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The Busy Person’s Lies

nytimes.com

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Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#31

Post by Kenji »

pc86 wrote: post #26
Kenji wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't squeeze more than 4-6 hours of intellectually productive hours out of a day. I may delude myself into thinking I can do more, but it's not sustainable.

Not all work is (or needs to be) "intellectually productive." I see statements like this on HN a lot, particularly from developers (myself included), but most of them cringe at the thought of having 2-4 hours of administrative work every day.

Software Design is intellectually productive. If you aren't, you are not designing and implementing software.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#32

Post by cmdrfred »

zeveb wrote: post #22
thefalcon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just constantly find myself out of the zone with a family/kids around.

Hence the utility of having some people in a family specialise in staying in the zone, and others specialise in handling child-based interrupts, not entirely different from having one CPU devoted to main processing tasks and other processing units handling ancillary tasks. During the nuclear-family era, the idea was that dad would specialise in in-zone work and mom would specialise in interrupt servicing, but both be…

Prior to that children were vastly more independent as well.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#33

Post by Jtsummers »

Kenji wrote: post #23
Jtsummers wrote: post #19

I did an analysis on my own time once, ignoring the breakdown of my work day and just focusing on overall time available: 1130-0000 - prepare for bed, relax 0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) 0600-0700 - stuff (shower, shave, personal email) 0700-1630 - work + lunch + commutes So I had 7 hours each day I was "leaving on the table". Most of it was spent on TV or video games, possibly socializing. I felt exhausted from work s…

I can't squeeze more than 4-6 hours of intellectually productive hours out of a day. I may delude myself into thinking I can do more, but it's not sustainable.

That's why I go to the gym, or clean my apartment, or cook a nice meal for myself (GF lives in another country so currently solo-cooking most nights), and call my GF.

I used to have really bad habits with respect to keeping my apartment clean. Not dirty, but just generally messy (bathrooms were terrible though, I'll admit). And it was because of the time it would take to do it. Acknowledging my true time budget I now keep a nice, though not spotless, apartment because I take 15 minutes each day to straighten something up. Some areas need a Saturday morning to tackle. But the bathroom is cleaned once a week. The floors get cleaned throughout the month in segments.

If you've ever spent time on money management with tools like YNAB or Mint, it's very similar. You realize where your time is going, and what time is left available. You mete it out in reasonable amounts to the tasks that need to be done. When I'd only clean my apartment once a month (at best) it was a major undertaking. It was intimidating and I'd skip months because of that. Amortize the time cost across the month, it's now "easy", and my apartment takes 20 minutes to get ready for company in the worst case of short notice from friends.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#34

Post by lacampbell »

Jtsummers wrote: post #19

I did an analysis on my own time once, ignoring the breakdown of my work day and just focusing on overall time available: 1130-0000 - prepare for bed, relax 0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) 0600-0700 - stuff (shower, shave, personal email) 0700-1630 - work + lunch + commutes So I had 7 hours each day I was "leaving on the table". Most of it was spent on TV or video games, possibly socializing. I felt exhausted from work s…

0000-0600 - sleep (roughly)

I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on 6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#35

Post by lacampbell »

pc86 wrote: post #26
Kenji wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't squeeze more than 4-6 hours of intellectually productive hours out of a day. I may delude myself into thinking I can do more, but it's not sustainable.

Not all work is (or needs to be) "intellectually productive." I see statements like this on HN a lot, particularly from developers (myself included), but most of them cringe at the thought of having 2-4 hours of administrative work every day.

What sort of work would you class as administrative?

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#36

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

cmdrfred wrote: post #24
apsec112 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends a lot on the specifics. Of course, there are certainly lots of Americans who are both poorer than the author and work harder. But in the US, the very poorest people tend to be those who don't work at all, or only work part-time. People who live their whole life in a small town with one or two big employers, which move away when the economy crashes; people whose skills go out-of-date, and can't affo…

I come from poverty. There is a big difference between poor and working poor. The poor get handouts, the working poor get fines because they can't afford Obamacare. Then people wonder why the poor don't struggle their way to working poor.

Whoever downvoted this comment doesn't understand it at all.

The working poor are a revenue source. By keeping people indebted, they remain predictable consumers and fixed-income assets, like a human bond.

The impoverished are effectively trapped by the welfare system itself, because it reduces benefits as incomes rise at a faster rate than can be made up by the equivalent amount of work. If the minimum wage was a living wage, like in Australia, then this wouldn't be a problem. But instead American welfare/min-wage clearly incentivizes staying just poor enough to keep getting benefits, or else you are actively making yourself poorer by working more.

This is why so many Walmart employees are on food stamps.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#37

Post by Jtsummers »

tboyd47 wrote: post #12

The story seems to be that most people are under the delusion of being busier than they actually are, and if they just paid closer attention they would realize this. To me the far more interesting question is, why do we feel so busy? I've made the observation to my family on numerous occasions that the most stressful and exhausting work days for me are the least productive, those days when I'm just sitting at the com…

My theory, people feel busy because of stress/anxiety. Not necessarily the level requiring intervention, but just low level stress.

You have a bunch of tasks to finish this week at work. You get them all done, and properly accounted you realize they only took 30 of your 40 work hours. But you feel like you've spent much more time on it. You have, you've been thinking about it. Thinking about what to do next while you're going for your coffee break makes it not a break (mentally). This is why GTD suggests you get things out of your head. Once your tasks are captured, then you can focus on the doing and not the planning to do. You can also see the true scope instead of the anxiety magnified scope ("oh god, this'll take me ages", stress, stress, get to the time, it takes 10 minutes).

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#38

Post by nitrogen »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #21
JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

It's worth noting that the writer of this piece isn't a New York Times employee; she's an author doing a guest spot. It seems unlikely that the typical NYT journalist lives a similar life.

It seems that at least a few journalists at the top end of their profession do make "rich" level money, based on an article I seem to remember reading about one such journalist making over $200k and realizing he was out of touch with most people. But certainly it doesn't seem common.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#39

Post by qntty »

chillingeffect wrote: post #30

This is going to be devastating to feminists: "I have found that for women especially, it is the best antidote to the pernicious narrative that professional success requires harsh sacrifices at home." and "... a narrative of craziness, the sort professional women in particular tell one another as we compete in the Misery Olympics,"

How so?

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#40

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

lacampbell wrote: post #34
Jtsummers wrote: post #19

I did an analysis on my own time once, ignoring the breakdown of my work day and just focusing on overall time available: 1130-0000 - prepare for bed, relax 0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) 0600-0700 - stuff (shower, shave, personal email) 0700-1630 - work + lunch + commutes So I had 7 hours each day I was "leaving on the table". Most of it was spent on TV or video games, possibly socializing. I felt exhausted from work s…

0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on 6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.

I used to make it on 6 hours a night, easily.

Then I started college and it went up to 8, for some reason.

Recently I stopped drinking. I'm back to 6.

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