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What “work” looks like

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: What “work” looks like

#141

Post by mr_gibbins »

barrenko wrote: post #64
blibble wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, while employed, have you tried to go out for an extended walk or do something else away from your computer, outside of the building you are required to work in? I'm 2 decades into my career amongst multiple different employers in different industries (including traditional stuffy ones), and I've never had anyone even raise an eyebrow at people wandering off for a few hours unannounced if you're billing the…

I've been recently reprimanded for being seen too often drinking water at the kitchen.

Leave. Honestly.

I had a gig in a tiny company where the ritual was always to have a cup of tea/coffee at hand. People took it in turns to brew up. Which meant, with 3-4 people in the office, an enforced tea round every 45-60 minutes. If you were doing something, tough. TEA ROUND!! They'd literally come over and tap you on the shoulder. I spent more time at the kettle than I did working. I had the solace of daily pay, but when the time came to renew the contract, noped right out of there.

Re: What “work” looks like

#142

Post by cma »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #140
lqet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which o…

Snap. Whenever I sat down to cast about for ideas on how to develop the initial form of my PhD, nada, zip. Deliberate concentration on one thing was a shortcut to procrastination. The 'big idea' came when I was on campus, standing outside smoking. Hit me like a bombshell. I literally ran to see my supervisor, blurted out IT'S JUST A F**G MOLECULE, cleared off his whiteboard and spent the next hour sketching out what…

The question is would you be able to still get those spontaneous ideas at a background level without also the staring at the screen and deliberate work?

Re: What “work” looks like

#143

Post by LocalH »

jerrygoyal wrote: post #115
Test0129 wrote: post #16

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck…

> So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. I get it that it works but wonder what could be the logical explanation of this. I remember this method was also mentioned in the movie Turner & Hooch.

My working hypothesis is that the conscious and subconscious mind cannot access the same part of the brain at the same time (sort of like bus conflicts). So, counterintuitively, to let your subconscious mind churn on a problem, you have to actively focus elsewhere. This, at least, seems to be how it works for me.

Re: What “work” looks like

#144

Post by texasbigdata »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #124
deepGem wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Benjamin Franklin had this amazing idea of having ball bearings in his hand while solving and thinking about hard problems. The thinking would eventually make him fall asleep and as he fell into a slumber, the ball bearings would roll off his hands startling him up. It is at this precipice, the fine line between awake and asleep states that most of his ideas came to life. He would start penning down his ideas in this…

Leveraging the hypnagogic state. If anyone is interested, the yoga tradition has extensively developed this technique – it’s called Yoga Nidra.

It’s pandemic popular as “non sleep deep rest” if you want to try it by following a YouTube guide. Great nap replacement for when you’re too wired to fully fall asleep.

Re: What “work” looks like

#145

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

lqet wrote: post #82
jayde2767 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the castration of ideas in the "Everything-is-an-Emergency" company culture. If you're not careful, it will condition you to delay work because the next "emergency" and shift in priority is imminent.

This is exactly how my working days looked like in the last 12 months before I quit. Sitting in front of the screen waiting for the next emergency ticket. Why even bother to start some deep work? It will be interrupted, possibly for days, in the next hour anyhow. It was corporately-enforced procrastination, non-stop, for 2 years. At the same time, the technical debt grew and grew, until it towered above everything. I…

Creativity and experimentation are not needed for survival, so stress hormons flow and the nice things are postponed.

Re: What “work” looks like

#146

Post by Fnoord »

lqet wrote: post #77
Test0129 wrote: post #16

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck…

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which o…

Yes, this is undervalued. It is called the diffuse mode of thinking (as opposed to the focused mode). Walk around in the park during lunch break is work, too.

Re: What “work” looks like

#147

Post by lqet »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #140
lqet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which o…

Snap. Whenever I sat down to cast about for ideas on how to develop the initial form of my PhD, nada, zip. Deliberate concentration on one thing was a shortcut to procrastination. The 'big idea' came when I was on campus, standing outside smoking. Hit me like a bombshell. I literally ran to see my supervisor, blurted out IT'S JUST A F**G MOLECULE, cleared off his whiteboard and spent the next hour sketching out what…

I also vividly remember the moment I had idea 1 from my list above. It was such a nice warm autumn day in the last months of a very turbulent year: I struggled finding something worth doing a PhD on, and in the 10 weeks before, I got married, my wife got pregnant, was rushed into emergency for a suspected ectopic pregnancy a few days later, which then suddenly turned out to be a completely normal pregnancy. I also had an upcoming conference talk a week later, for which I was completely unprepared. Suddenly the idea was there, and it was like a door to a wide avenue opened, with follow-up ideas left and right all along the way. It turned out quite beautiful in the end, and when we published 6 months later, one of the reviewers found the idea "elegant", which was by far the most positive thing I ever read in a paper review.

Re: What “work” looks like

#148

Post by thenerdhead »

Diffused time is needed for creativity to come. The best ideas always come while not actively working on it. Working out, going on a walk, taking a shower, or even before going to sleep can have your subconscious do the work for you.

I always thought big tech companies knew this with how many "fun" activities they have in the office, but it seems like nobody utilizes it as much as they should. At least my experience.

There's a cap on active work each day. Yet we work through that cap thinking we're some type of hero and end up doing pretty poor work.

This is very "left brain, right brain" thinking. There's a number of books on this topic. I think one of the better ones is Barbara Oakley's books on how to teach yourself.

If you read any famous creative's memoirs, you'll see similar patterns where the best stuff came at the oddest times. You'll probably even see that cliche story about Edison falling asleep with metal balls to wake up and write his inventions down.

Peter Drucker and many before him knew that "knowledge work" was a whole different ballgame. They were quite ahead of their time thinking back now in 2022:

https://hbr.org/2014/10/what-peter-drucker-knew-about-2020

Re: What “work” looks like

#150

Post by scruple »

sph wrote: post #126
gman83 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was drinking whiskey for breakfast I'd probably need to take a nap in the afternoon as well.

If you were not drinking coffee, perhaps you might as well. I wonder if our cultural addiction with caffeine, an effective sleep inhibitor, is the reason why napping and siestas feels so weird and exotic to our modern minds. "Oh you're from Italy? I heard they take lunchtime naps over there." Sadly only my grandma had such a luxury. Everybody else chugs coffee and is expected to work 9-18 without pause, like the rest…

Aren't the Italians known for their coffee?
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