for verbs). No confusion about whether this particular word is A class or O class or consonant class or whatever. There are some sound changes that may happen inside a stem in certain very well-defined situations, but they are easy enough to remember.
So, to return to your question: What was learning Finnish like? Tons of fun. Then again, this may be because I'm a linguist and also easily amused 🙃
I figured that was the point. Too many people don't understand that productivity is linked to general well-being as well and without the latter, the former will drop
The food for thought suggestions are fine individually, but this functions horribly as a flowchart. Pragmatically, I'm only going to get a few minutes to actually spend on one or two of these between work shifts if I'm lucky.
how am I supposed to organize my space, when I haven't read a book or learned a new language? I'm sorry, but this is in order for a reason
With my ADHD I can't do like 43 out of these 50 without already being productive in the first place.
If I was productive enough to do all these I wouldn't need to boost my productivity?!
Feeling unproductive? Here’s an enormous, overwhelming to-do list!
I mean, most of these are good habits to try and develop I guess. I disagree with the notion of doing this to improve "productivity" though, these are just things that will improve your mental and physical health, enrich your life, and overall develop more skills to help you do whatever it is you want to do with your time. If you are able to do any of these things and you find that doing so makes your life better, then good. But don't do all this just so you're better at producing value for the ruling class, do this because it makes you happy.
A massive list of 50 tiny habits lol
Already overwhelmed, instantly
Does anybody actually journal? Genuinely asking for tips. I've tried it, but I always end up quitting after like three entries because I end up writing the same things over and over again. Honestly think part of that might be current life circumstances. My life is pretty stagnant atm (despite my best efforts to change that) so, like...what's the point? It's not like I'm going to go back and reread it to relive the most miserable time of my life to date. At a certain point it just becomes an excuse for me to waste money on a pointless but ever growing stationary collection. Seriously, it's a problem for me. I don't even like writing, or drawing, but I collect pens and notebooks like I'm going to use them for something other than collecting dust in a drawer somewhere.
To be fair, the pens and notebooks are PRETTY.
-- a fanfic writer with a drawer full of very pretty empty notebooks
I have found junk journaling to be a good way to use them up, just a helpful tip! I'm also a fanfic writer, and sometimes making collages/vision boards for fics gets me out of writer's block.
Curious, what do you mean by junk Journaling?
It's basically just scrapbooking with bits and bobbles! It's basically like "collecting stray bits of receipts, tickets, wrapping paper, ect and using them for scrapbooking". This website explains it well, I think.
i journal more when I'm having low points in mental health, not something I think about otherwise. maybe the real issue is that you feel guilty or pressured to do something that you don't want to do. Try to journal a little about that. Maybe work out why you feel the need to make use of your stationary collection. Is your hobby any more wasteful than someone else's?
They are already made, already bought: you got the part you enjoyed out of it by shopping and picking it out and getting it. If you genuinely think you need to journal to feel better, then idk- journal about ways to shake your life up? Is the issue that you want a life worth journaling about? Make plans, brainstorm, dream...
...or maybe just explore why you are pushing yourself to do what you don't want to do. If your collection was full of entries, what would be different about it? Are you able to admire your collection for what it is? Are you able to sell or give away the ones you like least?
I think I just see everyone always talking about how helpful journaling is, and I feel frustrated/guilty that it just doesn't do anything for me, especially after my previous therapists were so adamant about it, like "have you tried journaling?" "I thought you were journaling?" "Why haven't you been journaling?" "I think you'd benefit from and see a lot of progress with journaling!" And I was always like, "how is a useless emotional word vomit I'll never look at ever again supposed to help me?" I think maybe a Jungian journaling method could work, once I get around to actually reading Jung's work lol.
Psychology techniques are only helpful when they are helpful. Take what helps, leave what doesn't. If it gives you stress, if it's hard to do, it's no longer helpful. There are other means of therapy... journaling is just nice because it's free and self-guided, etc. But there are more structured workbooks and things that are just as good. Sometimes a little structure is what we need to be creative again.
I highly recommend Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Book by Steven C. Hayes. Not for everyone, no size fits all. Just like journaling isn't always what's best for us. Maybe one day you return to the journal... maybe you have jounral to have nearby as you read a workbook... maybe you find that you don't need to journal at all. maybe you just need less self judgement and more self love. it sucks when we guilt ourselves about things we don't need to do.
The people I know who journal are affluent white women who live off their husband’s or father’s income. (They’re also usually “Buddhist.”)
I gotta learn a whole ass LANGUAGE before I can meditate? Jeez
Hard lime difficult time
One of these things is not like the others.
I’m taking a nap. I’m good
I would love to do all of these but severe depression from a lack of hope for a future in a destabilizing world makes it hard. My brain chemicals are completely fried. All these things are just escapist bandaids on a wound that needs addressing with a tourniquet.
50 tiny habits for avoidant coping mechanisms that will completely terminate your productivity
50 tiny habits and the first is to read a book???
(Had to remember I’m dyslexic there, for most people that probably isn’t hard)
learning a new language immediately at step 2 is certainly a choice
How the fuck would researching your family history in any way help "boost productivity"?
The vast majority of these "habits" are not even remotely "tiny." And if someone is doing ALL of these things "habitually," when do they have time to be productive?
This is just advice? These arn't meant to be cures.
The point is it's an unrealistic expectation being set. "If you just do these 50 different things sequentially you'll be more productive!" ignores that mental health and our lived experience are most influential on productivity, and that you could do all 50 and still feel depressed and unproductive. Which isn't an obtainable goal to make it even decent advice. Additionally, I think something doesn't need to be touated as a cure to fit this sub.
well, okay then.
L post fr. I too, am willing to do none of the things on this list of generally good advice and expect something to change. In fact, I'll be cured tomorrow. I'll start it all tomorrow...
People really underestimate how hard is it to properly meditate. It's not just sitting and thinking shit
If doing this stuff didn't take up 24 hours in every day, I could see how it might boost productivity
*goes into the rabbit hole of family history research, watches a documentary on how pencils are made, takes a nap, folds laundry ,assembles some ikea furniture (probably counts as "building a puzzle")
I applied 5 tips out of 50, why am I not more productive at my desk job? 😭
honestly so many of these tips look like fun ways to procrastinate instead of doing the stuff you're supposed to be productive at
These things massively vary in difficulty and have no coherence. I imagine it's ai generated. You should really put the easiest ones first then build to harder things. That's growth. Also, guy who's read 39 books this year here: books are cool but they're not magic like people think they are although OOP probably wants you reading self help books and not Naked Lunch
So i do each of these for 5 minutes each and after more than 4 hours doing this every day i am more productive?
If I could do all that shit I wouldn't be taking all these pills
"Learn a new language" is step 2?
"Take a nap" is step 49???
I want to see a version of this written for someone that is renting and working 3 jobs just to pay the interest on the credit card they have that is mainly used for diaper purchases.
Hardy fardy citrus sharty
Am I supposed to do these in a row? I can read a book I guess but learning a language seems slightly more difficult and time consuming than making a grocery list. Also that one’s more immediately useful, surely I should do it first.
I need to be productive in the first place to do those