"...it may be worth-while for you to remember that you have as much time as anyone else — twenty-four hours a day".
I don't think this is fair. If you are poor and uneducated, you have to spend more time working just to provide basic needs. So you don't have as much time available as those who are better off.
This is very true. The article also didn't take into account that some people need different amounts of sleep each night to function properly. There's a big difference between needing 6 hours and needing 10 hours.
Not in a meaningful sense, given that the species should probably have a next generation. It's work that needs to be done.
Society can make the work a lot less onerous, restoring that time-choice. (And various societies through time had quite sensible solutions, though of course war and violence destroys sensible living arrangements.) For instance, the common atomized family is incredibly inefficient duplication of work.
I have one kid so I have a little bit of perspective on this.
Looking back on things, I don't think I've lost too much time by having a child. It's a little inconvenient sometimes having to shuttle him around. But from my observations, single/childless people tend to spend the same amount of time on extracurriculars that I spend with my child.
Really? How active a part do you play in your child's life? Because much of my non-work time is spent caring for my children. Even when they're asleep or not in the house, I am doing things for them or because of them.
I have 2 children and found the workload goes up significantly on the second. No economies of scale there, in fact the reverse as with one you can take turns with your partner to look after them but with 2 it's typically all hands on deck.
Also regarding extra curricular, people might spend the same time socialising etc but this counts as time to re-charge and get back to work. If you spend a couple hours getting your kids dinner and into bed you don't feel like heading back to the desk the same way you do after a game of tennis with friends.
Too true. It's important not to forget that, at least in the US, we find it acceptable that there are people who have to work more than 1.5 full-time jobs to survive.
Aside from the profound conclusions and hyperbolic examples, this is just some darned practical advice taken at face value.
The value of focus is highly underrated. You don't need to do everything, and often doing everything 'on your list' means you're not devoting the time you should be to more important things; things that may not be on your list, or may not even be listable, or might just be doing the things on your list better. Devote yourself to focusing on one thing, shed the things that don't matter, and you might find a quality of execution you never realized.
This is something I learned perhaps too late in my career so far. I feel I would have advanced more and faster and achieved better results if I had stopped doing things that weren't tightly focused—not only on what I needed, but on what my company needed and what our customers needed.
The mantra I repeat to myself is "context switches are expensive". I've internalized this across many different disciplines (whether the workings of a CPU or the workings of my kids going to school) and even now, I need to repeat those four words to myself quite frequently.
"Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What annoys me about a lot of time management advice is the same thing that annoys me about bucket lists. Acting as if the entire measure of the value of your life is how "efficiently" you spend every second.
I totally agree about having a "stop doing" list, because that shit can eat up your whole life on stuff that you didn't actually enjoy. But leaving space for coincidence and serendipity is important too.
And doing useless things sometimes, so that when you DO need more time, you have something left to give up that's not important to you. If you're already maxed out with valuable uses of your time, there's no room to add something else.
(crossover: decluttering and the "get rid of something before you add something")
> And doing useless things sometimes, so that when you DO need more time, you have something left to give up that's not important to you. If you're already maxed out with valuable uses of your time, there's no room to add something else.
That makes no sense. At any given time you do the most valuable things available. When something else comes up, either it's more valuable than the least valuable thing you're currently doing - in which case great, you do it instead of that - or it's not, in which case why would you want to do it?
When I found myself unexpectedly in a relationship I needed more time, so I stopped doing taekwando and dropped out of my roleplaying campaign as soon as there was a story-appropriate point to do so. Losing those things hurt, but I knew I was replacing them with something better. If I'd instead been keeping n nights a week free in case something comes up, what would I have gained? I'd just have been less happy in the weeks before that.
I am not sure if the logic makes sense for everyone.
If I had 10 years to live and got $20 million, I would immediately stop working and start playing video games to get as much in as possible before I die.
That's an interesting point of view...
If I were in that situation, I would STOP playing video games and writing software in exchange for money but invest every last penny and energy in building something for people in need.
But probably that's the reason I'm much too often dreaming of dropping everything, leaving to Africa to build schools. Too bad I'm a software engineer.
I don't dream of playing video games, I already do it too much, but it's interesting to know that someone does.
Instead of building schools in Africa, why not look towards my current heroes, "one billion" who are building school apps and distributing them in Malawai (just google university Nottingham trial too)
Not to put you off your dream, but it does strike me that buildings is doable - really good teachers are much harder to source.
Building schools in Africa is a metaphor of my actual "volunteering" desire: if I had infinite or just enough capital I would prefer to invest it in infrastructure and technology: building renewable energy power plants, internet connectivity to rural areas, research labs, etc.
Education is very important but most third world countries could benefit much more from technological self-sufficiency and expertise.
Interesting. I'd be travelling the world, eating at the highest rated restaurants in every city I'd find myself in. I guess I really am a tubby kid at heart.
You could probably partner with some of the groups in Africa on the ground now (assuming you have the time in your current life) and perhaps work with them in building software for free or a fee?
I'm working on an Ed Tech startup in Ghana myself (well it is my home land though I don't reside there) and that's mostly what I spend my time out of work on.
> Too bad I'm a software engineer.
No way, our skills are crucial for a continent that is rapidly embracing technology. The next billion to come online will need software that works for their contexts, and I think we're empowered to do that - while those more skilled in building solve those problems as well
You could probably do that. Live on $20,000 and save the rest for 5 years as a software engineer. You now have enough to retire in a developing/undeveloped country. Go there and build schools.
Because you can't survive playing video games. If the final goal is sort of hedonistic lifestyle, it is sometimes best to do the exact opposite of what you want to end up doing to maximize the time actually enjoying the lifestyle.
Sort of like you see a person setting up a hammock to lie in comfort and enjoy the beach. You tell him to stop setting up the hammock and just start enjoying the beach.
Assuming that the monetary restrictions no longer apply is not useful for almost any hedonistic outcome.
Sort of like you see a person setting up a hammock to lie in comfort and enjoy the beach. You tell him to stop setting up the hammock and just start enjoying the beach.
Isn't this basically, "you're enjoying yourself wrong" moralizing condescension? And frankly, if I had a hammock available on the beach I would use it and skip the sand in my crack.
Yes of course you can't survive playing video games, because you also have to eat. I don't think that was in question.
I think in the beach example we can take for granted that having a hammock is better than not. The question is whether having the hammock is worth giving up some time to set it up.
You probably can survive almost just playing video games. Get on welfare, live in a trailer park in the southern US. You probably have to be classified as "disabled" but doctors hand that out like candy these days.
My aunt gets about $900 a month from the government and lives in subsidized housing, so that she only has to pay about $200 a month in rent. So income-wise she's doing a lot better than me (I am a grad student).
So I'm curious, is this nonsense made up just to give bad advice to potential competitors or is it to stimulate an endless smoldering far right rage at imagined crimes in a fabicated world?
Second, I gave this advice because it would be incredibly sad to think, "I want to play video games all day, but unfortunately, I have to have a job." That is no way to live. I was trying to encourage the person above me to think about what he really wants.
Third, please don't go around snarkily second-guessing people's comments. My comments deserve to be taken at face value. I am tired having having to defend myself from unwarranted personal attacks.
Can I ask what you think happened to all those people who stopped getting Welfare after it was "reformed" in 1996? Did they all pull themselves up by their bootstraps and march off to Walmart to get minimum wage jobs?
javert's comment is patently false statement designed to create intense hatred of a vulnerable group for political ends.
A now deleted comment posted a link to a rambling diatribe as "evidence" (which just further proves my point). And mentioning any of this is described as a "personal attack". It's an interesting mixing of John Galt and Horst Wessel.
To answer your question, I presume eliminating aid to incapacitated people creates homelessness not walmart jobs.
Now can I ask you: what drives extremists to so thoroughly propagandize themselves that they derail their own ability to think clearly and do such demonstrable harm to their societies?
While javert's comment might have been un-sympathetic, its narrative is true. People have gotten on disability in proportion to the reduction of people on welfare. Check out this awesome Planet Money piece: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
This does not mean that these people are bad or that we should end disability aid. But it's true... people are becoming "disabled" as a means of surviving.
While your link is at least an intellectually honest attempt at analysis, the graph you link to shows that disability claims were flat just when welfare was falling the fastest (1996 – 99)
And were rising the fastest when welfare also rose the fastest (1990-94). This would run contrary to even correlation let alone a causal relationship.
While it is certainly an interesting theory, apparently the situation is even more complicated.
And mentioning any of this is described as a "personal
attack".
javert's post was based on his personal experience with his aunt. You said it was made up nonsense. This is essentially calling him a liar, which is probably why he took it as a personal attack.
I presume eliminating aid to incapacitated people
creates homelessness not walmart jobs.
You accused javert of making things up to support his political narrative, and then you proceed to simply "presume" that the facts instead support yours. Also, welfare was not for the incapacitated, it was for anyone with low income.
what drives extremists to so thoroughly propagandize
themselves that they derail their own ability to think
clearly and do such demonstrable harm to their
societies?
I don't know, but that's not what is happening here. Claiming that disability is the new welfare is not the same as claiming there shouldn't be disability or welfare. See for example the other reply to your comment. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132570)
>javert's post was based on his personal experience with his aunt
No, the language "to get on welfare" you have to be "classified as disabled" but "doctors hand that out like candy" is not about anyone's aunt, it is designed to provoke hatred toward vulnerable people to further a political agenda.
Is the anecdotal evidence that uses the word "about" twice and is written to provoke yet more hate true? Well there are hate mongering anecdotes about Jews, priests and gays too. They are of equal value and are repeated with the same intent. Was he offended when this was pointed out?
>>..what drives extremists to so thoroughly propagandize themselves..
>..that's not what is happening here..
On the contrary, it is the only thing happening here.
Well, you probably can't survive off playing video games, but you could certainly restructure your life around them. You simply stop and ask yourself before any life decision, "How does this maximize my gaming?" Your day-job, your social calendar, your home, your diet -- everything can be optimized to give you the most time and the highest-quality gaming.
Now, maybe games aren't your thing, but this ultimately applies to anything, hedonistic or industrial or altruistic. Whatever is most important to you -- gaming or family or mountain climbing or mathematics or civil rights -- you can restructure you life to maximize the amount of time or impact you have on that one thing. It doesn't really matter if it pays the bills.
>If I had 10 years to live and got $20 million, I would immediately stop working and start playing video games to get as much in as possible before I die.
wow that sentence didn't end up where I expected it to!
you listed one of the cheapest forms of entertainment in the world. (And a primary reason so many millions of teens are into it.)
you could play all the games you want for ten years, with like four complete TV or computer updates and all the games that interest you, for a total of $18K per year including basic living expenses. Leaving you 99.1% of the $20 million untouched (even though it is not such a huge sum of money.)
1. If you find your work boring, and don't make enough money at it, then quit and find something that either makes you money or stokes your passion.
2. If you find your work boring, but you make plenty of money at it, then find side-passions.
3. If your work stokes your passion, but you mooch off other people to make ends meet, it's not a great way to live.
4. It's easy to be passionate about something. But will you be able to sustain the passion for years? Through the ups and downs, and the late-nights and the disappointments?
I don't have deadlines for tasks. I have start times only. While that technically means the start time of task #2 is essentially a deadline for task #1, I find it a lot more motivating to think of it in this way. It keeps the notion that not finishing today's task is preventing tomorrow's task from starting at the front and center.
Someone once told me that what we need are three lists. A to-do list, a stop doing list, and a don't do list. I don't always end up with three lists, but the principle serves me well.
You have no idea, or you have ideas and you second guess them, thinking them trite or meaningless? I legitimately ask, because I had the same problem for a long time. It wasn't that I didn't know what I wanted to do, it was that I couldn't focus on just one thing, and I couldn't figure out what the meaning of it was, why any of it was important.
When I realized that it doesn't matter for things to be important, I was able to get over my hangups and get to the things that I really, actually wanted to do. When answering the question of "what would you do if you had limitless resources", you have to discard cultural pressures, because cultural pressures apply an artificial restriction to the "limitless resources" conceit of the thought experiment.
If you find yourself not liking your answers then, you have to sit down and figure out why. Keep climbing up the ladder of "why?". Why does it bother you? And why is that reason important? Why do those conditions that make it important exist?
Most of the things that cross my mind are cliche and I know from experience I would not actually find them all that satisfying.
It's possible that I would keep doing exactly what I am doing now, which I don't know whether to consider a blessing or curse. Am I living my dreams, or do I have no dreams?
I did an exercise one time in which I had to write down, in as much detail, my "ideal" day. The exercise was structured around a conceit that there was a magical genie who would grant you everything you wanted, but only if you could describe it in detail, and only in the detail that you describe it.
I found it helpful. I learned a lot about what I want from it. It took me a while to finish and ended up being several pages long. It helped when I realized that the trick is to describe lifestyle, not possessions obtained or goals achieved. That's really the important thing.
I realized that most of the goals I had created were vague, barely thought-through assumptions that would supposedly make that lifestyle possible. But those two things aren't really connected.
So now, I do some freelancing for 20 hours a week and the rest of the week is mine. I've achieved 80% of my lifestyle goals and it was mostly about rearranging the things I already had in my life.
I spend the rest of the week working on projects that will hopefully get me the other 20%.
Ironically, I need to stop doing my to-do list (ActiveInbox for me.) I've actually found it's become somewhat addictive. I think it's the unconscious feeling that I'm being productive and it actually keeps me from doing things I might enjoy. I've started to time box my to-do listing. I wouldn't be surprised if this is not an uncommon situation.
Nice piece. Get rid of excuses to continue to procrastinate and not get results. Also, well aligned with the Pareto principle: just do that 20% that get you results and improvement.
I don't think this is fair. If you are poor and uneducated, you have to spend more time working just to provide basic needs. So you don't have as much time available as those who are better off.