Productivity Method and Straw Man Fallacy
Fleeting“I tried this method, but it is not for me”
I often hear this, and when I dig into what the person was trying to apply, the person did not actually understand the method.
I’ve seen this for the pomodoro technique, gtd, and scrum. I don’t pretend I understand those methods well, but I claim I understand then enough to find out that the caricatures that are generally depicted to me are not actually those methods (dunning-kruger effect).
I believe that every new stuff you learn comes with a cognitive effort. Methods about helping you change your behavior, in particular, need you to struggle against your habits.
Thus, before pretending having tried a method, you need to have gone through that cognitive stress first.
I feel like people tend to give up as soon as they have the learning cognitive stress. But during that phase, I don’t think they could have actually taken the time to understand the method.
I decided to believe that this action of giving up produces a cognitive dissonance (“I can do it” vs “I did not do it”) that is rationalized invoking the fact this method “is not for me after all”. But in this argument, the “method” IS the current caricatured and dumb understanding of the method.