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It's harder to follow this advice when you're self-employed—in the bootstrapped, struggle-with-bills, glorified one-man-show sense, not the funded-with-plenty-o

It's harder to follow this advice when you're self-employed—in the bootstrapped, struggle-with-bills, glorified one-man-show sense, not the funded-with-plenty-of-runway sense. In addition to the guilt and social pressure to "look busy", there's the knowledge that making rent really is tied to how much you work. That leaves one feeling not only guilty for doing not-work in the abstract, diffuse sense related to societal messaging, but indeed, it feels financially irresponsible and often financially deleterious. It's not that grinding away at the PC makes one any more productive than folk who follow the article's advice. It's just an even bigger weight on one's shoulders. Instead of feeling like you owe society, your coworkers or your employer something, you think about owing people paychecks that don't bounce and owing the bank account balances that aren't negative. Seeing past that and becoming aware that taking a walk now and again won't change any of that in the big picture, because the big picture depends on the more cosmological success or failure of your business model to grow/scale, is hard when life is that kind of constant struggle. And then you constantly feel like a moral failure—I mean a real piece of shit, not just a slacker getting away with slacking—when you binge-watch something on Netflix or cruise HN or YouTube because you're constantly burned out.

Swizec 10y ago
I struggle with this a lot. It's like I have to make appearances for me. Forget pointy haired bosses and managers who like to see you work. Nothing is harder on yourself than yourself. You have a very clear insight into just how much you procrastinate and slack off and everything feels like too much. This of course does not lead to more productivity. It leads to a lot of "productivity" where you work late into the night or early into morning, but know a surprising lot about all the latest memes and goings on du jour of the internet. What I found works for me is exercise. Can't convince yourself that you can sit still and stare at the ceiling for an hour? Going for a run has the same effect and it feels productive. Added bonus: you don't look idle to others either. Saying "I wanna read for an hour" is often met with "Ok but can you do the dishes and the laundry while you're not doing anything anyway?". Going for a run or hopping to the gym is met with "Ok." Both from your subconscious and the people around you.
spaginal 10y ago
I thought so too. Ego plays a huge part in this when it comes to business. Working less can help you with working more meaningfully in a small business in my own personal experience. For others it may not. The thing that helped me with my small business, is the age old wisdom, the less I spent, the less I had to earn for the business and the more I could keep for myself. Instead of burning money on things that didn't help the business, or provided very small benefit financially but added more hours to grind out, I killed those things off and buried them. Changed my life with owning a small business for myself. It went from spending money like it was going out of style to gain a few more on top, working insane hours everyday, literally almost killing myself with neglect to my health and sleep, to enjoyment again and restoring my health. Frankly, some businesses and ideas won't scale, no matter how hard you try, and they won't exit for millions or billions at an IPO, but it doesn't make them failures if they give you the ability to provide for your home and find time to do other things that might down the road. Just my two cents. I've been in your shoes as have most here. Starting a business is one of the most insane experiences I think anyone can go through.
- abalashov 10y ago
  Frankly, some businesses and ideas won't scale, no matter how hard you try, and they won't exit for millions or billions at an IPO, but it doesn't make them failures if they give you the ability to provide for your home and find time to do other things that might down the road. Oh, I agree with that. My business aspirations aren't much higher. But sometimes even getting to that point is a challenge. As you say, high personal or business expenses can be a major reason for that.
dualogy 10y ago
I have taught myself to not feel bad about "off days". Rather than 5 days on, 2 days off like structured employment, if I "go with the flow" my body/mind/voice might demand after say 15 days on, maybe 3-5 days off. I'll grant that. As soon as recharged, whatever down-time/"off" stuff I was into becomes boring and the work where I left off lures me back in. But you'll have to allow such off time. Having one right now, hence I'm posting here. As for "procrastination" through "work-days", I don't do that much, maybe an hour of "random rubbish" a day tops. Grabbing lunch is a nice short break; eating it, another; 10 minutes of weights, another; showering, (h)eating dinner, filling/emptying dishwasher.. it all adds up to just the right amount & length of brief brain breaks "aerating" the work day/routine. The feeling that's worse than any sort of misguided guilt about off time is when you did power through some 12-15 hours and reflect back on & summarize what exactly one has managed to produce net --- it often feels like disturbingly little for the time, given all the high-level tooling, frameworks, helper libs and the fast hardware & internet we all enjoy today.
- abalashov 10y ago
  The feeling that's worse than any sort of misguided guilt about off time is when you did power through some 12-15 hours and reflect back on & summarize what exactly one has managed to produce net --- it often feels like disturbingly little for the time Definitely. Especially when coming by 12-15 hours is incredibly difficult, for any number of reasons. I often come away with the feeling that for having run this kind of marathon—and that's what it feels like nowadays—I should have managed like a week's worth of work, especially considering, as you say, all the perceived efficiency gains. But modern high-level tooling and frameworks have their drawbacks, too. One spends an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to do things "the frameworky way". I understand the upsides, of course, but it has still led to a profound frustration with the modern-day practice of programming. Back when I wrote C, I may have had to write 10x as much code, but at least I was churning out lines of code perceptibly. With a small standard library, there wasn't that much to stop and look up. It was an exercise full of "creative flow". Nowadays, I have 27 browser tabs and 5 API references open any time I need to actually do anything, and that in itself can be a major psychological blocker.
  - 10y ago
h1d 10y ago
For me, it's about having the "courage" to go get a long sleep. I'm not good at it, so my sleeping becomes so random I start sleeping at any time of day but usually wakes up in about 4 hours out of pressure (or by phone call) and perhaps does that in a certain cycle to at least keep the total sleeping time enough to keep going. This "If I do more through the night, then I can impress the client a bit more as a work done today" feeling is pretty shortsighted but it kind of still drags me to late night work especially when I'm behind schedule. But sometimes when I feel burned out, I take a break thinking I have the right to kill anyone who interrupts my time, even if it lasts for a day.
watwut 10y ago
I get you, but you will be more useful to people who depend on you if you are rested. I found out about rest when I started to track my worked time exactly. I like to track things and wanted to see how much exactly each specific activity takes. I would write down how much I am actually really working and what exactly I am doing e.g. staring at monitor with code while daydreaming does not count as coding. Chatting with colleague does not count etc. Result was that I could see drop in what I produce after working a lot. Sometimes it is just a question of doing experiment on yourself.

Swizec 10y ago

I struggle with this a lot. It's like I have to make appearances for me. Forget pointy haired bosses and managers who like to see you work. Nothing is harder on yourself than yourself. You have a very clear insight into just how much you procrastinate and slack off and everything feels like too much. This of course does not lead to more productivity. It leads to a lot of "productivity" where you work late into the night or early into morning, but know a surprising lot about all the latest memes and goings on du jour of the internet. What I found works for me is exercise. Can't convince yourself that you can sit still and stare at the ceiling for an hour? Going for a run has the same effect and it feels productive. Added bonus: you don't look idle to others either. Saying "I wanna read for an hour" is often met with "Ok but can you do the dishes and the laundry while you're not doing anything anyway?". Going for a run or hopping to the gym is met with "Ok." Both from your subconscious and the people around you.

spaginal 10y ago

I thought so too. Ego plays a huge part in this when it comes to business. Working less can help you with working more meaningfully in a small business in my own personal experience. For others it may not. The thing that helped me with my small business, is the age old wisdom, the less I spent, the less I had to earn for the business and the more I could keep for myself. Instead of burning money on things that didn't help the business, or provided very small benefit financially but added more hours to grind out, I killed those things off and buried them. Changed my life with owning a small business for myself. It went from spending money like it was going out of style to gain a few more on top, working insane hours everyday, literally almost killing myself with neglect to my health and sleep, to enjoyment again and restoring my health. Frankly, some businesses and ideas won't scale, no matter how hard you try, and they won't exit for millions or billions at an IPO, but it doesn't make them failures if they give you the ability to provide for your home and find time to do other things that might down the road. Just my two cents. I've been in your shoes as have most here. Starting a business is one of the most insane experiences I think anyone can go through.

abalashov 10y ago
Frankly, some businesses and ideas won't scale, no matter how hard you try, and they won't exit for millions or billions at an IPO, but it doesn't make them failures if they give you the ability to provide for your home and find time to do other things that might down the road. Oh, I agree with that. My business aspirations aren't much higher. But sometimes even getting to that point is a challenge. As you say, high personal or business expenses can be a major reason for that.

dualogy 10y ago

I have taught myself to not feel bad about "off days". Rather than 5 days on, 2 days off like structured employment, if I "go with the flow" my body/mind/voice might demand after say 15 days on, maybe 3-5 days off. I'll grant that. As soon as recharged, whatever down-time/"off" stuff I was into becomes boring and the work where I left off lures me back in. But you'll have to allow such off time. Having one right now, hence I'm posting here. As for "procrastination" through "work-days", I don't do that much, maybe an hour of "random rubbish" a day tops. Grabbing lunch is a nice short break; eating it, another; 10 minutes of weights, another; showering, (h)eating dinner, filling/emptying dishwasher.. it all adds up to just the right amount & length of brief brain breaks "aerating" the work day/routine. The feeling that's worse than any sort of misguided guilt about off time is when you did power through some 12-15 hours and reflect back on & summarize what exactly one has managed to produce net --- it often feels like disturbingly little for the time, given all the high-level tooling, frameworks, helper libs and the fast hardware & internet we all enjoy today.

abalashov 10y ago
The feeling that's worse than any sort of misguided guilt about off time is when you did power through some 12-15 hours and reflect back on & summarize what exactly one has managed to produce net --- it often feels like disturbingly little for the time Definitely. Especially when coming by 12-15 hours is incredibly difficult, for any number of reasons. I often come away with the feeling that for having run this kind of marathon—and that's what it feels like nowadays—I should have managed like a week's worth of work, especially considering, as you say, all the perceived efficiency gains. But modern high-level tooling and frameworks have their drawbacks, too. One spends an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to do things "the frameworky way". I understand the upsides, of course, but it has still led to a profound frustration with the modern-day practice of programming. Back when I wrote C, I may have had to write 10x as much code, but at least I was churning out lines of code perceptibly. With a small standard library, there wasn't that much to stop and look up. It was an exercise full of "creative flow". Nowadays, I have 27 browser tabs and 5 API references open any time I need to actually do anything, and that in itself can be a major psychological blocker.
- 10y ago

h1d 10y ago

For me, it's about having the "courage" to go get a long sleep. I'm not good at it, so my sleeping becomes so random I start sleeping at any time of day but usually wakes up in about 4 hours out of pressure (or by phone call) and perhaps does that in a certain cycle to at least keep the total sleeping time enough to keep going. This "If I do more through the night, then I can impress the client a bit more as a work done today" feeling is pretty shortsighted but it kind of still drags me to late night work especially when I'm behind schedule. But sometimes when I feel burned out, I take a break thinking I have the right to kill anyone who interrupts my time, even if it lasts for a day.

watwut 10y ago

I get you, but you will be more useful to people who depend on you if you are rested. I found out about rest when I started to track my worked time exactly. I like to track things and wanted to see how much exactly each specific activity takes. I would write down how much I am actually really working and what exactly I am doing e.g. staring at monitor with code while daydreaming does not count as coding. Chatting with colleague does not count etc. Result was that I could see drop in what I produce after working a lot. Sometimes it is just a question of doing experiment on yourself.