Productivity blog showdown

Without doubt, a false dichotomy, but this promises to be
entertaining at the very least. Any synthesis will be a helpful
contrast to the still all-too-prevalent notion that drudgery in and of
itself is good for the soul.

Like Frank, I start with a bias in favor of Fred's position as part of
my personal cursade to rid the world of busywork. It reminds me
of an incident during a college summer job over 30 years ago. I had
been hired as a “material accounting clerk” and my job was to spend
each day poring through three-inch thick stacks of greenbar computer
paper containing inventory control reports. I was looking for line
items with zero items in inventory but cost still on the books and
filling out forms to process write-offs. This was one of those seminal
moments that convinced me that I had no future in accounting.

For all that drudgery I could at least understand that this was a job
with some purpose. The incident that truly pissed me off was when my
supervisor handed me a handwritten sheet of numbers and asked me to
calculate the mean and standard deviation (with an adding machine and
slide rule). When I was done I brought the results to my supervisor and
asked what they were going to be used for. His response? He didn't need
the results for any purpose. He knew I was a statisics major and
figured I would enjoy doing the calculations just for fun! This was a
supervisor who believed in the virtue of work for its own sake and a
lesson to ask the right questions before doing what I was told.

“Welcome to Day 1 of a 3-day
'Productivity Blog Showdown.' If you're just joining us, here's the
quick background of what's going on. A few days ago, I noted that I'd
like to see a 'showdown' between two upcoming gurus of personal
productivity, Fred Gratzon and Steve Pavlina [who I've pointed to recently in my GTD mode – FP]. Both guys agreed to do the showdown, we collected some questions from readers, and here we are.”