Seems like we see this everywhere. Bob is highly productive and comes up with a "system" which he uses to be productive. Bob probably would have been productive with any other system, he's just a productive guy. Joe reads Bob's book and picks up this system thinking he'll be just like Bob. The story ends with Joe giving up on his dreams and taking a day job entering data into spreadsheets.

Bob was smart though, he made his system look like magic and a cult developed around it. Now Bob has many fans, and the top of the ponzi-scheme is the people who have learned to speak the magic. These masters sell courses while the followers work to learn the magic, correcting and debating each other on Twitter.

Seems like an underlying pattern of humanity. It happens with Agile, scientific methodology, even religion. A person reaches a truth through an earnest desire for truth and then everyone else tries to copy him as a shortcut to reach the same truth.

I feel like i have been Joe before and still am to some degree, are you just born as bob or are there actual fundamental things one can do to be more like bob ?

The best I have been able to tell is that productivity is like lifting weights, where you have to be always changing up your routine to "shock" the muscles into growth once you hit your plateau. Productivity is a series of brain hacks to keep yourself from falling asleep at the wheel. Like with a relationship, you have to always be doing new things to keep it interesting (don't stop dating your significant other.)

The value of stan systems is...

1. Take notes (documentation) on things.

2. Refer back to those notes (duh, might come in handy later when you find yourself doing the same thing.

3. Keep these notes in the same place.

Do ONLY the above and you probably get enough benefits to be worth it without dropping out because you failed to find the one true way.

Sounds stupid, but the hours I could have saved myself by writing things down for future reference add up. I can't just simply link to documentation, because the time I save is by documenting the spaces between the documentation. Stuff the writers didn't think to write because they already knew everything. But I'm not doing this simple thing if I have already said f*ck it, I give up, because I found the sword in the stone but it didn't choose me. I can't be king, so I go back to filling out spreadsheets.*

Currently conscientiousness is considered part of the big 5 which seem to be stable through your life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

I couldn't find if it can be trained during bringing up of a kid.

I suspect that you can go from being Joe to being Bob just by thinking. At least, that's what happened to me - I read David Allen's book Getting Thing Done, and then over a few years of trying to figure out why the GTD system wasn't quite working for me, I slowly re-invented the Zettelkasten system.

(I thought that I was on to something big, and then had quite a shock when I saw it hit the front page of HN)

To clarify: by "thinking" I mean "thoughtful analysis and introspection" - that is, if you're not being productive, or if you're not able to organize your thoughts, actually sit down and think really hard about it until you start getting a better understanding of your problems and ideas to fix them.

My personal observations of those around me seem to indicate a pattern where those who aren't productive haven't done any analysis as to why (although I know many productive people who haven't done any analysis either).

Absolutely. In fact I have a book that can teach you to be more Bob-like in just 7 simple steps ;-)

Too many steps. What about 3 steps?

I see a business opportunity here. Although I might undercut you and write a version that only requires 2 steps :)

So, "agile", then?

lol there actually ate zettlekasten consultants out there. The same type of people who teach you how to develop a second brain...

So true! This has bugged me enough to create a introduction to Zettelkasten myself - just one page - https://binnyva.com/zettelkasten/ (wanted to keep it under 500 - but it went to 700 words).

Too many my friends are getting the idea Zettelkasten is complicated. When anyone express interest, I make it a point to tell them its a very simple concept. The complication is more in creating the behavior of taking notes rather than in using the system.

Try reading the GTD book. What could have been a flowchart, maybe bundled with some potential downsides/gotchas-and-how-to-avoid-them, somehow became this nonsense 300-page sleeping pill.

I liked the abridged audiobook FWIW

People like creating systems more than they like implementing them. Hence the popularity of military strategy books as compared to the number of real generals.

Cant make courses that require thousands of dollars, blog posts, an entire online brand based on simple principles.