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The Busy Person’s Lies

nytimes.com

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Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#111

Post by ChuckMcM »

I've never gone full log analysis on this question but several times in my career I've wondered "Am I really getting less done than I used to or am I mis-remembering the past?"

Doing a surface analysis of that highlighted lots of places where I was doing something I wanted to do and later counting it as "wasted" time. So for example if I spent an hour watching a television show and later felt I had wasted an hour watching TV, I could go back and re-score that to "I wanted to watch television and I did, why are my priorities for that time different now than they were then?"

And for me, there were two things that were key to me getting better with my time. One was to be explicit about my priorities, and the other is the bin packing problem.

If you spend three hours on things, separated by 15 minutes between hours, you end up "losing" 45 minutes because 15 minutes is too short to spin up a new task but long enough to be meaningful.

If I wanted to address the bin-packing problem then it meant being a lot more thoughtful about planning my use of time. And doing three one hour things back to back (with a plan to switch tasks at the earlier of "I'm done" or "it's been an hour" that coalesces the three 15 minute chunks into one 45 minute chunk which is enough time to watch an hour long TV show if you can skip all the commercials.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#112

Post by vkou »

coolstorydude89 wrote: post #104
SilasX wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the sad, sympathy-inducing facial expressions was just ... what? Something the artist independently decided to do?

Not sure I understand what you are trying to imply? I think the artists intent was to show distress at having to pay large fines. I think that regardless of income people can(and usually do) feel distressed at having to pay thousands of dollars in fines. I personally wince at 20 dollar parking tickets, and probably always will despite my level of income.

Do you also wince at paying money for your groceries?

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#113

Post by clock_tower »

Swizec wrote: post #107
SilasX wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So ... the retired couple (top right) is upper class then.

That's a good question. I don't know. I guess it depends on what kind of retired you are. If you're living off of $1000 of dividends per month, or a $600 pension, then you're probably not upper class. At $4000/month like the couple in the picture ... borderline? Maybe once you retire you just stay the class you were before you retired?

> Maybe once you retire you just stay the class you were before you retired?

That's how I've always heard it, for what it's worth. The middle class, including the upper middle class, earns salaries; the upper class pays them.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#114

Post by sheepmullet »

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.

> Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

Except it's not true. The poor and working class have a lot more financial stress and less power to change.

That doesn't make them busier or mean they work harder.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#115

Post by coolstorydude89 »

vkou wrote: post #112
coolstorydude89 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I understand what you are trying to imply? I think the artists intent was to show distress at having to pay large fines. I think that regardless of income people can(and usually do) feel distressed at having to pay thousands of dollars in fines. I personally wince at 20 dollar parking tickets, and probably always will despite my level of income.

Do you also wince at paying money for your groceries?

If I feel like what I am obtaining from an exchange of money for some thing, is less valuable to me than the amount of my lifetime/mental and physical energies I spent to acquire that money originally, I am probably not going to feel good about the exchange. This seems like common sense to me?

It makes me feel even worse on general principle when the exchange is coercive, using my example, I parked in a place that was designated by "random person with authority" at "random point in time" as not to be parked in, so if I don't pay my locally sanctioned protection racket I will be penalized. I will never see this as a positive thing.

EDIT: Also, it should be said that with things like taxes there is a distinct psychological effect/cognitive bias where people see less value in things where the effect or value of the transaction cannot be easily seen.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#116

Post by apsec112 »

sedachv wrote: post #100
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…

> people whose skills go out-of-date, and can't afford a retraining program United States job training programs do not work - they are a 1980s Reagan-era privatization scam to funnel tax dollars to private scam "training" and "job" centers that do not provide effective training or result in any meaningful employment outcomes: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=8014010004030... Job training needs to be sto…

Sorry, I think there's a semantic confusion here. By "retraining", I was also referring to vocational education and trade schools in general, not just a specific US government program. It sounds like you're not anti-retraining (as I was using the word), you just want it to be reformed and brought more under federal control.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#117

Post by s_kilk »

jobu wrote: post #54
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.

As a parent of four kids myself, this seems ridiculously low: "I spent a mere 9.09 hours weekly on housework and errands" How is that possible? Housecleaner? Personal shopper? Nanny? We spend 6-8 hours each week shopping around trying to save money on just groceries, and that's not including clothes or haircuts etc.

> We spend 6-8 hours each week shopping around trying to save money on just groceries

Curious, How much money are you saving in exchange for that effort?

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#118

Post by spoinkaroo »

What kind of systems do you guys use for time tracking, priority organization, and achieving goals/finding meaning? I've flittered around with various systems, but never settled on anything. (Planning out my week in advance, time tracking from 15 minute intervals to morning intervals with what I have during the day, to do lists organized by urgent+important // important // urgent // neither, etc. It can be overwhelming, but I strongly suspect a system that makes me cognizant of my behavior, decisions, and where I am adding/finding the most value is superior to having no system at all.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#119

Post by cmurf »

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.

Yeah but the difference between working class $50K per year, and professional $500K per year, is tiny in comparison to the difference between millionaire and billionaire.

A billionaire can buy a new Mercedes Benz every day, and burn it to the ground in a pile of $100 bills at the end of that day, and not run out of money their entire life. So...

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#120

Post by binalpatel »

I've fallen into the busy trap pretty often lately.

Busy to me - paradoxically - is correlated with not getting shit done. It's one thing to have a lot to do, and get 90% of the tasks done, and another to have a lot to do, and get 10% of the tasks done, with the other 90% rolling over onto the next day.

It's the roll-over that's really the stressor for me, when I feel most "busy", and that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy for the next day, when you have that much more to do.

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