On Productivity Blogs

Around this time every summer I begin to get excited about school starting again: I put my classes in my calendar, buy a bunch of discount school supplies, and, most of all, fall into the rabbit hole of productivity blogs. For some reason I think that just reading about stuff is going to actually make me more productive: in high school I think I spent more time looking up how to get my work done than actually getting my work done.

To be fair, I've actually started to take some of the tips I've seen in blogs like College Info Geek, one of my favorite sources even though I have literally NOTHING in common with Thomas Frank. I think that's what makes him so marketable, he has very practical tips that apply to pretty much everybody. I also appreciate that he's not always right and often contradicts himself. I've been watching him for four years and he definitely helped my college productivity.

I have loosely developed my own style for academic success though, and I was never really sure what it was so it's not like I could hone in on it and improve it. However, on CIG I ran into Tom Miller's Phyzzle and it clicked. Like, his how-to articles are almost to the T in what I do to pass my courses but he actually put it in a step by step process. It's what I should say when people ask me how I did so well on a test: it's how I can cut out the things that don't work.

These blogs are amazing in contradiction to the person I've stopped listening to -- that is, Cal Newport. I'm not going to sit here and bash him, but I'm just going to say that he needs to get of his soap box and leave room for the productivity bloggers who are more practical and don't infantilize their audiences. I think the newer techniques are more mindful of the modern world and actually, in my experience, work without being so dogmatic.