There’s a difference between what you think you want and what you really want. I think people generally work toward what they really want. If you aren’t progressing toward your goals because you’re busy doing other things, you really want those other things more.
I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
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Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#102I've been mentoring CS college students and new grad SWEs for a while. It's shocking to see how many of them perpetually feel like they're overwhelmed and short on time, yet they can't account for where they've actually spent their time. It's not uncommon for new grad SWEs to complain that an 8-hour work day is somehow consuming 100% of their weekday hours, leaving them without any time to do anything else. On further investigation, they're just being pulled into Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, TV, and video games for far more time than they realize. It's almost like those activities are subtracting 6+ hours out of their day without them realizing it.
Nobody likes to be told that they're wasting their free time, but I've had mild success encouraging people to use basic time tracking utilities like the Screen Time feature in iOS. It's eye-opening to watch people estimate their daily screen time around 30 minutes and then be shocked when their reports come back at 2-3 hours or more.
Of course, some amount of leisure activity is necessary throughout the day. It's important to not shame people for spending time on things they enjoy (Hacker News, video games, Reddit, Twitter), but it is important that they can be honest with themselves about how much time they're spending on those activities.
Measuring time spent in leisure activities is the only real way to start closing the feedback loop. Structured procrastination (Spending 5 timed minutes out of every 30 minutes on leisure activities, aka Pomodoro technique) is a good way to start getting a handle on this.
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#103Funny piece. It can be so easy to waste time when we have the internet. I think the most dangerous distractions are the ones that feel productive but don’t actually work toward your goals. For example, browsing hacker news. Such an activity is useful every now and then, but at least for myself I often scroll around only to realize later that it was a massive waste of time I could’ve spent working on something I care…
HN, Facebook, Reddit, Messenger, YouTube, news websites and dozens of other sites are on a block list from 0900-1800 M-F via a super useful plugin for Firefox (on mobile now and I can't remember it!)
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
People underestimate how incredibly hard it is to pull yourself out of habits born from socioeconomic factors. Video games give you an alternate reality, likely much better than your own.
It wasn't a criticism of video games and if you are suggesting I am underestimating something, I got myself off the street a few years ago of my own efforts. I still play plenty of videogames. It's something I can drop at will as I get my act together, make the connections I need to make, etc. I like games and my kids always joked "Video games are our only education." But the reality is I would rather have a life and…
You're so right - video games shouldn't even have been mentioned. As human ingenuity goes, there's infinite ways to "waste time".
I've spent many hours with the family playing MineCraft, and it's an amazing way to teach things like not being selfish, being cooperative, etc. to children because they experience the effects or lack of in compacted real time without permanent real-world impact.
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#105Personally, the unquestioned Ethos of Productivity characteristic of early 21st century Western Society is much more dangerous than the distractions which can sometimes fill unstructured time.
The psychological rigidity and social sacrifices required of always being productive (with little to no unstructured leisure time) actively harms individuals and the societies in which they are embedded, perhaps to the exact extent they increase tangible and intangible forms of wealth.
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#106Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#107I'm 35. When I look at the people I follow on social media, I feel bad, because they're much nore successful than me, often even much younger too. When I look at the people I meet in my daily life, I'm doing quite okay. I haven't set an alarm for work in years, can buy what I want without too much consideration, mostly work when I feel like it, and the work I do is often interesting.
And what kind of success do you think those younger people on social media have? Can you give an example of what you look at? Is that success something you want?
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#108[deleted]
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
It wasn't a criticism of video games and if you are suggesting I am underestimating something, I got myself off the street a few years ago of my own efforts. I still play plenty of videogames. It's something I can drop at will as I get my act together, make the connections I need to make, etc. I like games and my kids always joked "Video games are our only education." But the reality is I would rather have a life and…
You're so right - video games shouldn't even have been mentioned. As human ingenuity goes, there's infinite ways to "waste time". I've spent many hours with the family playing MineCraft, and it's an amazing way to teach things like not being selfish, being cooperative, etc. to children because they experience the effects or lack of in compacted real time without permanent real-world impact.
I homeschooled my sons. After seeing how vastly superior Gungan Frontier and a similar Sim game were to my "pen and paper" style simulation in my college class on environmental biology, I went through their games and decided which games I would count as educational and for which subject.
Their joke grew out if conversations that went something like this:
Son blurts obscure historical factoid.
Me: "Where the hell did you learn that?!"
Son names video game he learned it from. Punchline: "Video games are our only education." (Vin Diesel movie line, so another excellent reason to say it to me.)
They now have a blog where that's the descriptor, basically.
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#110Paradoxically, when I had all the time in the world I frittered it away on video games and the internet. Now that I have multiple kids and my time is extremely constrained, I am very efficient with my time usage. I listen to audiobooks while doing the dishes. I plan in my mind exactly which programming tasks I want to accomplish as soon as the kids are in bed so that I can do them quickly and still have time to spend…
A mentor once told me “if you want something done quickly, give it to a busy person”
reminds me of another one:
nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
For me it just pushes the point that every situation is a negotiation.