Why time management is ruining our lives • Hacker News Board

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#111

Post by PavlovsCat » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 10:53 PM UTC

Negitivefrags wrote: post #88

rauljara wrote: post #16

My favorite quote from the article: > One of the sneakier pitfalls of an efficiency-based attitude to time is that we start to feel pressured to use our leisure time “productively”, too – an attitude which implies that enjoying leisure for its own sake, which you might have assumed was the whole point of leisure, is somehow not quite enough.

I see this attitude fairly pervasively in hacker news when it comes to consuming media. When famous tech people like Bill Gates post lists of books, there is almost never any fiction on there. It's like reading is frowned upon as a waste of time unless it's non-fiction. You can get away with literary fiction but only if it's high-brow enough that it still feels like learning. Can I not just read a fantasy book becaus…

"obligatory quote"

> To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-- C.S. Lewis

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#112

Post by reitanqild » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 10:54 PM UTC

softawre wrote: post #85

wcummings wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not entitled to other peoples' time. Email lets your interrupt people 24/7, if you don't take that responsibility seriously expect to be ignored sometimes. Your priorities are not their priorities.

No.. Email is async communication, unlike Slack and chat software. I send an email when I expect it to be read in the next 24 hours, but I can give enough respect for the other person's time to let them choose when to read it.

I don't know your nationality but around here we used to say that Americans were crazy with email, using it more or less as sms, bugging you if you didn't reply back in 5 minutes or so it felt.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#113

Post by jmcmichael » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 10:58 PM UTC

kakarot wrote: post #87

jmcmichael wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recommendation 'Only live in the now' requires a differentiation between two types of thinking about the past and/or future. One can be involved in thinking about the future in one way, e.g. making concrete plans for achieving goals, remembering important dates - Eckhart Tolle calls this 'clock time'. One can also be occupied in thinking about the future from another perspective - re-enacting stories of guilt and…

That is a good way to look at things. Some people swear that imagining your future as a narrative, immersing yourself in it, can help you achieve your goals or illuminate flaws with your current plan. And yet others swear this kind of thinking -- allowing ourselves to mentally reap the benefits of out labor before we actually complete it -- is harmful and satiates us to the point where we don't bother to achieve our…

Yes, I've struggled with very similar feelings about guilt over past misdeeds. I agree that feelings of guilt serve a critical function in modifying our future behavior such that we never do the actions that lead to us feeling guilty in the present moment.

However, those feelings of guilt become dysfunctional after we've learned our lesson. After we experience guilt, and resolve never to do again what caused the feelings of guilt, then we can let those feelings go - they've done their job. If they keep coming back, there exist practices which can take us deeper to reveal the obfuscated reasons for their recurrence. No reason to keep torturing one's self after the lesson has been learned.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#114

Post by greglindahl » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 10:58 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #105

austinl wrote: post #76

> “This topic of productivity induces the worst kind of procrastination, because it feels like you’re doing work, but I was producing stuff that had the express purpose of saying to people, ‘Look, come and see how to do your work, rather than doing your work!’” Outside of email, I often get carried away with setting up a system for doing work instead of actually doing work. If I know I have a lot to do, I'll spend ti…

I take the top 3 most important things and do those.

Which is similar to Kanban: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_(development)

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#115

Post by foldr » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 11:10 PM UTC

taterbase wrote: post #45

foldr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Only do things you really want to do We all have ethical responsibilities that require doing things that we don't want to do.

I would argue that these are things we want to do but just are not excited about the effort or potential results.

Well, speak for yourself!

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#116

Post by oblio » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #9

Time management and efficiency is a trap for the striver. Work smarter, not harder has always been a fundamental truism. I've seen time and again people working like donkeys, and pitching whatever they do to exec management. Half the time they eyeroll when the pitch is over because some buzzword wasn't incanted or the speaker said something that sounded like a thing that went bad in the previous meeting. Personally,…

You can have both. I have 0 unread emails cause the garbage goes to spam, the unimportant is marked as read and everything else is read every X hours.

The difference is probably ignore vs mass mark as read.

I find it useful cause I have a small diff for each check.

Think of it as Continuous Integration for email :)

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#117

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 11:19 PM UTC

tedmiston wrote: post #79

As I read this well written piece I can't help but to stop and think about the irony of reading a 22-minute article about priorities and time management instead of getting back to spending time with family and friends over the Christmas break. I will stop and react to one piece: > In an era of insecure employment, we must constantly demonstrate our usefulness through frenetic doing This is why I started my own compan…

[deleted]

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#118

Post by kalmi10 » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 11:23 PM UTC

andyidsinga wrote: post #12

I suspect that the notion of managing one's inbox creates a sort of kruger-dunning effect with the inbox owner in terms of perceived productivity. I've given up active or structured management of my inbox : I read a few times during the work day, try to keep up, but don't get worried about missing 40% of things that come through. I'm at-ease with the notion that important communications have a way of finding me (emai…

Hm, I just realized I work with some people like you, who seem to miss about half of my mails. Hah, from this point on, I will always call "you" if I need to inform "you" of something.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#119

Post by chakalakasp » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 11:24 PM UTC

elihu wrote: post #94

A good book about time management is Momo, by Michael Ende. It's a children's novel about a time-saving bank that comes to town and provide a service whereby any time their customers save can be deposited in an account to be paid back later with interest. The townspeople become more hurried and efficient and remove the things from their lives that give them meaning, and pretty soon everyone is rushing around and mise…

A German friend gave me this book almost 20 years ago; it's a children's book, but it's quite profound in spots. It's a bit dark, too. Same author as The Neverending Story. Who knew that Children's Dystopia Fiction could be a thing and that it could be good.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

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Post by justifier » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 11:26 PM UTC

jlgaddis wrote: post #71

justifier wrote: post #47

i actively develop time management techniques the best experience i've ever had was with meeting a reading deadline i needed to read through a final draft of a book i was writing with friends before the publication date i had read the book a thousand times but in pieces so it was important for me to read it through cover to cover before it was published i knew when the deadline was and was putting it off until three…

Why do you neglect the SHIFT and punctuation keys yet give the ENTER key so much attention?

time management ;P