You wont remember the project, hell you'll probably forget the job. But the little snippets of things that happen in between working hours will stick with you. They are in effect your life.
Of course, working less in the future often times entails working more now. Not in the retire-early sense, which realistically only a few can hope to achieve. But in finding employment that supports and doesn't compromise your life outside of it.
I work a 30 hour a week salary gig that I negotiated. I have to work at a small company, but it's better than freelancing.
I also work 100% remote from home. People talk about feeling out fo the loop or whatever, but I play music with friends and have a family so it[s never been lonely for me.
I think we just have to cut corners and not take recommendations too seriously.
The easiest way to get more time is just to work for a large company that provides meals and doesn't make you clock-in and be hyper-efficient with your work so you can slide out after six hour days, but that's easier said than done.
Realize that people who are really physically fit treat it like a hobby, so if you think something is more worth it (writing, guitar, binge drinking with your friends), then don't stress about not accomplishing everything-- it was an intentional trade-off.
And the not really solution-solution is to have enough serotonin so that you're perfectly happy doing things like cooking, running errands, and working out-- which is a big goal of mine.
I can relate to this, but there are things you can do to at least limit the time-wastes. Here's a breakdown of his list and how I solve some of those problems.
* eating: eat while you work or do something else; plus it also allows you to skip your lunch break at work, get more shit done and go home early.
* cooking: don't. If you live in a major city there should be a few healthy (not fast-food crap) takeaway options available. Just order while on your way home and dinner will be there shortly after you arrive.
* bills and bank related activities: switch to a bank that doesn't suck. I use a fully-online bank called Monzo since more than a year and I honestly can't remember the last time I actually had to spend more than a handful of minutes for "banking" activities. Ditch suppliers/utilities that waste your time for those that get out of your way.
* budgeting: again, try to find a bank with an app that does it for you or makes it easier.
* cleaning: outsource it.
* car upkeep: if in a major city ask yourself if it's worth the trouble to own a car. In my case Uber works out fine.
* pet upkeep: don't get pets? I love cats more than anything else and yet even I don't get one because I barely have time for myself, let alone the cat.
* general repairs and replacements for things breaking or going obsolete: outsource it, order online, etc.
* religious activities: don't?
* home upkeep/renovations/gardening: outsource it?
But I'm definitely interested in others' perspectives on this and how they solve this problem.
The author's problem is that there's a gap between what he's doing and what he thinks he ought to be doing. On the plus side he's already got some perspective via his humorous writing.
In addition he might try and do nothing for a spell: I've found this to be impossible. One can then relax and watch oneself doing the truly essential tasks. Automatically. This is the 'ability to let that which does not matter truly slide' (Tyler Durden in Fight Club).
I agree with most, but not the cooking, make enough for 2 or more meals at once, you can amortize the time over them, reddit.com/r/mealprep has a lot of ideas for people making large batches at once. Plus a lot of cooking can be things like roasting chicken which takes a long time but it's hands off so barely counts doesn't matter. For more hands on stuff I listen to audio books so entertainment time and cooking time overlap. I'll add
* shopping: This doesn't have to be an hour long ordeal, for me it's a <5 minute stop on the way home 3 or 4 times a week.
* exercise: Build it into the daily commute, IME a 30 minute drive will translate to a 30-60 minute bike ride, then you can scrap the car upkeep.
* shaving: only shave every few weeks.
* hair cuts: No 2 all over takes about 10 minutes and your good for another 3-6 months. Can even do this yourself in theory (in practice I can't).
Now if I could just stop procrastinating with all this free time...
Could feasibly get the shopping trips down to 1-2 by freezing meat, eating vego later in the week after you've used the meat, etc. If you use milk, time buying that with a petrol/gas stop if you run short. Daily grocery runs strike me as pretty wasteful unless it's en route or part of your walking/exercise routine.
I walk to the shop every day, which takes around half an hour. For me it's nice to just stretch my legs and get some fresh air.
Between walking to/from work and the shops, I get a nice hour outside every day.
It also breaks up the monotony a bit. I go crazy if the only 2 places I spend time at all week are work and home. I specifically try to spend time away from home in my evenings.
I'm a woman. I get a 2 or 3 guard around the back and sides, trimmed on top and leave me some bangs in front. I go every few months. It's initially quite short, but starts looking like a typical little old lady haircut after a while, which is appropriate, what with me being a little old lady. (Er, except for that little part. I'm not that petite.)
I cut my hair real short for health reasons. But not having to fuss constantly with long hair has been a huge secret of success as a woman. It is not lost on me that some women with PhDs -- like the "Mother of Dark Matter" and the first female Field's Medalist -- had quite short hair.
I expect people's answers will depend on several things: how much money they have, how much labor they can share, how much time they have, what privacy tradeoffs they're willing to make in the name of convenience, what their hobbies and skills are, etc. I happen to enjoy cooking, gardening and maintaining my car, so I do those things myself. I also find that eating takeaway or on the go leads to mindless, unhealthy eating, so even if I don't want to cook, I try to make it a priority.
But cleaning? I've got no interest, nor do I feel I get much value from it, so I outsource. I also make a real effort (failing often), to not do things that I don't feel add value: browsing social media or hacker news, opening articles I will never read in tabs in my browser, organizing things (send them to the thrift store), shopping (I shop online quite a bit), and so on.
I think that sometimes it's healthy to waste some time.
If I did all that you suggested, I honestly don't know what I'd do with all that spare time.
I think that household chores are good for your mental health. While you're cooking dinner, or mopping the floor, or fixing that broken curtain rail, it gives you time to disconnect from everything. You've got a task at hand that you can focus on and exclude everything else.
I've found meal prepping to be a fantastic solution. I can make 5 meals in about an hour with my 4 burner stove. These meals are cheap, help me eat a lot of vegetables, and allow me to easily hit my macronutrient goals for strength training.
It's definitely better to batch stuff, but even then, an hour of your time is probably worth a lot more than the equivalent of buying those 5 meals already made.
Not to mention, I assume the one hour doesn't include time to clean up, which for me is one of the biggest drawbacks of cooking.
They say that money can't buy happiness. That may be true, but it can buy a dishwasher, which is much the same thing. Easily one of the best material purchases I've ever made.
I only mention this because I only realized this after I purchased the dishwasher. And so I spend time researching and "optimizing" in hopes of finding the next dishwasher in my life, which is how one falls into the trap this article describes.
Yeah, meal prepping is something I've kind of wanted to look into but from what I've seen it only works for half a week and I still need good recipes for it. Not to mention that it kills my Sunday, which I take issues with.
I can understand the money tradeoff (your time is worth more than your money, ergo you do not cook), but I'm curious how you handle the health tradeoff? Do you eat lots of prepared foods or restaurant foods, or just lots of raw stuff?
I don't think I share the general view on "healthy" food. If I am getting correct macros and vitamins and not gaining weight I consider myself fine. I found evidence on other claims scarce. I think obsession with healthy eating is a fad and tbh I grew up in another country and the food was often much worse there despite much of it being prepared by hand, because there just wasn't enough of it or enough of nutritious food (i.e., something like /oranges/ cause for a celebration).
> Do you eat lots of prepared foods or restaurant foods, or just lots of raw stuff?
A mix of the three. I'm more likely to eat raw kale than cook it in something. I like things like canned chickpeas. I sometimes boil things or cook simple items like scrambled eggs.
I've never understood this attitude. Cooking takes as much time as you want it to.
Cooking up a bowl of pasta is like 10 minutes of actual engaged cooking time. Boil some water, add pasta, meanwhile fry a some sausage and onion (maybe add some broccoli or other vegetable), once pasta and sausage are cooked, drain the pasta water, add pasta sauce from a bottle and the sausage, then put it in a bowl. Boom, there's a good dinner.
Then consider a lesson in putting yourself in the shoes of others. When I make the decision to not cook, I am not you. Capture that, and it will make sense. Unfortunately, more often than not, I found people are just looking for someone to consider below them, rather than understanding that some people just make different choices.
I think cooking takes as much time as it does modulo your skill level. Obviously someone who cooks a lot will have lots of tricks up their sleeve. Their confidence level will be high. They won't make dumb mistakes. It doesn't take them forever to chop an onion. My cooking skill level has never been high. For example: I'm really bad at coordination. If I am doing two things at once (boiling + frying), I tend to mess up timing. Something ends up overdone underdone.
Another: logistics. When did I buy that broccoli? What if I can't find good broccoli? What if it spoils? Now my plan is in ruins. This is probably the hardest part of cooking for me, is deciding on ingredients, buying them at the right time, and not letting them spoil.
Whenever I do make food, say, for potlucks, it's a sufficiently advanced process that I don't really want to repeat it every single day.
Also, I'm used to tasty food. I'm not used to bland food. Boiled pasta with store sauce is just not going to cut it, I tried. I'd need to, at minimum, add cheese to it. And boiling pasta is hardly cooking anyway.
Wow this was the most ignorant and man-child comment I've read in this entire thread lol.
The generalisations and overestimations are beyond me.
No one cooks every night in this world, unless it's their job. Real food lasts a lot longer than you think it does, and that shows your inexperience or lack of trying to even inch near the real thing.
You remind me of a kid that gets a water pistol expecting a bb gun and cries because water doesn't hurt.
Your gripes with cooking:
- I don't understand how long food lasts. Takes one time to learn.
- I don't know how to cut things. Takes one time to learn.
- I am used to tasty food. The cheap food from your restaurant is not from scratch. Restaurants are often less fresh and less diverse than what you make at home.
- I don't want to cook every day. What are you cooking, 2 sausages and an egg? How about cooking 4 sausages and 2 eggs. Use a pot that doesn't feed 1 person like a normal person. Do you cut parts of a tree off as you need them or do you cut the base?
Honestly I don't know how you live by yourself when you can generate these kinds of "blockades". How about before you pin something you can't do down to it's "negatives" you actually start to pin some effort into it.
Do you catch Ubers everywhere because last time you got in a car your feet got tired from grabbing the steering wheel and your back hurt from sitting upside down? No one taught you to drive that way, no one taught you to cook pasta, toss in sauce and a piece of cheese on top...
Wow this was the most ignorant and man-child comment I've read in this entire thread lol.
The generalisations and overestimations are beyond me.
No one cooks every night in this world, unless it's their job. Real food lasts a lot longer than you think it does, and that shows your inexperience or lack of trying to even inch near the real thing.
You remind me of a kid that gets a water pistol expecting a bb gun and cries because water doesn't hurt.
Your gripes with cooking:
- I don't understand how long food lasts. Takes one time to learn.
- I don't know how to cut things. Takes one time to learn.
- I am used to tasty food. The cheap food from your restaurant is not from scratch. Restaurants are often less fresh and less diverse than what you make at home.
- I don't want to cook every day. What are you cooking, 2 sausages and an egg? How about cooking 4 sausages and 2 eggs. Use a pot that doesn't feed 1 person like a normal person. Do you cut parts of a tree off as you need them or do you cut the base?
Honestly I don't know how you live by yourself when you can generate these kinds of "blockades". How about before you pin something you can't do down to it's "negatives" you actually start to pin some effort into it.
Do you catch Ubers everywhere because last time you got in a car your feet got tired from grabbing the steering wheel and your back hurt from sitting upside down? No one taught you to drive that way, no one taught you to cook pasta, toss in sauce and a piece of cheese on top...
My example was just that, an example. But to elaborate on it, it's not hard to make pasta sauce from scratch.
To add to my recipe, instead of using pasta sauce, add some passata or a tin of chopped tomatoes as well as some garlic to the pan with the sausage and onion, as well as some mixed herbs (or fresh if you're fancy) and some salt & pepper. Maybe add some olives or capers, both of which will last forever in your fridge. Now you have an easy, fresh pasta sauce from scratch (or just as much from scratch as a restaurant).
You can make a curry pretty easy too. Get some good curry powder, chickpeas, canned tomatoes, some diced chicken, onions, and garlic.
Cook the onions and garlic, add the curry powder and chicken, cook the chicken a bit, then add the tomatoes and chickpeas. Serve with a packet of precooked rice to make your life easier.
Steak, green beans, and mashed potatoes is an easy meal to make. You can even buy good frozen mashed potatoes.
Stir fry is like the easiest thing to make, just fry random meat and vegetables, and then add noodles or rice.
Here are some other easy meals to cook, which require minimal effort and ingredients: Salmon, broccoli, and quinoa. Lamb chops with roast pumpkin and parsnips. Haloumi, arugula, tomato, and cucumber salad.
Wow this was the most ignorant and man-child comment I've read in this entire thread lol.
The generalisations and overestimations are beyond me.
No one cooks every night in this world, unless it's their job. Real food lasts a lot longer than you think it does, and that shows your inexperience or lack of trying to even inch near the real thing.
You remind me of a kid that gets a water pistol expecting a bb gun and cries because water doesn't hurt.
Your gripes with cooking:
- I don't understand how long food lasts. Takes one time to learn.
- I don't know how to cut things. Takes one time to learn.
- I am used to tasty food. The cheap food from your restaurant is not from scratch. Restaurants are often less fresh and less diverse than what you make at home.
- I don't want to cook every day. What are you cooking, 2 sausages and an egg? How about cooking 4 sausages and 2 eggs. Use a pot that doesn't feed 1 person like a normal person. Do you cut parts of a tree off as you need them or do you cut the base?
Honestly I don't know how you live by yourself when you can generate these kinds of "blockades". How about before you pin something you can't do down to it's "negatives" you actually start to pin some effort into it.
Do you catch Ubers everywhere because last time you got in a car your feet got tired from grabbing the steering wheel and your back hurt from sitting upside down? No one taught you to drive that way, no one taught you to cook pasta, toss in sauce and a piece of cheese on top...
Just going to keep putting my comment in until it's not censored lol.
I think the main problem with the author of the article is that he's still essentially reacting passively to the world around him. He's acting in response to things that bump up against him -- maybe he's trying to assess whether they're important or worth doing, but he's still fundamentally passive.
The difference between him and his friend who does the triathlon is -- there's no one who looks at the clock early in the evening, glances around their apartment, then checks their phone real quick, then says, "I guess I'll train for a triathlon." That's the sort of desire or goal that comes at a different moment in time, perhaps while you're doing something else, or you're caught between things. And you think, "Shit, I should run a triathlon".
Once you've had that thought, when you get home from work your first thought is, "when do I train for my triathlon?" And once that's done, you fit the rest of the crap in any which way.
The point being, start out with one or more positive, active goals. Prioritize them (as acconrad has said). Everything else just sifts in afterwards. It could be raising your kid, or volunteering for local politics, or playing the piano. Do something first and foremost, something you have decided to do, and you'll find you somehow still have time for all the other crap. (Or you'll find that you don't, and it doesn't matter.)
This is really the only relevant thing here, and effectively amounts to "spend less time on these things", "half ass them more", or "don't do these things".
Which is fine, and I think the subconscious point of this article is that if you focus on what a "proper" person should do, you'll run out of time real fast, and generally people need to cut corners.
And that advice that adds a daily time drain is questionable. I don't really know anyone who does it all.
Alternative strategy, get really fucking good at doing those things. Then you can get them done in a quarter of the time (compared to someone like the author), and you'll have a decent box of time to fill with doing things you love.
You can replace a daily 1 hour cooking with a 3 hour Sunday meal prep and save 4 hours for a week - you can spend 5 hours automating you lawn being watered, but probably not automate cutting it. There’s only so much time one can save.
Yes, and when you automate too many things with other people's labor it ends up getting expensive. Even if you have money, its not really much time savings - 30 minutes a week?
The point here is for even an above average worker the daily expectations of the modern lifestyle can overwhelm even a budget minded person, or a couple with kids.
Sort of, but a lot of these things are either time bound or not in your control. I think if they were so easy to optimize, most would have already optimized them.
Exercise is often time gated. It's not something you want to rush in many cases. Definitely not foam rolling. Exercise also often incurs logistical costs (i.e., getting here). [no, your optimization techniques for at-home body weight are not welcome here]
Meditation is not really prone to that.
Doctor visits you can't control. Or haircuts.
Calls and visits to bureaucracies you can't control.
Social time fundamentally is not something you want to squeeze.
There's also a danger with getting spazzy if you optimize too much.
I think the bigger issue is too much crap for a person to take care of. Too many things to remember and schedule when they should just happen. I think it's an externality that is being captured by no one and it will get worse with time and we won't notice because we'll just call people who fail inferior.
> no, your optimization techniques for at-home body weight are not welcome here
Body weight exercise is not all you should be doing, but it's certainly helpful. Don't be close minded. Running is possibly the best exercise you can do, and you don't need to go anywhere.
Meditation can absolutely be fit into short segments throughout your day (and if you're overwhelmed, yes, it's probably a good idea).
You're right about most of the rest. You can obsess about what you're missing, or appreciate what you have. Either way, you'll be absolutely right.
Having some long term goal and thing to work towards can definitely help. How to focus enough to figure out those goals can be very difficult, but knowing that you need a goal is a first step.
You're right about being active, but it's hard to have such a strong sense of identity and worldview-- to just say: I'm going to structure my life around training for a triathalon.
I feel like there are so many parts of life I want to explore to see if I'd like them. I and a lot of people my age haven't found our 'triathalon' and I'm worried about not having enough time to find it.
Also, the post was more about there being so many recommendations and 'upkeep tasks' for being healthy and functional. I don't see how assessing whether things are worth doing is 'fundamentally passive'.
Wait until you're 40! The things that are important to you will make themselves known. I'm 40 and have decided the things that matter are my family, writing, piano, taiji, and baking, in that order. A short list, but each one of those things could reward a lifetime of dedicated exploration, and each of them (okay maybe not baking) yields arbitrary philosophical depths. I need to spend time on other stuff, too, but I get that stuff out of the way as soon as I can.
"Upkeep tasks" are never worth making your main focus. Fooling with diets, the quantified life, exercise regimens... these are not worth making the focus of life. They make you healthy and functional -- for what? You need something to be healthy and functional for. Start with that thing (or things), and work backwards. You can't make oiling your wheels (or tending to your .emacs file) the whole point. And I don't mean we all need some all-fired existential purpose in life, I just mean we need something we've decided to do.
If you're not yet 40... uh... hang in there.
Sorry, this might be my first ever man-on-the-mountain, lemme-tell-you-how-things-are post, and I don't mean to make a habit of it. But I've got some years behind me, and a lot of mistakes, and this is something I feel pretty confident about.
My wife gets frustrated with my attempts at ruthless prioritization and my efforts to remove future potential time sinks from my life. I would like to achieve financial independence before having a house, dog, and children (well, I did own a house briefly before moving across the country). This is unlikely to occur, so I'm trying to figure out the next best path for the future: a small, well-built house with a simple yard, a breed of dog that is easy to train and requires little grooming, and as for children... well I just hope I get lucky.
I don't want "free time" in order to lounge around and watch TV (I don't even own a TV). I want free time to be able to research topics that interest me and start companies. It's difficult for a middle class or even upper-middle class person to simultaneously maintain a full-time job, family, health, and extremely productive hobbies. And I would say it's next to impossible for someone who came from a below-middle class background.
Some insight: if you don't engauge in common activities, your borometer of what is interesting or useful to the average person drifts, and fast. That is just something I learned from being somewhat similar in my persuits.
Your income based assumptions also, are very different from my experince. The middle class has a grind, that the lower and upper classes are less bound to. I find upper-middle class friends to have the least free time, and the most harried lifestyle. I find a good gauge of having free time to research or recreate is reading frequency. Ymmv.
I found this approach was leading to depression. My attempt to have "extremely productive hobbies" just made me feel bad about them when they were neglected. It also led me to taking on too many things that interested me (garden, car, reading, tech, and so on). I found that when I quit prioritizing and just did stuff I enjoyed doing without worrying what the long term outcome would be, I was happier. If you've ever read Shop Class as Soulcraft [1] or Mastery (by George Leonard, not the Robert Greene book) [2] you will have some idea of what I mean. I began to pursue things for the sake of pursuing them, not because there was an end goal in site.
I realize that this is a purely personal anecdote and I realize this is not how people get rich, run a triathlon or change the world, but maybe I just can't do those things.
"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."
-Ira Glass
I think some of the frustration comes from not sticking with any one thing long enough to get meaningfully better at it.
This assumes getting better is necessarily the goal, which it may not be. For example, I like to play soccer. I'm not terribly good at soccer, nor do I spend much time outside of playing to improve (i.e. doing soccer specific workouts, drills, etc.). I have the self awareness to realize that my ceiling is limited and my enjoyment would not be greatly impacted by "fighting my way through." I just want to play. In a twisted way, I feel I achieved a sort of mastery just by doing the thing for the thing's sake.
This isn't to say that it's not good advice, but when I spent my life relentlessly trying to optimize (a trap I still fall into frequently, I'm reading these comments after all), I just got frustrated and felt like a failure. I decided it was OK to watch a TV show I enjoyed, to read books that had nothing edifying except a story I enjoyed or to simply waste time.
I think regular self assessment and awareness are possibly more important that optimization or improving.
Getting better at soccer is so much fun though! Watch a little pro soccer (try the EPL or Champions League) and see how the pros can do more with less effort. Force entire defenses to rotate by changing the angle of your body. First touch the ball into space instead of nowhere. Make the tight cut at the right time to slice through a defense.
Oh, I watch soccer, though less now since I did the above self assessment and decided the hours I spending watching it were probably not really making me happier. And I can admire Robben cutting in diagonally from the wings on his weak foot to create an opening or even Suarez's almost instinctive genius. But firstly, I will never be Robben. Secondly, the level I play at has limited tactical sophistication (the traditional 4-4-2 formation has given way to more of a 0-5-5 or 5-5-0 depending on where the ball is). Thirdly, I'm "good enough" for my level.
Off topic, but if you're interested in sports theory and writing, Suarez always makes me think of John McPhee's "A Sense of Where You Are", a profile of Bill Bradley when he was at Princeton. Probably one of my top 5 favorite sports books or articles.
And that's ok! And neither will I. I think some of my enthusiasm comes from picking up soccer later in life. I've found learning things as an adult is a totally different skill from learning as a child. By accepting that my goal is improving myself, and not competing with the world's best, I've found great joy in the smallest steps towards being a more perfect player.
There’s plenty of time — you just have to focus on the things that really matter. I have a 30 minute commute, so I’m away from home for 9+ hours every day. My wife is a stay-at-home mom and we have two children who aren’t old enough yet for school (not that mamma is ready for them to go). I do most of the cooking (we rarely eat out), she does most of the child rearing. We pretty much split the cleaning. I fix the house as it breaks, and do some home
improvement when I can fit it in (just finished a set of bunk beds for the kids). We do something fun at least one day most weekends (beach visit, fishing, zoo, etc). I have a couple of beers most nights and just enjoy my family as I cook or get the kids ready for bed in the evenings. Before I go to work in the mornings I get in a short exercise routine (stretching and some push/sit/pull-ups for maintenance). Still manage to get 7-8 hours of sleep a night. I perform regular maintenance on our vehicles.
I don’t watch any TV or mindlessly browse the Internet during the week (OK, I’ll check up on some webcomics once or twice). Honestly I don’t do much of that on the weekends, either. I don’t read fiction much. I don’t check my IRA or 401(k) regularly. I don’t worry about my health — we eat fantastically healthy in my house and I’m not sedentary.
I work to live; I don’t live to work. My family is the most important thing in my life and I enjoy every minute I’m with them.
It would be nice, though, if we were on the galactic standard 25 hour day. I could use that extra hour every now and then.
If someone feels like that already, I cannot recommend having children or being responsible for a garden or home maintenance. You will be swamped.
That said, optimising your routine can be rewarding. Morning and evening routines with your children can be great fun. Something like cooking, which can be a chore to some, is a treat to others (myself included).
IMO, it's helpful to prioritise important things for the morning while you're sharp, and leave non-essential things for the late evening when feeling tired or falling asleep barely matters (watching a movie or playing PS4).
Pay bills/etc or check your stocks during your lunch break. Minimise your grocery shopping trips - keep a stock of staples and then do a weekly shop for meat, milk, etc. Exercise in the morning. That should start to free up your evenings.
"As you're Ubering down the road of life, if you're ahead of schedule and there are no other productive activities you can fit in before your next appointment, don't forget to stop and smell the roses."
There are a lot of very sad comments in this thread about optimising life and being productive and efficient. Don't have kids. Don't cook. Don't watch television or play video games, or at least save them until everything else is done. Buy other people's labour to free up more time for working to pay them.
This is an unapologetic value judgement: living your life that way is a waste of time.
There's not enough time, and that's okay. Let a few things go. You don't need to be optimally productive.
I can’t help but feel like it’s because we feel like we need to carve out some time to actually do something that is fulfilling, satisfying, or worth living for. The idea of the grind through middle age isn’t uncommon - and as people see their parents who went through it have regrets and/or fail to have anything happening for them after retirement it starts to really grow on you just how much of a waste it can feel.
> There are a lot of very sad comments in this thread about optimising life and being productive and efficient. Don't have kids. Don't cook. Don't watch television or play video games, or at least save them until everything else is done. Buy other people's labour to free up more time for working to pay them.
Maybe you're over aggregating? :)
I don't want to have kids in part because I like my video games and they and other activities I enjoy will have to go poof due to kids^t. Basically, you can only pick a few things before your time runs out.
I think you're vying for a time where people wouldn't feel so short of time, but I don't think it's bad, in the moment, if people do successfully optimize their time for their situation, and I don't care if it makes some idealizer of the human condition unhappy.
I do not owe it to anyone to fit some mold of the perfect human being who finds all the time to exercise, eat healthy, socialize, cook, AND have kids. It's all draining enough for me as it is.
^t there are other much more advanced and depressing reasons why I actually don't want to have kids, though
The next time I move jobs this is going to be a fairly high priority for me while negotiating. Either 7 h/day work or 4 days/week. I love doing things on my free time like programming, robots, and learning Japanese and cooking, but I don't have free time anymore.
I don't know how I've done it, but somehow I've reached a zen-like state where I just don't worry about this shit. I haven't ruthlessly optimised my day, I just deal with shit when I deal with it and everything works out fine.
I usually have time to watch some TV with my flatmate, or head to the pub for a couple of pints with a mate.
How does it take 2 hours to cook dinner? It takes me at most 15 minutes of engaged time to cook dinner. Apparently it takes 2 hours for the author to go to the gym too.
I think the author just needs to chill out and stop worrying about shit.
From what I've seen most parents effectively cease to exist once they get kids (i.e., drop hobbies) and their life revolves around their kids, so I am not really convinced that the time problems doesn't exist and parents don't just flag it as "OK" in their heads due to hyper-focus on their kids.
Much of what is on our list isn't really important. And I have personally identified Time as my #1 enemy in my quality of life.
There are a few resources that provide a different perspective. One I would suggest is The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. As thinking, analytical people, we should (grudingly?) realize that there truly is nothing other than this moment. And this moment usually doesn't care about your time on a foam roller... unless it does, in which case you get on the foam roller.
I think there's a problem for highly creative or mentally busy folks. We see so many possibilities, and perhaps we excel as many things we try. That brings a feeling of unrealized possibility that nags on us. We could be a good this, or that, or whatever. In some cases it might matter to the world if we accomplished it (assuming that ultimately even matters). But quite often, perhaps, the unrealized potential may not be worth much. So the worry about the time we should be spending to realize that potential can be dropped.
Not to belittle the "average guy", but we all probably know the guy that has had the same job for 10 years and who is SO happy to go home most night of the week - and especially to be there Sunday - to watch whatever game on his big TV. He's got the deadly but oh-so-tasty snack that he's blissfully unaware shorten his life with each mini-sausage. He's got a wife who appears to actually like sports and who provides the snacks for him and his buddies (not being sexist; just painting a typical American Dream picture). His big Ford F250 4x4 parked outside is only 1.5 years old. Life is good. If he's really rich and bad-ass, he's got a new Harley in the garage for his every-other-weekend-warrior needs.
Meanwhile, the HN crowd is browsing high achiever Github projects, considering their own many ideas, and feeling like underachievers. And eventually we die, or we set off on the ocean like Jim Gray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gray_(computer_scientist)#...) and never return.
> Not to belittle the "average guy", but we all probably know the guy that has had the same job for 10 years and who is SO happy to go home most night of the week - and especially to be there Sunday - to watch whatever game on his big TV. He's got the deadly but oh-so-tasty snack that he's blissfully unaware shorten his life with each mini-sausage. He's got a wife who appears to actually like sports and who provides the snacks for him and his buddies (not being sexist; just painting a typical American Dream picture). His big Ford F250 4x4 parked outside is only 1.5 years old. Life is good. If he's really rich and bad-ass, he's got a new Harley in the garage for his every-other-weekend-warrior needs.
I think this is actually an ideal.
But I don't think this ideal is as easy to reach as "average guy" would imply. A lot of these "average guys" hate their job, their relationship, or both, and the happiness evaporates, the Sunday game the only thing really keeping them afloat.
What you describe is contentment and stability and I honestly think most people don't have that. Even the really well off engineers still have to worry about their job and the sharpening of their skills. It's very hard to just sit back and not worry about it all, because you have to continue to do work to keep it up, and therein lies the rub.
One thing that’s really helped us save time is grocery delivery with peapod. It saves so much time and if you value your time in any reasonable way, you’ll almost certainly come out ahead.
How do you even clean a toaster? Do you have to take that shit apart with a screwdriver or something? That’s a good thirty minute investment. Fourty-five, if you count the fifteen minutes it’d take me to find a screwdriver.
Toasters typically have a trap door on the bottom for emptying the crumbs and for ease of access for cleaning the inside.
Once you know how to do things, lots of things aren't that time consuming. Eating right is also vastly less time consuming than being sick all the time.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 65.9 ms ] threadYou wont remember the project, hell you'll probably forget the job. But the little snippets of things that happen in between working hours will stick with you. They are in effect your life.
Of course, working less in the future often times entails working more now. Not in the retire-early sense, which realistically only a few can hope to achieve. But in finding employment that supports and doesn't compromise your life outside of it.
I work a 30 hour a week salary gig that I negotiated. I have to work at a small company, but it's better than freelancing.
I also work 100% remote from home. People talk about feeling out fo the loop or whatever, but I play music with friends and have a family so it[s never been lonely for me.
The easiest way to get more time is just to work for a large company that provides meals and doesn't make you clock-in and be hyper-efficient with your work so you can slide out after six hour days, but that's easier said than done.
Realize that people who are really physically fit treat it like a hobby, so if you think something is more worth it (writing, guitar, binge drinking with your friends), then don't stress about not accomplishing everything-- it was an intentional trade-off.
And the not really solution-solution is to have enough serotonin so that you're perfectly happy doing things like cooking, running errands, and working out-- which is a big goal of mine.
* eating: eat while you work or do something else; plus it also allows you to skip your lunch break at work, get more shit done and go home early.
* cooking: don't. If you live in a major city there should be a few healthy (not fast-food crap) takeaway options available. Just order while on your way home and dinner will be there shortly after you arrive.
* bills and bank related activities: switch to a bank that doesn't suck. I use a fully-online bank called Monzo since more than a year and I honestly can't remember the last time I actually had to spend more than a handful of minutes for "banking" activities. Ditch suppliers/utilities that waste your time for those that get out of your way.
* budgeting: again, try to find a bank with an app that does it for you or makes it easier.
* cleaning: outsource it.
* car upkeep: if in a major city ask yourself if it's worth the trouble to own a car. In my case Uber works out fine.
* pet upkeep: don't get pets? I love cats more than anything else and yet even I don't get one because I barely have time for myself, let alone the cat.
* general repairs and replacements for things breaking or going obsolete: outsource it, order online, etc.
* religious activities: don't?
* home upkeep/renovations/gardening: outsource it?
But I'm definitely interested in others' perspectives on this and how they solve this problem.
In addition he might try and do nothing for a spell: I've found this to be impossible. One can then relax and watch oneself doing the truly essential tasks. Automatically. This is the 'ability to let that which does not matter truly slide' (Tyler Durden in Fight Club).
* shopping: This doesn't have to be an hour long ordeal, for me it's a <5 minute stop on the way home 3 or 4 times a week.
* exercise: Build it into the daily commute, IME a 30 minute drive will translate to a 30-60 minute bike ride, then you can scrap the car upkeep.
* shaving: only shave every few weeks.
* hair cuts: No 2 all over takes about 10 minutes and your good for another 3-6 months. Can even do this yourself in theory (in practice I can't).
Now if I could just stop procrastinating with all this free time...
Great suggestions otherwise though.
Between walking to/from work and the shops, I get a nice hour outside every day.
It also breaks up the monotony a bit. I go crazy if the only 2 places I spend time at all week are work and home. I specifically try to spend time away from home in my evenings.
The heck is No 2?
What is this mythical 10 minute haircut? I never had a 10 minute haircut.
Also, he's referring to the clipper settings. Number 2 is about a quarter of an inch.
I cut my hair real short for health reasons. But not having to fuss constantly with long hair has been a huge secret of success as a woman. It is not lost on me that some women with PhDs -- like the "Mother of Dark Matter" and the first female Field's Medalist -- had quite short hair.
Vera Rubin, Mother of Dark Matter, pics:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=vera+rubin&FORM=HDRSC2
Maryam Mirzakhani, first female Field's Medalist, pics:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Maryam%20Mirzakhani&qs=...
But cleaning? I've got no interest, nor do I feel I get much value from it, so I outsource. I also make a real effort (failing often), to not do things that I don't feel add value: browsing social media or hacker news, opening articles I will never read in tabs in my browser, organizing things (send them to the thrift store), shopping (I shop online quite a bit), and so on.
If I did all that you suggested, I honestly don't know what I'd do with all that spare time.
I think that household chores are good for your mental health. While you're cooking dinner, or mopping the floor, or fixing that broken curtain rail, it gives you time to disconnect from everything. You've got a task at hand that you can focus on and exclude everything else.
Not to mention, I assume the one hour doesn't include time to clean up, which for me is one of the biggest drawbacks of cooking.
I only mention this because I only realized this after I purchased the dishwasher. And so I spend time researching and "optimizing" in hopes of finding the next dishwasher in my life, which is how one falls into the trap this article describes.
> Do you eat lots of prepared foods or restaurant foods, or just lots of raw stuff?
A mix of the three. I'm more likely to eat raw kale than cook it in something. I like things like canned chickpeas. I sometimes boil things or cook simple items like scrambled eggs.
Cooking up a bowl of pasta is like 10 minutes of actual engaged cooking time. Boil some water, add pasta, meanwhile fry a some sausage and onion (maybe add some broccoli or other vegetable), once pasta and sausage are cooked, drain the pasta water, add pasta sauce from a bottle and the sausage, then put it in a bowl. Boom, there's a good dinner.
Then consider a lesson in putting yourself in the shoes of others. When I make the decision to not cook, I am not you. Capture that, and it will make sense. Unfortunately, more often than not, I found people are just looking for someone to consider below them, rather than understanding that some people just make different choices.
I think cooking takes as much time as it does modulo your skill level. Obviously someone who cooks a lot will have lots of tricks up their sleeve. Their confidence level will be high. They won't make dumb mistakes. It doesn't take them forever to chop an onion. My cooking skill level has never been high. For example: I'm really bad at coordination. If I am doing two things at once (boiling + frying), I tend to mess up timing. Something ends up overdone underdone.
Another: logistics. When did I buy that broccoli? What if I can't find good broccoli? What if it spoils? Now my plan is in ruins. This is probably the hardest part of cooking for me, is deciding on ingredients, buying them at the right time, and not letting them spoil.
Whenever I do make food, say, for potlucks, it's a sufficiently advanced process that I don't really want to repeat it every single day.
Also, I'm used to tasty food. I'm not used to bland food. Boiled pasta with store sauce is just not going to cut it, I tried. I'd need to, at minimum, add cheese to it. And boiling pasta is hardly cooking anyway.
The generalisations and overestimations are beyond me.
No one cooks every night in this world, unless it's their job. Real food lasts a lot longer than you think it does, and that shows your inexperience or lack of trying to even inch near the real thing.
You remind me of a kid that gets a water pistol expecting a bb gun and cries because water doesn't hurt.
Your gripes with cooking:
- I don't understand how long food lasts. Takes one time to learn.
- I don't know how to cut things. Takes one time to learn.
- I am used to tasty food. The cheap food from your restaurant is not from scratch. Restaurants are often less fresh and less diverse than what you make at home.
- I don't want to cook every day. What are you cooking, 2 sausages and an egg? How about cooking 4 sausages and 2 eggs. Use a pot that doesn't feed 1 person like a normal person. Do you cut parts of a tree off as you need them or do you cut the base?
Honestly I don't know how you live by yourself when you can generate these kinds of "blockades". How about before you pin something you can't do down to it's "negatives" you actually start to pin some effort into it.
Do you catch Ubers everywhere because last time you got in a car your feet got tired from grabbing the steering wheel and your back hurt from sitting upside down? No one taught you to drive that way, no one taught you to cook pasta, toss in sauce and a piece of cheese on top...
No one cooks every night in this world, unless it's their job. Real food lasts a lot longer than you think it does, and that shows your inexperience or lack of trying to even inch near the real thing.
You remind me of a kid that gets a water pistol expecting a bb gun and cries because water doesn't hurt.
Your gripes with cooking:
- I don't understand how long food lasts. Takes one time to learn.
- I don't know how to cut things. Takes one time to learn.
- I am used to tasty food. The cheap food from your restaurant is not from scratch. Restaurants are often less fresh and less diverse than what you make at home.
- I don't want to cook every day. What are you cooking, 2 sausages and an egg? How about cooking 4 sausages and 2 eggs. Use a pot that doesn't feed 1 person like a normal person. Do you cut parts of a tree off as you need them or do you cut the base?
Honestly I don't know how you live by yourself when you can generate these kinds of "blockades". How about before you pin something you can't do down to it's "negatives" you actually start to pin some effort into it.
Do you catch Ubers everywhere because last time you got in a car your feet got tired from grabbing the steering wheel and your back hurt from sitting upside down? No one taught you to drive that way, no one taught you to cook pasta, toss in sauce and a piece of cheese on top...
My example was just that, an example. But to elaborate on it, it's not hard to make pasta sauce from scratch.
To add to my recipe, instead of using pasta sauce, add some passata or a tin of chopped tomatoes as well as some garlic to the pan with the sausage and onion, as well as some mixed herbs (or fresh if you're fancy) and some salt & pepper. Maybe add some olives or capers, both of which will last forever in your fridge. Now you have an easy, fresh pasta sauce from scratch (or just as much from scratch as a restaurant).
You can make a curry pretty easy too. Get some good curry powder, chickpeas, canned tomatoes, some diced chicken, onions, and garlic.
Cook the onions and garlic, add the curry powder and chicken, cook the chicken a bit, then add the tomatoes and chickpeas. Serve with a packet of precooked rice to make your life easier.
Steak, green beans, and mashed potatoes is an easy meal to make. You can even buy good frozen mashed potatoes.
Stir fry is like the easiest thing to make, just fry random meat and vegetables, and then add noodles or rice.
Here are some other easy meals to cook, which require minimal effort and ingredients: Salmon, broccoli, and quinoa. Lamb chops with roast pumpkin and parsnips. Haloumi, arugula, tomato, and cucumber salad.
Have a look at the recipes here: https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/collections/midweek-meal-r...
Or here: https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/collections/quick-recipes
They're easy, tasty, and relatively cheap.
Seriously, I'm about the least organised person in the world and I can manage to cook for myself 5 days a week. It's not a difficult undertaking.
No one cooks every night in this world, unless it's their job. Real food lasts a lot longer than you think it does, and that shows your inexperience or lack of trying to even inch near the real thing.
You remind me of a kid that gets a water pistol expecting a bb gun and cries because water doesn't hurt.
Your gripes with cooking:
- I don't understand how long food lasts. Takes one time to learn.
- I don't know how to cut things. Takes one time to learn.
- I am used to tasty food. The cheap food from your restaurant is not from scratch. Restaurants are often less fresh and less diverse than what you make at home.
- I don't want to cook every day. What are you cooking, 2 sausages and an egg? How about cooking 4 sausages and 2 eggs. Use a pot that doesn't feed 1 person like a normal person. Do you cut parts of a tree off as you need them or do you cut the base?
Honestly I don't know how you live by yourself when you can generate these kinds of "blockades". How about before you pin something you can't do down to it's "negatives" you actually start to pin some effort into it.
Do you catch Ubers everywhere because last time you got in a car your feet got tired from grabbing the steering wheel and your back hurt from sitting upside down? No one taught you to drive that way, no one taught you to cook pasta, toss in sauce and a piece of cheese on top...
Just going to keep putting my comment in until it's not censored lol.
The difference between him and his friend who does the triathlon is -- there's no one who looks at the clock early in the evening, glances around their apartment, then checks their phone real quick, then says, "I guess I'll train for a triathlon." That's the sort of desire or goal that comes at a different moment in time, perhaps while you're doing something else, or you're caught between things. And you think, "Shit, I should run a triathlon".
Once you've had that thought, when you get home from work your first thought is, "when do I train for my triathlon?" And once that's done, you fit the rest of the crap in any which way.
The point being, start out with one or more positive, active goals. Prioritize them (as acconrad has said). Everything else just sifts in afterwards. It could be raising your kid, or volunteering for local politics, or playing the piano. Do something first and foremost, something you have decided to do, and you'll find you somehow still have time for all the other crap. (Or you'll find that you don't, and it doesn't matter.)
This is really the only relevant thing here, and effectively amounts to "spend less time on these things", "half ass them more", or "don't do these things".
Which is fine, and I think the subconscious point of this article is that if you focus on what a "proper" person should do, you'll run out of time real fast, and generally people need to cut corners.
And that advice that adds a daily time drain is questionable. I don't really know anyone who does it all.
The point here is for even an above average worker the daily expectations of the modern lifestyle can overwhelm even a budget minded person, or a couple with kids.
Exercise is often time gated. It's not something you want to rush in many cases. Definitely not foam rolling. Exercise also often incurs logistical costs (i.e., getting here). [no, your optimization techniques for at-home body weight are not welcome here]
Meditation is not really prone to that.
Doctor visits you can't control. Or haircuts.
Calls and visits to bureaucracies you can't control.
Social time fundamentally is not something you want to squeeze.
There's also a danger with getting spazzy if you optimize too much.
I think the bigger issue is too much crap for a person to take care of. Too many things to remember and schedule when they should just happen. I think it's an externality that is being captured by no one and it will get worse with time and we won't notice because we'll just call people who fail inferior.
Body weight exercise is not all you should be doing, but it's certainly helpful. Don't be close minded. Running is possibly the best exercise you can do, and you don't need to go anywhere.
Meditation can absolutely be fit into short segments throughout your day (and if you're overwhelmed, yes, it's probably a good idea).
You're right about most of the rest. You can obsess about what you're missing, or appreciate what you have. Either way, you'll be absolutely right.
I feel like there are so many parts of life I want to explore to see if I'd like them. I and a lot of people my age haven't found our 'triathalon' and I'm worried about not having enough time to find it.
Also, the post was more about there being so many recommendations and 'upkeep tasks' for being healthy and functional. I don't see how assessing whether things are worth doing is 'fundamentally passive'.
"Upkeep tasks" are never worth making your main focus. Fooling with diets, the quantified life, exercise regimens... these are not worth making the focus of life. They make you healthy and functional -- for what? You need something to be healthy and functional for. Start with that thing (or things), and work backwards. You can't make oiling your wheels (or tending to your .emacs file) the whole point. And I don't mean we all need some all-fired existential purpose in life, I just mean we need something we've decided to do.
If you're not yet 40... uh... hang in there.
Sorry, this might be my first ever man-on-the-mountain, lemme-tell-you-how-things-are post, and I don't mean to make a habit of it. But I've got some years behind me, and a lot of mistakes, and this is something I feel pretty confident about.
I don't want "free time" in order to lounge around and watch TV (I don't even own a TV). I want free time to be able to research topics that interest me and start companies. It's difficult for a middle class or even upper-middle class person to simultaneously maintain a full-time job, family, health, and extremely productive hobbies. And I would say it's next to impossible for someone who came from a below-middle class background.
Your income based assumptions also, are very different from my experince. The middle class has a grind, that the lower and upper classes are less bound to. I find upper-middle class friends to have the least free time, and the most harried lifestyle. I find a good gauge of having free time to research or recreate is reading frequency. Ymmv.
I realize that this is a purely personal anecdote and I realize this is not how people get rich, run a triathlon or change the world, but maybe I just can't do those things.
[1]: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-so... [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Mastery-Keys-Success-Long-Term-Fulfil...
I think some of the frustration comes from not sticking with any one thing long enough to get meaningfully better at it.
This isn't to say that it's not good advice, but when I spent my life relentlessly trying to optimize (a trap I still fall into frequently, I'm reading these comments after all), I just got frustrated and felt like a failure. I decided it was OK to watch a TV show I enjoyed, to read books that had nothing edifying except a story I enjoyed or to simply waste time.
I think regular self assessment and awareness are possibly more important that optimization or improving.
Off topic, but if you're interested in sports theory and writing, Suarez always makes me think of John McPhee's "A Sense of Where You Are", a profile of Bill Bradley when he was at Princeton. Probably one of my top 5 favorite sports books or articles.
And that's ok! And neither will I. I think some of my enthusiasm comes from picking up soccer later in life. I've found learning things as an adult is a totally different skill from learning as a child. By accepting that my goal is improving myself, and not competing with the world's best, I've found great joy in the smallest steps towards being a more perfect player.
Eh, this only works if the stuff you enjoy happens to line up with "productive" activities. :P
I don’t watch any TV or mindlessly browse the Internet during the week (OK, I’ll check up on some webcomics once or twice). Honestly I don’t do much of that on the weekends, either. I don’t read fiction much. I don’t check my IRA or 401(k) regularly. I don’t worry about my health — we eat fantastically healthy in my house and I’m not sedentary.
I work to live; I don’t live to work. My family is the most important thing in my life and I enjoy every minute I’m with them.
It would be nice, though, if we were on the galactic standard 25 hour day. I could use that extra hour every now and then.
That said, optimising your routine can be rewarding. Morning and evening routines with your children can be great fun. Something like cooking, which can be a chore to some, is a treat to others (myself included).
IMO, it's helpful to prioritise important things for the morning while you're sharp, and leave non-essential things for the late evening when feeling tired or falling asleep barely matters (watching a movie or playing PS4).
Pay bills/etc or check your stocks during your lunch break. Minimise your grocery shopping trips - keep a stock of staples and then do a weekly shop for meat, milk, etc. Exercise in the morning. That should start to free up your evenings.
There are a lot of very sad comments in this thread about optimising life and being productive and efficient. Don't have kids. Don't cook. Don't watch television or play video games, or at least save them until everything else is done. Buy other people's labour to free up more time for working to pay them.
This is an unapologetic value judgement: living your life that way is a waste of time.
There's not enough time, and that's okay. Let a few things go. You don't need to be optimally productive.
Maybe you're over aggregating? :)
I don't want to have kids in part because I like my video games and they and other activities I enjoy will have to go poof due to kids^t. Basically, you can only pick a few things before your time runs out.
I think you're vying for a time where people wouldn't feel so short of time, but I don't think it's bad, in the moment, if people do successfully optimize their time for their situation, and I don't care if it makes some idealizer of the human condition unhappy.
I do not owe it to anyone to fit some mold of the perfect human being who finds all the time to exercise, eat healthy, socialize, cook, AND have kids. It's all draining enough for me as it is.
^t there are other much more advanced and depressing reasons why I actually don't want to have kids, though
I usually have time to watch some TV with my flatmate, or head to the pub for a couple of pints with a mate.
How does it take 2 hours to cook dinner? It takes me at most 15 minutes of engaged time to cook dinner. Apparently it takes 2 hours for the author to go to the gym too.
I think the author just needs to chill out and stop worrying about shit.
There are a few resources that provide a different perspective. One I would suggest is The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. As thinking, analytical people, we should (grudingly?) realize that there truly is nothing other than this moment. And this moment usually doesn't care about your time on a foam roller... unless it does, in which case you get on the foam roller.
I think there's a problem for highly creative or mentally busy folks. We see so many possibilities, and perhaps we excel as many things we try. That brings a feeling of unrealized possibility that nags on us. We could be a good this, or that, or whatever. In some cases it might matter to the world if we accomplished it (assuming that ultimately even matters). But quite often, perhaps, the unrealized potential may not be worth much. So the worry about the time we should be spending to realize that potential can be dropped.
Not to belittle the "average guy", but we all probably know the guy that has had the same job for 10 years and who is SO happy to go home most night of the week - and especially to be there Sunday - to watch whatever game on his big TV. He's got the deadly but oh-so-tasty snack that he's blissfully unaware shorten his life with each mini-sausage. He's got a wife who appears to actually like sports and who provides the snacks for him and his buddies (not being sexist; just painting a typical American Dream picture). His big Ford F250 4x4 parked outside is only 1.5 years old. Life is good. If he's really rich and bad-ass, he's got a new Harley in the garage for his every-other-weekend-warrior needs.
Meanwhile, the HN crowd is browsing high achiever Github projects, considering their own many ideas, and feeling like underachievers. And eventually we die, or we set off on the ocean like Jim Gray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gray_(computer_scientist)#...) and never return.
I think this is actually an ideal.
But I don't think this ideal is as easy to reach as "average guy" would imply. A lot of these "average guys" hate their job, their relationship, or both, and the happiness evaporates, the Sunday game the only thing really keeping them afloat.
What you describe is contentment and stability and I honestly think most people don't have that. Even the really well off engineers still have to worry about their job and the sharpening of their skills. It's very hard to just sit back and not worry about it all, because you have to continue to do work to keep it up, and therein lies the rub.
Toasters typically have a trap door on the bottom for emptying the crumbs and for ease of access for cleaning the inside.
Once you know how to do things, lots of things aren't that time consuming. Eating right is also vastly less time consuming than being sick all the time.