Top all-time · #7276
Sid Savara
Personal blog · sidsavara.com · on HN as sidsavaracareerproductivity
Sid Savara's personal blog at sidsavara.com covers career and productivity. Since 2008, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 30 times, most often “Outsourcing Cooking with Craigslist for $60/week”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-09, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (6) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN links Sid Savara's productivity and self-help posts, including fact-or-fiction checks of popular claims such as a Harvard written-goals study, and a post on Harvard MBA outcomes.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 6 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Outsourcing Cooking with Craigslist for $60/week3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2008-09-23
What Hacker News says?
Regarding your last point, the Harvard goals study doesn't actually exist: http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/fact-or-fiction-t...
Comment linking /personal-productivity/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-harvard-written-goal-study
on “How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To”Submitted Outsourcing Cooking with Craigslist for $60/week as a story · 135 points
HN discussionSome of what you say doesn't contradict the author. You might also have an incomplete understanding of some others. (1) A prevention and a promotion focus are two types of focus people have a disposition to. You can't adopt a prevention focus if you are promotion inclined. Maybe you, personally, work better with tasks requiring a promotion focus. (2) The technique you mention does not contradict the author. I agree…
Comment linking /personal-productivity/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other-97-combined
on “How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To”Submitted Unlimited Virtual Assistant Tasks for $59 a Month - TimeSvr.com, a Review, Versus My Single Assistant as a story · 81 points
HN discussionAbout food, I remember reading a post on HN some time ago about how someone had found somebody on Craigslist to cook for him and his family. The lady would bring food three times a week or something like that and everything was homemade and of the season. Personal chef makes it sound like it would be somewhat fancy, and thus expensive, but in that post it was just somebody who was cooking at home but make more and b…
Comment linking /personal-productivity/the-price-of-my-dreams-60-a-week
on “How I automated the boring parts of life”Submitted Nerdy Productivity: Covey’s Time Management Matrix Illustrated with XKCD Comics as a story · 9 points
HN discussionMyth, as referred to in an update to the link you provided: https://sidsavara.com/fact-or-fiction-the-truth-about-the-ha... Though it's claimed that the myth did prompt an actual study (not peer reviewed?) https://sidsavara.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsum... Which claims to support a fuzzier notion that writing things down helps achieve a goal.
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2008/09/researchsummary2.pdf
on “The annoying habits of highly effective people”Submitted Sid Savara: Never Check Email First Thing In The Morning as a story · 5 points
HN discussionNearly every self-help book mentions the importance of goal setting. It is important even for those with a pedigree and born into wealth (I recognize not every student in this study was born into wealth but the median Harvard family earns at least 3 times the national average). From https://sidsavara.com/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-a... “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to ac…
Comment linking /why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other-97-combined/
on “The annoying habits of highly effective people”Submitted Conversation Hacking as a story · 4 points
HN discussionProductivity isn't something that can be forced; there's some good books out there on the subject. The 'grueling work' you described (and likewise) remind me of Stephen Covey's quadrants [1] (and similar); being in one quadrant (grueling work being 'urgent but not important') too much will cause someone to go to another for escape (not important, non-urgent tasks; distractions). It's important to find a balance ther…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2009/01/merrillcoveymatrix.png
on “Making Remote Work Work”Submitted Self Discipline - Use It, Exercise It, Eat Donuts to Temporarily Strengthen as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSurprised that HN likes this. I wrote a post on this topic too: http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/today-is-your-gold... Since people enjoyed this video, here's the HN link - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1112797
Comment linking /personal-development/today-is-your-golden-ticket
on “"Don't you dare waste your fucking time"”Submitted Chasing The Dopamine Rush - Television, Alcohol and Fast Food as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI just finished a ton of great books, some that immediately come to mind: The Four-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris - Really made me think about life and the work I do Tribes by Seth Godin - Love this book. The Dip by Seth Godin - read it before, reread it again this year Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina - really had to struggle to get past the beginning, was fantastic once I did Find Your Great Wo…
Comment linking /product-reviews
on “Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?”Submitted Managerspeak - A Developer's Guide To Speaking to Non-Technical Managers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI wrote an article regarding dopamine as well, I saw a couple recently on HN on the subjects of dopamine and self discipline, if you guys are interested. Much more in depth than the articles I've seen make it onto HN - but I didn't really think this was the appropriate place for them, that's why I never submitted them. Kind of off topic IMO, but for readers who like it here they are: Dopamine, rewards, pleasure cent…
Comment linking /personal-development/will-power-how-to-improve-your-personal-self-discipline
on “Dopamine Makes Us Addicted To Seeking Information”Submitted Today Is Your Golden Ticket as a story · 1 points
HN discussionRescueTime! http://sidsavara.com/product-reviews/review-of-rescuetime-fr... Of course if you're using Unix, you can get the linux version (which I don't believe is officially supported). Just knowing where I am spending my time makes me more productive and less likely to randomly web surf etc
Comment linking /product-reviews/review-of-rescuetime-free-time-tracking-software
on “Ask HN: What tool makes you most productitive?”Submitted Where I Go To Get Inspired as a story · 1 points
HN discussionReally interesting. I don't like cooking either, and this seems like a good middle ground. The lost freezer space is probably not as big a deal also, since I'm guessing you don't ever need to put frozen chicken etc in there unless it's already prepackaged in a meal. I recently discovered the same thing: that food preparation is a pain and takes too long. My solution (which people also enjoyed on HN) was to avoid coo…
Comment linking /personal-productivity/the-price-of-my-dreams-60-a-week
on “Hacking your food supply”Submitted Don't Listen to Slate: Use your RSS Reader, Just Better. Like this as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSeth Godin's Blog - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ Mark Cuban - http://BlogMaverick.com Paul Graham - http://PaulGraham.com Gary Vee - http://garyvaynerchuk.com/ 538 - http://FiveThirtyEight.com fascinating Freakonomics - http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/ as above ZenHabits - http://zenhabits.net I met him in person and Leo is as genuine as they come My Life In A Cube - http://www.mylifeinacube.com/ Great comic…
Comment linking /
on “Ask YC: Favorite blogs?”I recommend finding someone on craig's list to cook for you, so you don't have to worry about it. Time is at such a premium when you are trying to launch your own business, and if they're shopping for a family, they are probably better at bargain hunting and coupon clipping than you are. I did just that, and I discuss it in this post. Wasn't sure if HN would appreciate it, so I haven't submitted it here: http://sids…
Comment linking /personal-productivity/the-price-of-my-dreams-60-a-week
on “Ask HN: Hack a healthy, yet not expensive, meal.”I call it metawork. Perhaps "metaworkers" ? http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/are-you-really-wo...
Comment linking /personal-productivity/are-you-really-working-or-just-using-metawork-as-an-excuse-to-avoid-real-work
on “Ask HN: Name for people who study without getting around to doing”The abridged version: I use Google Reader and delicious. I make liberal use of starring articles (rather than reading them inline) and then as a secondary filter I also will tag them as "Read tonight", "Read this week" and "Read someday" in delicious on the second pass. I have had to let go of a lot of temporal "breaking" news since it's just so hard to keep up with it, but this process lets me still see the headlin…
Comment linking /personal-productivity/how-to-effectively-read-12853-articles-forum-topics-and-blog-posts-a-week
on “Ask HN: How do you manage your news reading time?”I like the gist of the article, but disagree with the opinion of dumping the RSS Reader. It seems to me that it's a mental shift that the author finds possible when using Firefox, but can't do with GReader The "neutered RSS version" of the content is exactly what I want. I don't want ads. I don't want to see other headlines in the sidebar. I want to get through the content as quickly as possible, pick out the gems I…
Comment linking /personal-productivity/how-to-effectively-read-12853-articles-forum-topics-and-blog-posts-a-week
on “Kill your RSS reader, and use my amazing system for browsing the Web. ”
