7 ms·

Paradoxically, when I had all the time in the world I frittered it away on video games and the internet. Now that I have multiple kids and my time is extremely

by umvi 6y ago

Paradoxically, when I had all the time in the world I frittered it away on video games and the internet. Now that I have multiple kids and my time is extremely constrained, I am very efficient with my time usage. I listen to audiobooks while doing the dishes. I plan in my mind exactly which programming tasks I want to accomplish as soon as the kids are in bed so that I can do them quickly and still have time to spend with my wife.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
A mentor once told me “if you want something done quickly, give it to a busy person”
- _alex_ 6y ago
  Wow. That is a great line.
- andi999 6y ago
  Thats Parkinson's law phrased very nicely.
- benc666 6y ago
  reminds me of another one: nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. For me it just pushes the point that every situation is a negotiation.
hinkley 6y ago
If you have twenty minutes now, and don’t know when you’ll get another twenty minutes, why not do it now? When you have hours and hours available for the rest of the week, why fret about it? You have so many other opportunities ahead.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Alternately: When you have a wife and kids and job you like, a lot of your most important needs are well met -- if you can keep juggling everything. Someone with hours and hours to do nothing likely isn't getting laid, isn't making much money, isn't intellectually gratified, etc. So you play games to occupy yourself to keep from going bonkers.
  - tidbits 6y ago
    People underestimate how incredibly hard it is to pull yourself out of habits born from socioeconomic factors. Video games give you an alternate reality, likely much better than your own.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      It wasn't a criticism of video games and if you are suggesting I am underestimating something, I got myself off the street a few years ago of my own efforts. I still play plenty of videogames. It's something I can drop at will as I get my act together, make the connections I need to make, etc. I like games and my kids always joked "Video games are our only education." But the reality is I would rather have a life and if I had more of a life, that fact would drive a lot of my activities and there simply wouldn't be time -- or need -- to play games for hours.
      - benc666 6y ago
        You're so right - video games shouldn't even have been mentioned. As human ingenuity goes, there's infinite ways to "waste time". I've spent many hours with the family playing MineCraft, and it's an amazing way to teach things like not being selfish, being cooperative, etc. to children because they experience the effects or lack of in compacted real time without permanent real-world impact.
        DoreenMichele 6y ago
        I homeschooled my sons. After seeing how vastly superior Gungan Frontier and a similar Sim game were to my "pen and paper" style simulation in my college class on environmental biology, I went through their games and decided which games I would count as educational and for which subject. Their joke grew out if conversations that went something like this: Son blurts obscure historical factoid. Me: "Where the hell did you learn that?!" Son names video game he learned it from. Punchline: "Video games are our only education." (Vin Diesel movie line, so another excellent reason to say it to me.) They now have a blog where that's the descriptor, basically.
renjimen 6y ago
I’m very nostalgic about the countless hours I frittered away on video games and the internet as an adolescent. Part of me thinks it made me the person I am today, who I am proud of. I recently joined a Counter Strike team with work and had some of the most fun times I can think of recently. I compare that with the time I put aside to learn 3D modelling, which was fun in its own way but required more self motivation and the satisfaction took a lot more time to achieve. It made me question what society accepts as a valid way to spend spare time, as well as the purpose of how we spend our spare time.
- core-questions 6y ago
  > It made me question what society accepts as a valid way to spend spare time Well, to be brutally honest with you, it's one thing for you to be proud of yourself for playing video games, but why would anyone else see that as something pride-worthy? Typically, one takes justifiable pride for accomplishments that stand up to external scrutiny. That usually comes in the form of the accomplishment having an element of sacrifice, of pain and difficulty, of opportunity costs paid, and of a result that stands on its own as something not everyone can do. I am proud of some of my adventures; proud of some of my work; proud of some of the artistic things I have created. None of them are extremely amazing in the grand scheme of things, and I don't let any of it get to my head, but they do give me stories to tell at the bar that aren't dismissed with a wave of the hand as being frittered-away time. Video games, on the other hand, are not exactly grand sacrificial effort. I can't imagine telling someone I was proud of myself for spending a few hours killing orcs on a screen while eating processed snack food alone in my underwear. > as well as the purpose of how we spend our spare time. It's only "spare" if you've really satisfied yourself in your best judgement of what you could otherwise be doing. I like to put Slack and Laziness on a continuum. Laziness is putting things off, avoiding important tasks, pawning them off on others, rationalizing why you shouldn't bother, finding easier ways out even if the end result isn't as good, cutting corners. From the article: > I was supposed to renew my car registration today. I haven’t opened the Web site. That's classic laziness. Sure, the consequences can be dealt with later, a day or two without driving won't be the end of the world, but it also took about as much effort to write this self-effacing article as it would have to just renew the insurance and move on. Slack, on the opposite side of the spectrum (and before the word was co-opted by a program that ironically takes up all possible Slack), is free time that you carve out of the world with your actions. Slack is arranging things so that you have time to relax, time to "surf down the luck plane" that you have created for yourself, so that you can allow things to proceed knowing that at the end of the slope, you're not actually in a worse off position than when you started. Slack is paid vacation time, where laziness is unemployment. Slack is a glass of wine at the end of the day, laziness is beer for breakfast. Slack is sitting in the hot tub after you work out, laziness is sitting in the bathtub after you eat a microwaved dinner. Slack is posting on HN on a cloudy Saturday morning while the kids (with breakfast in their tummies) watch a bit of TV, laziness is posting on HN when you're supposed to be writing a program at 3:00 on a Thursday afternoon. Video games are something you can do in your slack time, or they're something you can do because you're lazy. That's the difference between a healthy hobby and a damaging addiction.
core-questions 6y ago
This describes me very well. What the hell was I doing with all that time during my 20s? I wasn't out hiking up a storm, I wasn't making a lot of music, I wasn't out drinking with friends at every chance. I was inside doing nothing, shitposting online, watching trash TV that I can barely remember the plots of now. Work was productive, but when I went home, I left it at work... Relationship was stable, but I didn't max out every minute of it when I could... Now, as soon as the kids are in bed, virtually every scrap of time is used for something productive. Except, obviously, for lazy Saturday mornings posting on HN ;-)
late2part 6y ago
I read this somewhere, I tried to find the source, and I'm sad I can't properly attribute it: When you are young, you trade time for money. When you are middle aged, you trade money for convenience. When you are old, you trade money for time.
ip26 6y ago
Similar boat. I flip-flop between efficient time usage, and squandering my free time, because I'm so fried I just want to do nothing.
thinkharderdev 6y ago
I've had a similar experience. There is something about scarcity of time that breeds discipline. Whenever I go through a period of life where I have to spend a huge amount of time on some particular task project I always think "man, when this is over I'm going to be able to use all this time to do X,Y,Z. It's gonna be great!" And then the project ends and I essentially waste all of my newly found free time. I end up accomplishing less, even on my side projects somehow.
yibg 6y ago
Yea there seems to be some thing of a positive feedback loop that one can get into. I’ve experienced this multiple times too. When I had a boring and easy job I had all sorts of aspirations of doing a side business or learning some new stuff etc. I ended up doing none of that and mostly playing games instead. When I had a busy (but interesting) job I ended up doing side projects, socializing a lot more and generally being more productive outside of work. Something like momentum from one activity carrying through to others.

by umvi 6y ago

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

A mentor once told me “if you want something done quickly, give it to a busy person”

_alex_ 6y ago
Wow. That is a great line.
andi999 6y ago
Thats Parkinson's law phrased very nicely.
benc666 6y ago
reminds me of another one: nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. For me it just pushes the point that every situation is a negotiation.

hinkley 6y ago

If you have twenty minutes now, and don’t know when you’ll get another twenty minutes, why not do it now? When you have hours and hours available for the rest of the week, why fret about it? You have so many other opportunities ahead.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Alternately: When you have a wife and kids and job you like, a lot of your most important needs are well met -- if you can keep juggling everything. Someone with hours and hours to do nothing likely isn't getting laid, isn't making much money, isn't intellectually gratified, etc. So you play games to occupy yourself to keep from going bonkers.
- tidbits 6y ago
  People underestimate how incredibly hard it is to pull yourself out of habits born from socioeconomic factors. Video games give you an alternate reality, likely much better than your own.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    It wasn't a criticism of video games and if you are suggesting I am underestimating something, I got myself off the street a few years ago of my own efforts. I still play plenty of videogames. It's something I can drop at will as I get my act together, make the connections I need to make, etc. I like games and my kids always joked "Video games are our only education." But the reality is I would rather have a life and if I had more of a life, that fact would drive a lot of my activities and there simply wouldn't be time -- or need -- to play games for hours.
    - benc666 6y ago
      You're so right - video games shouldn't even have been mentioned. As human ingenuity goes, there's infinite ways to "waste time". I've spent many hours with the family playing MineCraft, and it's an amazing way to teach things like not being selfish, being cooperative, etc. to children because they experience the effects or lack of in compacted real time without permanent real-world impact.
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        I homeschooled my sons. After seeing how vastly superior Gungan Frontier and a similar Sim game were to my "pen and paper" style simulation in my college class on environmental biology, I went through their games and decided which games I would count as educational and for which subject. Their joke grew out if conversations that went something like this: Son blurts obscure historical factoid. Me: "Where the hell did you learn that?!" Son names video game he learned it from. Punchline: "Video games are our only education." (Vin Diesel movie line, so another excellent reason to say it to me.) They now have a blog where that's the descriptor, basically.

renjimen 6y ago

I’m very nostalgic about the countless hours I frittered away on video games and the internet as an adolescent. Part of me thinks it made me the person I am today, who I am proud of. I recently joined a Counter Strike team with work and had some of the most fun times I can think of recently. I compare that with the time I put aside to learn 3D modelling, which was fun in its own way but required more self motivation and the satisfaction took a lot more time to achieve. It made me question what society accepts as a valid way to spend spare time, as well as the purpose of how we spend our spare time.

core-questions 6y ago
> It made me question what society accepts as a valid way to spend spare time Well, to be brutally honest with you, it's one thing for you to be proud of yourself for playing video games, but why would anyone else see that as something pride-worthy? Typically, one takes justifiable pride for accomplishments that stand up to external scrutiny. That usually comes in the form of the accomplishment having an element of sacrifice, of pain and difficulty, of opportunity costs paid, and of a result that stands on its own as something not everyone can do. I am proud of some of my adventures; proud of some of my work; proud of some of the artistic things I have created. None of them are extremely amazing in the grand scheme of things, and I don't let any of it get to my head, but they do give me stories to tell at the bar that aren't dismissed with a wave of the hand as being frittered-away time. Video games, on the other hand, are not exactly grand sacrificial effort. I can't imagine telling someone I was proud of myself for spending a few hours killing orcs on a screen while eating processed snack food alone in my underwear. > as well as the purpose of how we spend our spare time. It's only "spare" if you've really satisfied yourself in your best judgement of what you could otherwise be doing. I like to put Slack and Laziness on a continuum. Laziness is putting things off, avoiding important tasks, pawning them off on others, rationalizing why you shouldn't bother, finding easier ways out even if the end result isn't as good, cutting corners. From the article: > I was supposed to renew my car registration today. I haven’t opened the Web site. That's classic laziness. Sure, the consequences can be dealt with later, a day or two without driving won't be the end of the world, but it also took about as much effort to write this self-effacing article as it would have to just renew the insurance and move on. Slack, on the opposite side of the spectrum (and before the word was co-opted by a program that ironically takes up all possible Slack), is free time that you carve out of the world with your actions. Slack is arranging things so that you have time to relax, time to "surf down the luck plane" that you have created for yourself, so that you can allow things to proceed knowing that at the end of the slope, you're not actually in a worse off position than when you started. Slack is paid vacation time, where laziness is unemployment. Slack is a glass of wine at the end of the day, laziness is beer for breakfast. Slack is sitting in the hot tub after you work out, laziness is sitting in the bathtub after you eat a microwaved dinner. Slack is posting on HN on a cloudy Saturday morning while the kids (with breakfast in their tummies) watch a bit of TV, laziness is posting on HN when you're supposed to be writing a program at 3:00 on a Thursday afternoon. Video games are something you can do in your slack time, or they're something you can do because you're lazy. That's the difference between a healthy hobby and a damaging addiction.

core-questions 6y ago

This describes me very well. What the hell was I doing with all that time during my 20s? I wasn't out hiking up a storm, I wasn't making a lot of music, I wasn't out drinking with friends at every chance. I was inside doing nothing, shitposting online, watching trash TV that I can barely remember the plots of now. Work was productive, but when I went home, I left it at work... Relationship was stable, but I didn't max out every minute of it when I could... Now, as soon as the kids are in bed, virtually every scrap of time is used for something productive. Except, obviously, for lazy Saturday mornings posting on HN ;-)

late2part 6y ago

I read this somewhere, I tried to find the source, and I'm sad I can't properly attribute it: When you are young, you trade time for money. When you are middle aged, you trade money for convenience. When you are old, you trade money for time.

ip26 6y ago

Similar boat. I flip-flop between efficient time usage, and squandering my free time, because I'm so fried I just want to do nothing.

thinkharderdev 6y ago

I've had a similar experience. There is something about scarcity of time that breeds discipline. Whenever I go through a period of life where I have to spend a huge amount of time on some particular task project I always think "man, when this is over I'm going to be able to use all this time to do X,Y,Z. It's gonna be great!" And then the project ends and I essentially waste all of my newly found free time. I end up accomplishing less, even on my side projects somehow.

yibg 6y ago

Yea there seems to be some thing of a positive feedback loop that one can get into. I’ve experienced this multiple times too. When I had a boring and easy job I had all sorts of aspirations of doing a side business or learning some new stuff etc. I ended up doing none of that and mostly playing games instead. When I had a busy (but interesting) job I ended up doing side projects, socializing a lot more and generally being more productive outside of work. Something like momentum from one activity carrying through to others.