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Poisoning the Day

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Re: Poisoning the Day

#61

Post by pseudosavant »

mindslight wrote: post #49
Aurornis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This feels like an incredibly elaborate way to say that he's a morning person. If you read the whole article there’s a section dedicated to evening people. Regardless, the advice is about avoiding emotionally draining stimuli until you’ve accomplished what you want to do for the day. You can wake up at noon and still do that. The root problem is that people are consuming large amounts of negative news and social me…

> If you read the whole article there’s a section dedicated to evening people. It's a perfunctory mention of the exact kind morning people commonly throw out to superficially address an evening person's actual constraints. The article's whole thesis is that after some point in the day your emotions will end up fried. An evening person can't simply flip the arrow of time to make it so that before that point in the day…

No matter what time you are getting up, I think this is suggesting that if there is something important for you to get done, it is better to get it done sooner than later. I am a complete night owl, but leaving the most important items to the end of the day has rarely been a winning plan for me.

Re: Poisoning the Day

#62

Post by thimkerbell »

workflowing wrote: post #58
thimkerbell wrote: post #55

Weird pattern, that posts with titles like that seem to surface around Thanksgiving. Russian? Chinese?

American?

Could be. The time I noticed it in a travel nexus, everyone (young adult, white) was speaking unaccented English. (again, just before TG)

Re: Poisoning the Day

#63

Post by postoplust »

user_7832 wrote: post #51
nomilk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangental but I noted this quote from 4HWW: > Ask: if this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day? Don’t ever arrive at your computer without a clear list of priorities, you’ll just read unassociated email and scramble your brain for the day. When I read that last bit ("scramble your brain") I had a profound sense of agreement that this was incredibly applicable to me. I feel like distr…

Is 4hww 4 hour work week, the book, that you’re referring to? It’s a good quote!

(not OP) Yes, the quoted strategy is from The 4-Hour Workweek (Ferriss 2007)

Re: Poisoning the Day

#64

Post by dylan604 »

adamauckland wrote: post #50
dylan604 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can wake up at noon and still do that. That's not necessarily true. If you're a morning person managing other people that are not morning people but insist on having daily meetings in the morning, you're an asshole. I find meetings early in the morning sadistic and way more draining than reading the news, but I'm not the type that gets emotional about the news while I will react negatively in an early meeting a…

If you're a morning person and you're scheduling meetings for the morning you're literally wasting your period of productivity.

I couldn't agree more

Re: Poisoning the Day

#65

Post by tdeck »

adamauckland wrote: post #50
dylan604 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can wake up at noon and still do that. That's not necessarily true. If you're a morning person managing other people that are not morning people but insist on having daily meetings in the morning, you're an asshole. I find meetings early in the morning sadistic and way more draining than reading the news, but I'm not the type that gets emotional about the news while I will react negatively in an early meeting a…

If you're a morning person and you're scheduling meetings for the morning you're literally wasting your period of productivity.

Unless the closest you ever get to productivity is having meetings :).

Re: Poisoning the Day

#66

Post by glitchc »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #9
Etheryte wrote: post #6

This feels like an incredibly elaborate way to say that he's a morning person. There's plenty of people for whom the entire thing works the exact opposite, and of course loads of people everywhere in between. I wouldn't really read deep into this, it's one of those takes that tries really hard to sound profound, but it really isn't.

Did you read the article?, is about doing the importnat stuff when no one is around to distract you. >Not an early riser? No problem, just flip it. Avoid the day. And when it’s done, that’s when your focussed work starts (my favourite adherent of this approach is Demis Hassabis: who works a “second day” from between 11pm and 4am).

This is not possible to do in most workplaces, unless it's remote and the time zone difference works in your favour.

Re: Poisoning the Day

#67

Post by IAmGraydon »

I think I’m pretty good at productivity, and to me it’s the opposite. You don’t let the outside events poison the day. You know how to get things done despite all that. If your day is controlling you, you’ll never control your destiny.

Re: Poisoning the Day

#68

Post by devjab »

Etheryte wrote: post #6

This feels like an incredibly elaborate way to say that he's a morning person. There's plenty of people for whom the entire thing works the exact opposite, and of course loads of people everywhere in between. I wouldn't really read deep into this, it's one of those takes that tries really hard to sound profound, but it really isn't.

I think there is some sound advice in there that just happens to fit into his mornings. Take always like having your day poisoned by news, stuff in your life and so on would also occur for you if you woke up later. I do agree that it’s not that deep. Anyone who’s bipolar has ADHD or other “doesn’t fit into the 9-5 society” issues can likely tell you how their emotions will fuck with their productivity.

There isn’t a whole lot you can do with it if you don’t have the freedom to work when you’re energised and stop when you’re not. A lot of us in the software industry have the advantage of being able to not work a lot during “normal hours” and then pull off an entire weeks worth of work on a Saturday, but a lot of us don’t. I worked 30 hours a week for a while (37 is normal in Denmark) and I consistently scores between 20-30% better on our infernal measurements for quality and productivity than I did when I went back to a 37 hour week. Not because I was doing anything different, felt less motivated or was intentionally trying to do anything different. I was simply more tired and it impacted me more than it might do to neurotypical (or whatever we call healthy people these days). Of course for me personally the 37 hours are way better because it pays 20% more.

Anyway, even if you aren’t neurodivergent like me I still suspect you’re not cut out to do office work as though you were at an assembly line. Which is really where the modern “work week” originated. Cutting down on distractions, getting enough sleep and so on will obviously work in your favour. So yeah, I agree with you.

Re: Poisoning the Day

#69

Post by high_priest »

vonnik wrote: post #39
Etheryte wrote: post #6

This feels like an incredibly elaborate way to say that he's a morning person. There's plenty of people for whom the entire thing works the exact opposite, and of course loads of people everywhere in between. I wouldn't really read deep into this, it's one of those takes that tries really hard to sound profound, but it really isn't.

He’s really talking about how to maintain focus and neurological energy, but doesn’t have the right words. Fwiw, I wrote about it here: https://vonnik.substack.com/p/the-inner-game-of-knowledge-wo... It’s something I struggle with, too.

I love how you have connected the dots between evaluation of ideas, metaphorisation & invention of consciousness. Linking to relevant book.

I've come up with the same, internalised, realisation, based on my relation with religion & science. Both are a way to describe our world with metaphors (e.g. electric & water currents). At some point, for some people, one is a more attractive way, to describe our relation with the environment.

Re: Poisoning the Day

#70

Post by groby_b »

dylan604 wrote: post #42
Aurornis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This feels like an incredibly elaborate way to say that he's a morning person. If you read the whole article there’s a section dedicated to evening people. Regardless, the advice is about avoiding emotionally draining stimuli until you’ve accomplished what you want to do for the day. You can wake up at noon and still do that. The root problem is that people are consuming large amounts of negative news and social me…

> You can wake up at noon and still do that. That's not necessarily true. If you're a morning person managing other people that are not morning people but insist on having daily meetings in the morning, you're an asshole. I find meetings early in the morning sadistic and way more draining than reading the news, but I'm not the type that gets emotional about the news while I will react negatively in an early meeting a…

> If you're a morning person managing other people that are not morning people but insist on having daily meetings in the morning, you're an asshole.

This of course raises the question why forcing morning meetings on morning people is an asshole move, but forcing morning people to meet afternoon people in the afternoon is OK.

Can I suggest that maybe we all need to put on our big-boy/girl pants and accept that the world has more people than ourselves? And that this means we all need to compromise from time to time?

It is absolutely impossible to get any team efforts done in a world where everybody insists we all exclusively work in their own preferred style of work.

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