Why time management is ruining our lives • Hacker News Board

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#41

Post by echelon » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #26

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…

Ah, so you're one of those folks who doesn't answer my emails! Makes me pester you multiple times, by email, SMS, Skype, and if I'm truly desperate, the dog park. You're just outsourcing the work of communication onto me. When you ask for a favor I will pretend I didn't hear it! Winky emoticon.

When someone has hundreds of other requests coming from all directions, plus his or her own work, you're going to have to take the effort to contact them directly if you want help.

If that isn't a compelling argument, keep in mind that many engineers have varying degrees of ADHD, and email is a huge distraction from getting what they normally do done. Every context switch is painful, so they often put it on mute.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#42

Post by andyidsinga » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

saycheese wrote: post #25

andyidsinga wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Most important time is now; I've been thinking about this occasionally -- it never quite sat right with me. Then, recently on a podcast (I think it was Marc Maron, can't remember the guest) they were talking about this, but suggested instead of living in the now, one should ONLY live in both the past and the future -- "those who suffer from dementia and similar diseases live in-the-now and its terrible". In a cer…

Sounds like something someone would say that has no idea what dementia is; feels comparable to saying a savant is a genius. Being in the present is a skill that is learned, not a disorder.

I don't really have a good idea what dementia is. But I did experienced a family member with Alzheimers and witnessed the terrors they lived through.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#43

Post by enraged_camel » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 6:46 PM UTC

nether wrote: post #8

colund wrote: post #4

I manage my time by stopping reading after a few sections when I realize that the article does not contain information that will matter to me for real. It's actually quite simple. Only do things you really want to do and try to do it well. Be nice to others and be nice to yourself. Don't waste time reading stuff which is boring but... "stay hungry... stay foolish"

Why should one stay hungry? What about conquering one's insatiability, and becoming content?

False dichotomy.

Contentedness and happiness are very different things. The former comes from the inside. It is a sense of satisfaction and peace. The latter comes from the outside. It's a sense of elation and joy.

The reason your post presents a false dichotomy is that it is possible to be both content and happy. In fact, people should strive for a balance of both. Being content should not get in the way of attaining happiness, or vice versa.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#44

Post by andyidsinga » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #37

andyidsinga wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Most important time is now; I've been thinking about this occasionally -- it never quite sat right with me. Then, recently on a podcast (I think it was Marc Maron, can't remember the guest) they were talking about this, but suggested instead of living in the now, one should ONLY live in both the past and the future -- "those who suffer from dementia and similar diseases live in-the-now and its terrible". In a cer…

> one should ONLY live in both the past and the future Time is expression of sorrow. Past time is full of regrets, future time is full of apprehension.

hmmm - I think there is both sorrow and joy in both ..no?

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#45

Post by taterbase » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 6:48 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #29

colund wrote: post #4

I manage my time by stopping reading after a few sections when I realize that the article does not contain information that will matter to me for real. It's actually quite simple. Only do things you really want to do and try to do it well. Be nice to others and be nice to yourself. Don't waste time reading stuff which is boring but... "stay hungry... stay foolish"

>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.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#46

Post by tunesmith » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

Slack (the concept, not the app) is interesting because it can also be applied personally. Lots of businesses these days talk about wanting to have both "high autonomy and high alignment" for their teams.

So it's useful to think about having high autonomy, high alignment, and slack - for one's own individual life.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#47

Post by justifier » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 7:01 PM UTC

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 days before the day and i still had 130 pages to read and edit

i decided to dedicate a day to finishing it

130 pages, 1 day.. i could easily pull off 10 pages per hour and effectively work from 9am, to 10pm

10 pages per hour seems silly but it really is a mechanism to subvert what i call my reward response

put in the time to read 10 pages at the start of any hour and the rest of the hour is mine to do whatever i want to

stretch, workout, run, eat, context switch, information dope

sometimes those 10 pages would take 5 minutes, woot! 55 minutes to work on some other project

sometimes i would be so distracted that those 10 pages could take 40 minutes, so i'd make myself some tea and stare out a window for 10 minutes before the next hour

reading simplifies this model because you can quickly gauge how many hours you want to work, how much reading you have to do, and roughly how fast you can read

it's a bit different for other endeavors

for instance, 10 lines of code can take 2 seconds or 2 years

so instead of hard hour breaks i'll work until i finish a definitive partition of a larger project and wherever i lie in the current hour chunk determines the length of the reward, to be limited by the start of the next hour

same game different rules

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#48

Post by rdiddly » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 7:02 PM UTC

moxious wrote: post #31

rdiddly wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so you're one of those folks who doesn't answer my emails! Makes me pester you multiple times, by email, SMS, Skype, and if I'm truly desperate, the dog park. You're just outsourcing the work of communication onto me. When you ask for a favor I will pretend I didn't hear it! Winky emoticon.

Are you sure all of your communications are so critical? There are also people who will chase others to the dog park to tell them that a CI build passed...

That last example sounds like someone incompetent at email and choosing teammates, chose one who's incompetent at deciding what's critical. Oops-a-daisy. For competent adults, having the recipient unilaterally decide what's critical (critical to whom? being a key question) is insulting.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#49

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 7:11 PM UTC

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #39

rdiddly wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so you're one of those folks who doesn't answer my emails! Makes me pester you multiple times, by email, SMS, Skype, and if I'm truly desperate, the dog park. You're just outsourcing the work of communication onto me. When you ask for a favor I will pretend I didn't hear it! Winky emoticon.

If it's not important enough to message me twice, it doesn't need a sub-week-later reply. (Obviously, some caveats about important people, routine work messages, etc.) I generally get back to people or read messages, but only when I spend an hour going through things when I have free time. I don't feel obligated to respond to random messages on their timeline.

Totally this. I also apply a similar rule to phone calls - barring few exceptions (family, expected important communication), I pick up only when I feel like it (and most of the time, I don't). If something is important, one can text me instead (thus letting me decide whether or not I consider it important too).

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#50

Post by duaneb » Sat, Dec 24, 2016, 7:11 PM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #26

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…

Ah, so you're one of those folks who doesn't answer my emails! Makes me pester you multiple times, by email, SMS, Skype, and if I'm truly desperate, the dog park. You're just outsourcing the work of communication onto me. When you ask for a favor I will pretend I didn't hear it! Winky emoticon.

In many jobs that's totally worth it—chances are very low a stranger will need something high priority from you, and people who work with you will know how to communicate.

Email is good for a lot of things, but not for expecting processing quickly.