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How I got to 200 productive hours a month

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Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#151

Post by emodendroket »

softawre wrote: post #148
emodendroket wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, but plenty of that is spent on chores, washing, getting dressed, transportation, and other drudgery, so it's not as much time as it sounds like.

So optimize away the chores? In my case, marrying a woman who wanted to be a stay at home mom worked pretty well. I'd rather be working than doing chores, she'd rather stay home and feel productive cleaning the house, and we're both super happy.

OK, let me tell my wife to stop working and become a homemaker so I can "optimize away the chores" from my life. That sounds like a more sensible solution than working a normal amount of hours.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#152

Post by kazagistar »

deepGem wrote: post #29
kobeya wrote: post #8

> Two years ago I could spend a week not working because I was avoiding some task. This is a great article and there’s plenty to talk about in organizational systems, even if this seems to be subtly pitching his own products in places. But if anyone reading this identifies with this sort of chronic procrastination, consider seeking psychiatric help. This is a giant red flag for adult ADHD, which is a serious and ofte…

Can I ask what is considered chronic procrastination. For instance, I am sitting on a tax filing task for almost 2 months now. It's not gonna endanger my life, but it's one of those things I can't get my mind to do.

Afaik, it's not chronic in the sense that you procrastinate the one thing, but that you procrastinate lots of things constantly.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#153

Post by [deleted] »

lazyjones wrote: post #54
mbrock wrote: post #26

TL;DR: Basically getting up early and doing 4 hours of deep work has changed my life from really stressful and bad to really productive and nice. One thing really fundamentally helped me, as someone who works from home on a large project in an asynchronous 100% remote organization. I work on a fairly involved project that demands a lot of hard work. At the same time there are other things I want to get done: some adm…

Sounds to me like you had some issues with distractions during the day, amplified by working at home. Other people (like me) prefer to work late at night for the same reason, it also allows for a more social lifestyle (i.e. going out occasionally) than having to be in bed early.

[deleted]

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#154

Post by kazagistar »

lkozma wrote: post #124
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlike "stop staying awake" which is not actionable. That's the problem: you think "stop staying awake" is not actionable, while "leave your phone at home" is actionable for a person with ADHD. Again, this is not different than saying "just be happy" to a depressed person. To that person, in that moment, "stop wasting time on the internet" is not actionable just as much, otherwise it would not be a problem in the f…

Going with your examples, I think "leave your phone at home" is more actionable than "stop wasting time on the internet", and both are vastly more actionable than "stop staying awake" and "just be happy".

Right, and his point is that actionability of advice depends on brain configuration. I have no problem lifting my mood, or falling asleep. So those actually seem more actionable to me. However, I have empathy for people whose brains work differently, who struggle with different things, and who might need intense therapy and medication just to stay afloat at these kinds of mental tasks.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#155

Post by CamelCaseName »

tome wrote: post #144
hacker_9 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"early to rise, early to bed, socially dead"

Here's an idea. I'd be interested in fellow HNers thoughts on it. Get up really early, say 5am. Finish work perhaps 3pm. Sleep for four hours until 7pm. Go out, do other stuff, party as much as you like until 1am. Sleep. 8 hours sleep a day in 2 chunks of 4 hours. Would that work?

This is called polyphasic sleep. Wikipedia can give you a much better understanding than I can: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep

From personal experience when I tried this briefly in high school, I wasn't getting very deep sleep and just kept ending up tired. Perhaps if I had continued I would have adjusted, but I gave up after just one week.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#156

Post by shade23 »

While I love the advice, my qualm are with the measurement of productivity,I use qbserve too,checking my logs I see 307 hours as an average for the past 4 months.(this includes office and my personal projects and also my studies(distance masters).But not every moment you spend on an IDE,terminal, .. productive.I know that I spend 20% of time yak shaving.Trying to figure out why something simple is broken.This is not the time I would count as productivity.

Measuring productivity as the completion of goals/output generated per hour spent seems to be a more viable quantity, however goals get modified too.Plus this is a much more time consuming process than just measuring hours.

I find measuring time spent on productive apps to be analogous to measuring productivity using LOC, both are opaque and do not convey the actual meaning of what they are measuring.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#158

Post by flyinglizard »

ulkesh wrote: post #118

> Caution: The mentioned amount of hours is not advisable for people working on someone else's business for illusory stock options, with no payment for overtime. There's also no point in going beyond this number because working over 50 hours a week actually decreases productivity. Life should come first in the "work-life balance." Great disclaimer in the article. The only problem is that many employers will be quite…

I'm thankful for working at a position where I enjoy putting in hours above and beyond what's required by contract. I'd advise anyone to prioritize having a work they thoroughly enjoy well ahead of a work that requires less hours. When you enjoy something, it makes sense to want to be doing that something for a prolonged duration.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#160

Post by kobeya »

thonos wrote: post #34
kobeya wrote: post #8

> Two years ago I could spend a week not working because I was avoiding some task. This is a great article and there’s plenty to talk about in organizational systems, even if this seems to be subtly pitching his own products in places. But if anyone reading this identifies with this sort of chronic procrastination, consider seeking psychiatric help. This is a giant red flag for adult ADHD, which is a serious and ofte…

Thank you. I was suspecting that I might have ADHD for a while now but never got to actually test it. The country I'm living in is still very backwards when it comes to ADHD treatment and until recently only children could get diagnosed. For adult immigrants it was almost impossible. Your comment was a good reminder though. I right away googled for a mental clinic, picked up my phone and asked if they are able to dia…

That’s great! Glad you’re making progress.
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