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How I got to 200 productive hours a month

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Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#161

The author mentions that George R.R. Martin uses a similar set-up to separate work from leisure. Then I think: George RR Martin is a notoriously slow writer. Many are legitimately worried he will not finish GoT before heart disease takes the beloved author.

GRRM is a slow GOT writer. He pumps out other projects.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#162
post #26

TL;DR: Basically getting up early and doing 4 hours of deep work has changed my life from really stressful and bad to really productive and nice. One thing really fundamentally helped me, as someone who works from home on a large project in an asynchronous 100% remote organization. I work on a fairly involved project that demands a lot of hard work. At the same time there are other things I want to get done: some adm…

I miss the times developers would optimize their lives without all the online rants and the sensitive encouraging, nodding and enabling of said behavior. That said, don't you have banks which automatically pay your bills (electricity/gas/water)? Which country are you from?

If someone writes about how THEY do things it's a good way to improve MY process. If it improves things for me, what's wrong with saying thanks to the writer?

Most of my bills can be automated, but a few cannot. I also take time to read over my statements to check for fraud/bad habits.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#163

The author mentions that George R.R. Martin uses a similar set-up to separate work from leisure. Then I think: George RR Martin is a notoriously slow writer. Many are legitimately worried he will not finish GoT before heart disease takes the beloved author.

GRRM is a slow GOT writer. He pumps out other projects.

I see him listed as the editor quite frequently, true.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#164
post #118

> Caution: The mentioned amount of hours is not advisable for people working on someone else's business for illusory stock options, with no payment for overtime. There's also no point in going beyond this number because working over 50 hours a week actually decreases productivity. Life should come first in the "work-life balance." Great disclaimer in the article. The only problem is that many employers will be quite…

I'm thankful for working at a position where I enjoy putting in hours above and beyond what's required by contract. I'd advise anyone to prioritize having a work they thoroughly enjoy well ahead of a work that requires less hours. When you enjoy something, it makes sense to want to be doing that something for a prolonged duration.

It sounds like you feel a sense of ownership around the work you do. That is great but I hope you understand that you do not own the code. You are a contractor and have no stake in the future success of the project.

All of the extra free hours you are spending could be used to build your own product that you would have a stake in.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#165

The author mentions that George R.R. Martin uses a similar set-up to separate work from leisure. Then I think: George RR Martin is a notoriously slow writer. Many are legitimately worried he will not finish GoT before heart disease takes the beloved author.

Yet GOT will last generations upon generations. There will be many reboots, rewrites, and scripts all based upon the work he has done long after he is gone. That is to say sometimes the best things in life take time. Most of our software projects won't make it past one year.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#166
post #25
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have ADHD it’s not so simple. When I’m off my pills — which is to say every day of my life before I was diagnosed — I don’t really make conscious decisions about such things. I open my computer to work and find myself on Twitter or Facebook or HN or whatever 20min later without thinking about it. I mean that literally with no hyperbole. ADHD manifests from an under developed or under stimulated prefrontal cort…

I absolutely don't want to be rude, but the 'inventor' of ADHD (Eisenberg), when he died, said that ADHD is a pharmaceutical dease and the cause is social. Wrong food, bad sleeping habits, wrong teaching methods all influence the way we get stimulated. Studies agree with this. I am not saying you don't have a problem, because I also feel like someone who has ADHD and feel a lot like the author of the article. But I a…

FMRI Brain scans tell a different story. If Dr. Eisenberg really believed that in the end, he was wrong.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the times developers would optimize their lives without all the online rants and the sensitive encouraging, nodding and enabling of said behavior. That said, don't you have banks which automatically pay your bills (electricity/gas/water)? Which country are you from?

My bank doesn't know how much my bill is going to be every month, so I have to put the amount in. Fortunately, I use simple.com and paying a bill with their mobile app takes a couple of seconds (once I have entered the companies info). Some companies have decent recurring billing via ACH, and I use that on most of my credit cards (I still check the statements each month), but my electric, water, sewer, and gas compan…

Same, it's usually the utility companies that I have trouble getting automated. They have shoddy websites/weird rules/etc.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#168
post #118

> Caution: The mentioned amount of hours is not advisable for people working on someone else's business for illusory stock options, with no payment for overtime. There's also no point in going beyond this number because working over 50 hours a week actually decreases productivity. Life should come first in the "work-life balance." Great disclaimer in the article. The only problem is that many employers will be quite…

A well run company will always have more work for each employee than is possible for them to complete. This is because the employee is then forced to prioritise their work themselves and only focus on the pieces of work that align with their incentives. Which should align with the company incentivies. If this was not the case, then the organization would need to employ additional staff to plan work, in order to maxim…

"A well run company will always have more work for each employee than is possible for them to complete."

That's the whole problem, right there. Sometimes, this "well run" company will generate work that might not matter, not at all.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#169
I found a lot of this advice, coincidentally, in the book "Respawn" over at game quitters (I had a horrible video game addiction that I decided I needed to break) -- that is the advice to apply the same psychological principles that get people hooked to video games to other things in life. This is the ultimate life hack for me and something I am still working on.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Timing, an amazing software with a very small memory and resource footprint. [0] If it matters, Timing's UX is very macOS-y both in my experience and in the opinion of Mac aficionado John Gruber. [1] I have no relation to product except that I'm a satisfied customer. [0] https://timingapp.com [1] (disclosure: advert) https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/02/timing

Anything like this good for Windows?

https://www.manictime.com/
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