the n2nbl strategy — broccosite

recently I’ve been testing out a new strategy to squeeze some more value out of my free time. I started working full time a few months ago, and ever since then I’ve been trying to be as productive as possible with the hours I don’t spend sleeping (sleep is cringe). As such, I have been trying to find new skills to build or projects to work on.

my idea for this strategy arose from wanting to avoid a situation I frequently find myself in: I start to work on a new project or building a skill, but eventually end up dropping it (shoutout coopm26). This brings me to assumption #1 of the “need to know basis” loop strategy (n2nbl):

in the past, this is what my productivity cycle looked like:

flowchart TD
    A["you found something new to work on"] --> B["start working on that thing"]
    B --> C["tell a friend about what you are working on"]
    C --> D["positive feedback: “yeah that's cool”"]
    D --> E["subconscious external validation /<br/>extrinsic motivation"]
    E --> F["continue to work on that thing"]
    F --> C
    F -->|eventually| G["zero or negative feedback from person"]
    G --> H["subconscious feedback that you shouldn't continue"]
    H --> I["less likely to continue"]
    G -.->|note| J["this is not necessarily malicious; the person could simply be preoccupied"]
    I --> F
    I -->|eventually| K["project is doomed"]

this whole loop is built upon two more assumptions:

obviously every situation is different, but I felt like this amount of problem distillation is entirely appropriate. Additionally, a core idea of this loop is that the extrinsic stimulus artificially boosts your motivation to finish a task and prolongs the time you spend on it (more on that later).

here is the proposed “n2nb” loop that I am currently testing:

flowchart TD
    A["you find something new to work on"] --> B["start working on that thing"]
    B --> C["don't say anything about it to anyone"]
    C --> D["motivation is entirely intrinsic,<br/>so you'll only work on it if you really want to"]
    D --> E["you actually want to work on it"]
    D --> F["it's not actually that interesting"]
    E --> G["continue working on that thing<br/>with fewer sources of externally induced doubt"]
    F --> H["find a new thing to work on"]
    H --> B
    G --> C
    G -->|eventually| I["project complete :)"]

this loop is built upon assumption #4:

the main idea here is that you kinda have to do some testing to find that personal baseline of what actually matters. For example, if I wanted to pick up something like basket weaving because it seemed interesting at the time, but I don’t actually put a plan in motion to pursue basket weaving, then basket weaving is simply something that doesn’t actually matter to me.

in my experience, you can try to shift your perspective of what matters to you, but you’ll only be able to get so far. If anything, the “what matters” baseline is probably defined by something like maslow’s heirarchy of needs which could explain why it is not as simple as thinking about it differently.

to summarize, I think the key to being more productive is to go through this n2nb-loop as many times as possible, and eventually you will find something that sticks (assumption #1). My issue with the first loop diagram is that extrinsic motivation is only good in moderation, and these outside factors can often result in you working on something longer than you should. After all, time is a very valuable resource 🙂

there are a few additional things that I think are important to note:

not every activity can benefit from this strategy, some are inherently social
- for example, playing a competitive team game with other people can push you to do better and keep up with everyone else’s rate of improvement
I dunno if this is actually effective yet I just came up with it one afternoon
my assumptions could just be completely off base from other people’s experiences

but yea if you read this far then thanks for your time, lmk what you think