To a point. I'm not a workaholic by any means, I skew towards working 20 hours weeks. When everything is good, the time off allows me to be incredibly productive. Breakthroughs happen by themselves.
I am, however, prone to anxiety. When things start to become uncertain and I get anxious, I find it's much better for me to take the extra hours head-on and work however much is needed to dig myself out - 30,40, 50, or 60. Otherwise both work and rest become really low-quality as I can never truly procrastinate away from worry. Focused work is the only way through.
Which is one reason why I try to avoid work where there are many emergencies and sudden operational problems. It throws me off my game completely.
Edit: apologies for the typos, not used to posting from my phone :)
I wish I could enforce this at my current company. Everyone is always “busy” and in meetings and fighting fires from earlier short-term-thinking projects
Performative work is the most common type of work at all workspaces. As soon as promotions happen not on results but on subjective things which is basically all departments apart from sales, performative work becomes the norm.
Is it though? I think most people brought up in the Christian tradition would associate the Sabbath with rules about church attendance and Sunday best, dutiful visits to great aunt Agatha, etc.
Very much not doing nothing, just not doing financially productive work.
Sabbath includes letting land rest every seven years and forgiving debts every seven years (literally a write-off) so, yes, I think this "write-off principle" with a cute name is the same as the old Sabbath concept.
It does bring up the point that the long history shows us that in this case the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law because people push the boundaries of the rules.
> One neither gets to choose when the Sabbath comes, nor do believers get to opt out of observing it.
That may be true in some traditions (e.g. Judaism) but not others.
In the Christian tradition they choose to observe the sabbath on Sunday, not because it is the 7th day (which would be the same day that the Jews observe), but because it is the day of resurrection. There's nothing saying it could not be yet another day.
Additionally, the scriptures say that observation is not mandatory by saying "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath", therefore the believers have authority over their observation of it (with observation still highly recommended).
Most of our day-of-the-week names are from the Roman planet-based names, so saturday is saturn-day, and sunday is sun-day. Some names have been changed, e.g mercury-day in english is now wednesday (wodans-day, from the Germanic god Wodan), although in French is it still mercury-day (mercredi).
Emperor Constantine I was the one who, in 321 AD, designated sun-day as a day of rest.
"On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed"
I actively treasure my shower thoughts time and have been thinking of doing more of that. One issue is that if I'm in a bad mood, stressed, annoyed at some stupid coworker, etc. my mind will wander in that useless area instead of in the direction of cool problems.
I didnt know about this school of thought but came to this same realization after decades of beating myself up for not being productive all the waking hours.
Now I am starting to let go -- of evenings, weeknd days, and even some work days. The world turns all the same even when I fail to send that email before "end-of-day" (12 midnight)
‘The real gauge of friendship is how clean your house needs to be before they can come over.’
Back when we were "just" best friends, I'd get offended that my fiance would clean her apartment when casual acquaintances would come over, but would never bother to clean up for me. She finally explained the above to me..
I clean up thoroughly before any guests come. Not because I don’t want them to see a mess. But rather because I feel a lot better when things are tidy and clean and being in a better mood means more enjoyment when friends or family come.
My wife and I invite people over often because it helps us keep the house clean and benefits us overall :).
My most productive periods in life was before I moved in with my girlfriend.
We'd live together on weekends, but not the weekdays. So I'd work on problems all week, and then go visit her, bringing no computer or anything like that.
I always came up with a bunch of solutions to hard problems I'd been working on during those weekends away from the keyboard. They'd just appear in my head one by one, throughout the weekend. All of my most inspired ideas came out of that period. It's as though working activley on a problem spawns a bunch of threads that, without serious time away from the problem, continuously get interrupted and never resolve.
For me just jotting down four words in any notes app or email draft contains enough information to pick it back up later.
I eventually settled on a shortcut on my phone's home screen that opened up an email to my work email. So all I had to do was press that shortcut, write the note and send it. Then come Monday I would have a couple notes from my self waiting in my inbox.
I'm not the parent commenter, but no computer doesn't mean no access to writing implements, and writing something down physically can render it mentally ‘sticky’ in a way I've never been able to replicate in software.
I just write it down somewhere. Usually the solution is much smaller than the problem, so a 1-2 line note and a sketch goes a long way.
In general I make a habit of writing down anything I think I should do. It's easy to think you'll remember, but those types of thoughts are extremely fleeting, and you almost never remember then when it's time to get to work. Such note-taking is pretty much the backlog for my life and a principal key to getting a lot of shit done.
Most of the ideas that came to me in similar times as OPs are like “actually we don’t need that new database at all,
the data is already in the main db”-kind of ideas. So, notes are not really needed.
Wake and sleep, workout and rest, prospers in balance. But this also means you can't just hang out in the showers and expect solutions. You have to work on it, then rest.
My method in college ended up being explicit balance. Study, read, ingest as much knowledge on the topic as I could until I felt I was at either the point of diminishing returns or having sufficiently covered the subject, taking some, but not copious notes. Then just start doing idle things, specifically letting the "background processing" happen in my brain, things like running/hiking, going to dinner, etc. Mostly just waiting for the ideas to form and appear. At that point, I just started rapidly scribbling draft shards, in whatever order the ideas appeared. When that slowed down, it was time to wrangle the shards into a properly organized paper, which usually also included finding a smaller number of new connections among the shards.
The whole key was first feeding selected info in, then allowing — and trusting — my unconscious brain the space to work on it.
FWIW, I tend to find that it doesn't have to be a full brain idle. Some active component seems to be helpful, but I think it needs to be easy to pause and that there's a sweet spot on the amount of engagement.
Reading actual books or other longform documents is usually pretty fertile/generative. Watching youtube or a movie or listening to a podcast doesn't do the trick. Writing and editing are both also pretty good.
Walks are good, but biking/running/swimming don't seem to be.
Programming can be good in the sense that it regularly reveals missing tools/libraries, but I don't find the work itself all that generative.
My most productive time was when I was alone in my mid twenties. I did so much cool stuff that I look back fondly on between 10p and 2a. Once I found a wife and had a kid I have almost no productivity outside of work but I honestly don’t care. Life is good.
Efficiency is brittleness. When you cram your time with this or that, you give up resiliency to random shocks, and you shut yourself off from random opportunities.
I read this, took a shower and can now share my own shower thoughts.
Imagine explaining all of this to a person asking you why you're unavailable on a Sunday. It's much easier to just say "my god says so". Depending on the person, it also often gives much higher chances of them respecting your way of life.
I embrace the Christian concept of the seventh day of the week free from work, having arrived here in a completely non-religious way. It's one of the things that made me convinced that there is some value in religion, despite all the corruption and misguided dogmatism on the surface.
My most productive times at work were when I was bored. I worked a job that had a lot of downtime, and while most people spent all that time watching movies and browsing the internet (which I did a little of as well), it also gave me time to identify the problems that made the time I was working more painful. This led me to try to find solutions. I learned to write code to automate various repetitive tasks, wrote documentation to upskill others on the team, built tools that would allow everyone to work faster and easier... this kind of stuff eventually turned into my actual job once the boss saw the impact.
At one point he just told me to think of stuff that would help the team and do it; he then didn't really talk to me again for 2 years. For the first few months I was feeling lazy. I didn't really know wheat to do and felt like I was sitting around a lot. However, by the end of the first year I had more projects than I could handle. Eventually a whole team of 10 people was formed around me to help with all the stuff.
Current management wants to overload everyone with more work than they can handle, after they read the cliff notes about OKRs. Productivity has gone down, the solutions are worse, and chaos is the new normal. I think some time for everyone to take a step back, assess where we're at, and put some practical plans in place on how to move forward, would do the whole organization a lot of good.
I have a lot more free time now, and I can't overstate how useful idle time is. Let ideas simmer!
I get a lot of my best work done when I travel. I spend days holding my bicycle or motorcycle handlebars, free to think but unable to act. All I get are short breaks with pen and paper. By the time I wrap up my vacation I'm eager
This is when I come up with my best ideas. This is when I fire a few emails that turn into lucrative deals. This is when I get to rethink my general position, and make life-altering changes.
I've tried to introduce those breaks in my normal life too. The morning coffee on the balcony, regular walks, cafe hopping. Anything that introduces time to think is good in my book.
>> You step into the shower, stand under the hot water, the aromas of your shampoo and soap lulling you into a relaxed state. Suddenly, your eyes open – the solution to some problem you’ve been struggling with is miraculously clear! [...] When the brain relaxes sufficiently, creative solutions do appear.
I'm getting the same effect with ... alcohol. Took me a while to realize it and it's not easy (winnings outweigh the losses but it's hard - hangovers that is). But so many times it happened that I got stuck trying with no solution to my ongoing problem (finding algorithms to make money in finance) and I tried walking, taking a break etc. Still nothing. Then in frustration, went on an alcoholic binge and out of the physical pain and mental void of the hangover it came out: a new approach that just occurred to me.
So in addition to Reitoff principle, I'm adding here "Michael's lemma" :) "When adding nothing still doesn't work, try 'filling the void'".
The more you actually rest during rest time, the more it helps. Generally any time with screens strains you a little bit, even if you don't notice it. So if you're always spending time on screens, you'll eventually get really lethargic and worn out.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadBy scrolling low signal/noise content we block ourselves from this fenomena.
I am, however, prone to anxiety. When things start to become uncertain and I get anxious, I find it's much better for me to take the extra hours head-on and work however much is needed to dig myself out - 30,40, 50, or 60. Otherwise both work and rest become really low-quality as I can never truly procrastinate away from worry. Focused work is the only way through.
Which is one reason why I try to avoid work where there are many emergencies and sudden operational problems. It throws me off my game completely.
Edit: apologies for the typos, not used to posting from my phone :)
What is meant by this?
Very much not doing nothing, just not doing financially productive work.
It does bring up the point that the long history shows us that in this case the spirit of the law is more important than the letter of the law because people push the boundaries of the rules.
That may be true in some traditions (e.g. Judaism) but not others.
In the Christian tradition they choose to observe the sabbath on Sunday, not because it is the 7th day (which would be the same day that the Jews observe), but because it is the day of resurrection. There's nothing saying it could not be yet another day.
Additionally, the scriptures say that observation is not mandatory by saying "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath", therefore the believers have authority over their observation of it (with observation still highly recommended).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39796900
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39796860
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39795221
We have to ban accounts that post like this. Moreover we've had to warn you many times before (see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31851409). I need to ask you to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and properly stop this.
Emperor Constantine I was the one who, in 321 AD, designated sun-day as a day of rest.
"On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed"
Sábado is of course from Sabbath
You're right of course - planet names came later, being named after roman deities (with the exception of Uranus, named after a muse).
Now I am starting to let go -- of evenings, weeknd days, and even some work days. The world turns all the same even when I fail to send that email before "end-of-day" (12 midnight)
Back when we were "just" best friends, I'd get offended that my fiance would clean her apartment when casual acquaintances would come over, but would never bother to clean up for me. She finally explained the above to me..
My wife and I invite people over often because it helps us keep the house clean and benefits us overall :).
I agree with the sentiment of this quote though.
We'd live together on weekends, but not the weekdays. So I'd work on problems all week, and then go visit her, bringing no computer or anything like that.
I always came up with a bunch of solutions to hard problems I'd been working on during those weekends away from the keyboard. They'd just appear in my head one by one, throughout the weekend. All of my most inspired ideas came out of that period. It's as though working activley on a problem spawns a bunch of threads that, without serious time away from the problem, continuously get interrupted and never resolve.
I eventually settled on a shortcut on my phone's home screen that opened up an email to my work email. So all I had to do was press that shortcut, write the note and send it. Then come Monday I would have a couple notes from my self waiting in my inbox.
In general I make a habit of writing down anything I think I should do. It's easy to think you'll remember, but those types of thoughts are extremely fleeting, and you almost never remember then when it's time to get to work. Such note-taking is pretty much the backlog for my life and a principal key to getting a lot of shit done.
My method in college ended up being explicit balance. Study, read, ingest as much knowledge on the topic as I could until I felt I was at either the point of diminishing returns or having sufficiently covered the subject, taking some, but not copious notes. Then just start doing idle things, specifically letting the "background processing" happen in my brain, things like running/hiking, going to dinner, etc. Mostly just waiting for the ideas to form and appear. At that point, I just started rapidly scribbling draft shards, in whatever order the ideas appeared. When that slowed down, it was time to wrangle the shards into a properly organized paper, which usually also included finding a smaller number of new connections among the shards.
The whole key was first feeding selected info in, then allowing — and trusting — my unconscious brain the space to work on it.
Reading actual books or other longform documents is usually pretty fertile/generative. Watching youtube or a movie or listening to a podcast doesn't do the trick. Writing and editing are both also pretty good.
Walks are good, but biking/running/swimming don't seem to be.
Programming can be good in the sense that it regularly reveals missing tools/libraries, but I don't find the work itself all that generative.
As well as breaking productivity of the past into really small steps.
Hammock Driven Development:
https://youtu.be/f84n5oFoZBc
Imagine explaining all of this to a person asking you why you're unavailable on a Sunday. It's much easier to just say "my god says so". Depending on the person, it also often gives much higher chances of them respecting your way of life.
I embrace the Christian concept of the seventh day of the week free from work, having arrived here in a completely non-religious way. It's one of the things that made me convinced that there is some value in religion, despite all the corruption and misguided dogmatism on the surface.
Jewish idea at its root.
At one point he just told me to think of stuff that would help the team and do it; he then didn't really talk to me again for 2 years. For the first few months I was feeling lazy. I didn't really know wheat to do and felt like I was sitting around a lot. However, by the end of the first year I had more projects than I could handle. Eventually a whole team of 10 people was formed around me to help with all the stuff.
Current management wants to overload everyone with more work than they can handle, after they read the cliff notes about OKRs. Productivity has gone down, the solutions are worse, and chaos is the new normal. I think some time for everyone to take a step back, assess where we're at, and put some practical plans in place on how to move forward, would do the whole organization a lot of good.
A programmer who's busy at the computer is goofing off.
I get a lot of my best work done when I travel. I spend days holding my bicycle or motorcycle handlebars, free to think but unable to act. All I get are short breaks with pen and paper. By the time I wrap up my vacation I'm eager
This is when I come up with my best ideas. This is when I fire a few emails that turn into lucrative deals. This is when I get to rethink my general position, and make life-altering changes.
I've tried to introduce those breaks in my normal life too. The morning coffee on the balcony, regular walks, cafe hopping. Anything that introduces time to think is good in my book.
I'm getting the same effect with ... alcohol. Took me a while to realize it and it's not easy (winnings outweigh the losses but it's hard - hangovers that is). But so many times it happened that I got stuck trying with no solution to my ongoing problem (finding algorithms to make money in finance) and I tried walking, taking a break etc. Still nothing. Then in frustration, went on an alcoholic binge and out of the physical pain and mental void of the hangover it came out: a new approach that just occurred to me.
So in addition to Reitoff principle, I'm adding here "Michael's lemma" :) "When adding nothing still doesn't work, try 'filling the void'".
Related: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/360006563975832665/
Exactly! Didn't know the comic strip but it's right on! :)