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Why time management is ruining our lives

theguardian.com

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Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#81

Post by sambe »

pmichaud wrote: post #62
ryandrake wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for pointing that out. Not answering one's E-mail is on my list of "rude things that somehow have become acceptable". It's part of individual companies' cultures. I've worked places where people can generally be relied upon to get back to you, and places where you might as well print out the message and shred it--it's not going to be responded to. The former means your working relationship with me is going…

I like your tactical suggestion at the bottom, but I wanted to say that I rankle at the top. Philosophically, I don't think a request for my attention creates an obligation to give it. Practically, if I responded to every email I received, I'd spend all my time doing nothing but responding to email, then I'd still fail by running out of time. It's actually pretty stressful. I've outsourced a lot of my email to a coup…

If your company pays you to give your attention when requested then it kind of does create such an obligation.

I'll grant you that if they have to choose, they probably choose total productivity over all emails answered. However, clearly not every incoming email requires an answer from every recipient. You are not being asked to reply to 100% of incoming emails instantly.

Ignoring direct requests for attention is both rude and in my opinion ultimately toxic. Imagine what would happen if everyone acted that way. It blocks information flow, holds people up, and ultimately doesn't solve the problem - you are just forcing someone to follow up some other way. It actually hides problems. Those can be that you are doing something wrong: poor at organising your email or your time compared to others; contiually optimising visible productivity at the expense of other people's time; poor communication skills. On the flip side, it can be that the company has poor email culture, suboptimal team structures/dynamics or just too much work for the number of employees. If your manager met you by the coffee machine when you were busy and asked you for something you wouldn't just walk away.

None of the best or most productive people I've worked with have been casual about dropping 40% of their emails.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#82

Post by tptacek »

Weird tangent:

A couple years ago I had a wicked bout of insomnia, and one of the things I did to combat it was to scrub all my screens of clocks, so that I couldn't easily succumb to an anxious urge to check the time when I was having trouble falling asleep.

I've found that not having a clock in the upper-right corner of my screen slightly but noticeably chills me out. Like the little red badge on the email client telling you to stop what you're doing and check your mail, the clock is a source of tiny little distractions throughout the day.

I still use calendars, of course, and I'm never more than a couple keystrokes from the time.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#83

Post by wcummings »

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.

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.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#84

Post by ryandrake »

tinbucket wrote: post #74
pmichaud wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your tactical suggestion at the bottom, but I wanted to say that I rankle at the top. Philosophically, I don't think a request for my attention creates an obligation to give it. Practically, if I responded to every email I received, I'd spend all my time doing nothing but responding to email, then I'd still fail by running out of time. It's actually pretty stressful. I've outsourced a lot of my email to a coup…

I couldn't agree more that a request for my attention does not obligate me to give it; if it did, I could spend all my (work) day answering emails and all my leisure time watching adverts.

You're both right. Nothing, besides courtesy, obliges you to respond. But then, depending on the urgency of the request, we end up in the "follow you to the dog park" mode of communication GP talked about, which is less than ideal

I'd argue that getting more requests for attention than one can handle is a symptom, not a root problem. Tons of people needing your approval for something? Maybe authority can be distributed more evenly. Designate others who you trust to approve things on your behalf. Frequent pings for "status updates"? Maybe the project is not being run as transparently as it can be. Time to publish a wiki or something so these people can serve themselves.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#85

Post by softawre »

wcummings wrote: post #83
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.

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.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#86

Post by softawre »

ryandrake wrote: post #52
junto wrote: post #51

One of my bosses had a good way of dealing with emails. He would only write one single short replies. No "Dear/Hello Blah", no sign off, just one single terse sentence that was straight to the point. He detested my wordy, time laboured and well formatted emails that looked like letters. He had a point. He treated email like a messenger application, whereas many of us still see it as an electronic replacement for the…

This style breaks down when you ask three distinct questions, and the boss (who's so busy he can't even form sentences) simply responds "YES". Now you're guessing. Yes to everything? Yes to only the last question? Now more E-mails are needed and nobody wants that.

I also learned to be succinct early in my career, when I emailed a VP a wordy mess and he gave me this important advice.

Every word you type costs the company money, compounded by how many people see the email. Make your words count.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#87

Post by kakarot »

jmcmichael wrote: post #27
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…

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 goals because the rewards we seek are just an imaginative narrative away.

I find that each mentality suits different career paths and different people; there is no one correct answer.

But as for immersing yourself in past guilt...I find that this happens to me, and my rationality is that I deserve the guilt from my failures and misdeeds. That if I "live in the now" I am doing a disservice to those I may have wronged (even though they may have completely forgotten whatever it was by now and moved on).

I have trouble escaping this negative, self-hating mentality despite knowing it is folly.

It's easy for me to forgive myself for dropping the ball here and there, for missing opportunity, because I understand the power of negative vs positive thought loops. But it feels so selfish when I apply this mentality to my transgressions upon others. What do.

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#88

Post by Negitivefrags »

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 because I find it entertaining?

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#89

Post by Negitivefrags »

andyidsinga wrote: post #18
saycheese wrote: post #10

Tolstoy, 1885: - Most important time is now; - Most important people are the ones you're with; - Most important task is helping them. __ Lots of people focus way, way too much on a past the may have never been, or at the least, will never change - and a future that may never be, or will feel different when it finally arrives as reality.

> - 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…

David Mitchel has some interesting (and humorous) thoughts on this issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HTt6QJqzxk

Re: Why time management is ruining our lives

#90

Post by llwt »

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…

That sounds a lot like the Pomodoro Technique: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
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