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Marc Andreessen on productivity, scheduling, reading habits, work
- chrisdbanks 6y agoThis does not sound like a fun life. Spontaneity brings life's most rewarding moments. He's basically reduced spontaneity to zero. He may be successful, but success is sometimes a prison.
- imperialdrive 6y agoI admire the drive and capital that he and others like him/her offer, which in turn empowers a decent chunk of our economy and technological development, but o lord what a cross to bear. I feel especially thankful for my own schedule now, which is maybe two meetings a week and the rest creative engineering... having to schedule sleep!? What a world our souls occupy.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoIt’s important to recognize that different people have different goals in life and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. This advice is great for people looking to maximize productivity. If that’s not your thing, that’s fine too.
- aborsy 6y agoHonestly, what a boring life :) Basically few hours of sleep, plus a lot of business meetings in a rigid schedule!
- IkmoIkmo 6y agoHe gets a solid 8 hours of sleep, 19:30 to 23:30 are his to spend with friends/family/hobbies/reading. His working days are arguably packed working on the cutting-edge of business and technology, working with the individuals from 0.001% of the world's most talented/lucky/interesting/educated/resourced/entrepreneurial/hardworking people. + vacations and weekends almost entirely free. I definitely wouldn't want to trade with him, but it's because I'd burn out and have no real passion for the life of a VC, not because my life is so any more interesting.
- cinntaile 6y agoRigid schedules are good if the things you plan are the things that you actually want to spend time on. Time allocation guarantees that you'll work on whatever is scheduled and a side-effect is that it forces you to be be more effective.
- was_boring 6y agoCurious if this applies to people who do not have the same wealth and power.
- k__ 6y agoI heard, the average nun looks much younger than the average woman, because of the rigid lifestyle.
- was_boring 6y agoInteresting. In the article it mentions Fortune 500 CEOs having highly regulated schedules without downtime (because they are meeting with different stakeholders all the time). It seems they have the wealth but maybe not the power? Where as a nun perhaps doesn’t have wealth but has power over their time.
- codpiece 6y agoMy wife and I have noted, that in our area, nuns tend to live well into their 90s based on our personal observation and reading tombstones. It's pretty remarkable.
- selfinvariant 6y agoMy anecdotal experience (and I'm not remotely close to Marc Andreessen in wealth and power) is that there is a lot of benefits in structure and schedule. Knowing how big part of your day will play out is a very powerful thing. It removes so much stress and uncertainty. In the end of the day it's a question of balance. It's probably unhealthy to plan every single hour of your life in advance (which Marc does not do), and the same goes with allowing too much spontaneity.
- selfinvariant 6y agoha, interesting. I was personally impressed (and inspired!) how much of a free unscheduled time Marc maintains. I disagree that his life is boring. He is influencing directly and non-directly the decisions that shape the future of humanity. What is boring about that?
- Droobfest 6y agoThe guy doesn't seem to take a lunch break, ever.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mkskm 6y agoGood point. When does he eat?
- jedberg 6y agoWhen I worked at my last corporate job, they would bring lunch boxes every day at 11am. If you had a meeting any time between 11am and 2pm it was generally accepted that you might be eating during that meeting. I never really had a lunch break when I worked there, I just ate through my noon meeting.
- chubot 6y agoThe problem of having to finish every book is you’re not only spending time on books you shouldn’t be but it also causes you to stall out on reading in general. If I can’t start the next book until I finish this one, but I don’t want to read this one, I might as well go watch TV. Before you know it, you’ve stopped reading for a month and you’re asking “what have I done?!” Yeah I've found that many people have a weird hangup about this. I guess it's because of how they learned to study in school. You're "supposed to" finish the book. In my mind, the point of reading is learning/retention/permanent change, not "completionism" in finishing the book. I just get a bunch of books from the library, and read the PARTS of the ones I feel like reading, that I feel have some relevance. I get 5 books for every one I finish, and I don't feel bad about it. Often when I get to a "bad part" (and most books are filled with bad parts), I just read the first sentence of every paragraph, and nothing is lost. Paradoxically, you may get more retention that way! The bad parts have low information density. But there has to be some retention, and I have a couple tactics for that: - I take notes on every book I read. Key point: it's not a lot of notes. It's not page-by-page notes, and I don't do it while I read. It can be 4 sentences for some entire books. If you can't remember the notes you want to write after 24 hours, then the book might not be that good. - I take notes in a wiki and use hyperlinks. If what you read doesn't cause you to think of some other book you read, or something someone said, then you probably didn't learn anything. Everything is related, and different authors say the same thing in different ways. If you're not recognizing that, then you're probably reading the material without understanding it. ----- Related: http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html What use is it to read all these books if I remember so little from them?
- aahortwwy 6y agoMost non-fiction has a recursive introduction, body, conclusion structure. The nature of the structure varies a little from author to author, but can be identified pretty quickly. In pop non-fiction (and especially in business/management/productivity non-fiction) at a certain depth in the tree the body will be entirely filler and can be skipped wholesale. This is how I "read" most non-fiction now: first and last paragraph of each chapter (or section), first sentence of each paragraph in between, if something strikes me as particularly interesting or unintuitive I'll backtrack and read the full paragraphs before and after. Once I've done a first pass like this I'll decide whether I want to go back and read the full thing word-for-word. Typically the answer is "no."
- chinathrow 6y agoThat's actually a repost from three months ago. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23516890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23516890
- ilrwbwrkhv 6y agoThis productivity porn needs to end.
- blablablerg 6y agonot without the obligatory comment about orgmode :>
- te_chris 6y agoMind blowing that such a pedestrian (dare I say Protestant?) life is so venerated and celebrated. Do as you like, but is this guy really one of our deities? The whole glory of work thing is so droll. Outcomes are what matter imo.
- jariel 6y ago'Protestant work ethic' is 'hard work', diligence, consistency, frugality, but not necessarily 'work all hours' esp. not family time or weekends. Also, those who have come from humble means towards building themselves through capability and integrity ... as opposed to being handed their station. I feels sorry for Andressen because though his assistant seems to manage his weekend and evening schedule, I'll bet $100 his wife does even more so.
- troelsSteegin 6y agoWhat I learned from this was that it is great (if you can afford it) to have an "amazing and indefatigable assistant". In Andreessen's case, this assistant, Arsho Avetian, is credited, but her contribution is not described beyond that. Some highly successful people employ staff that helps them produce. How does having staff benefit?
- ghaff 6y agoOnce one gets to a certain level of being highly scheduled and more demands on their time than they can deal with: - Pre-screening - Making travel arrangements based on known preferences - Setting up meetings with other people who are hard to reach and also have busy schedules - Following up on various things And so forth. Not that I'm at that level but my understanding is that executive assistants can be incredibly helpful.
- ta1234567890 6y ago> Once one gets to a certain level of being highly scheduled If you can afford it, you can start doing it before you get too busy. In fact you can do it as a means of staying less busy (at least work/chore-wise).
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoTo a degree. Most people wouldn't be able to get away with having an assistant handle things like meeting schedules.
- ta1234567890 6y agoYou'd be surprised. There are companies that you can outsource that kind of work to. You can also get a decent personal assistant for $200-300/month.
- 082349872349872 6y agoGolf handicap: a number which reflects how many hours a week the holder spends in the office. (Even when I was a summer intern, I shared an admin who gave me leverage: she played phone tag, tracked down pricing and availability from vendors, and told everyone who was not explicitly whitelisted that I was "in a meeting." But we also had offices with doors back then too, so maybe it was a different world?)
- ckl1810 6y agoRead full-transcript in its entirety. TLDR / Key learnings I got from PMarca: - Original 2007 Pmarca guide to productivity far more useful to Hacker audience; Updated 2020 Pmarca guide to productivity is better for the executive. - a16z is more about inputs and process vs. John Doerr / Kleiner Perkins is more on OKRs whereby you quantify results objectively -Barbell Strategy to Book reading "I basically read things that are either up to this minute or things that are timeless" -Lindy Effect to find key signals, Pmarca avoids "all the commentary and all the interpretation" -"Strong views weakly held" going from zero to one in a new space.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rdlecler1 6y agoI’m just wondering when he has time for family. I’m making breakfast and dinner for my family, cleaning up after, giving them baths, reading to them putting them to bed. Some of this could be outsourced but a lot of it is quality time with your kids.
- luxurytent 6y agoI think most highly successful people sacrifice time with their young families for more time later, assuming it works out. For many, they don't want to sacrifice this. For example, I won't, even if I _really_ want to. So if I want to succeed, I need to optimize the heck out of the free time I _do_ have. Bill Gates famously took weeks away in a cabin to get work done. Ruth Bader Ginsburg would work like crazy during the week while spending some time with her young child during that time, only to sleep the entire weekend to catch up.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago> So if I want to succeed, I need to optimize the heck out of the free time I _do_ have I'm kind of the opinion that there is no such thing as optimizing your time, only the way you distribute your energy and focus. Allocating time to do something is meaningless if you've already spent all your mental energy on other tasks. For most people, free time = a break. So if you're already using 100% of your energy on other things and also expect to be productive in your free time... I'm don't think it adds up.
- luxurytent 6y agoRight, I agree with your point. If you are dying from death by a thousand cuts, no amount of time optimization will help. Need to cut, outsource, distribute.
- ksec 6y ago>I'm kind of the opinion that there is no such thing as optimizing your time, only the way you distribute your energy and focus. This. People constantly say they only have 24 hours, I felt I have ample of time. But my energy doesn't replenish as quickly. Human are not machine, you have to optimise your energy usage. Try to play a game of Go for hours and you have absolutely zero energy left for the rest of the day to think about anything. May be their are super human that can do that. I certainly cant. My guess is that it is similar to that some people are very good at long distance running. While I prefer to sprint, walk, run, and sprint again. Where walk = resting.
- jramos 6y ago2 weeks ago called, they want their #1 spot back.
- dataisfun 6y agoI can speak from direct experience that a lot of highly successful people in tech are miserable. This is not a path to try and copy.
- bergstromm466 6y agoYeah I’ve seen it too. It’s damaging how our current culture often dangerously attributes ‘success’ to lone individuals [1]. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/166593/techs-enduring-great-man-myth/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/04/166593/techs-end...
- selfinvariant 6y agoBeing miserable or not does not have much to do with success. It does not mean that it's not a path to try.
- khazhoux 6y agoHe says he lives by his calendar, and the calendar runs 8am-5pm. I daresay that's no worse than the masses of unsuccessful peons in tech.
- C1sc0cat 6y agoI think a lot of people in tech don't mange to be a strict about just doing 8-5 on average.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dbuder 6y agoHedge fund managers and VCs always push motivation, productivity and planning for their self promotion. Read one, read them all. I get that these ppl think these things are important and that they don't want to give away their edge, but it is of so little value. A16Z are a bunch of face eaters who think of themselves as aristocracy.
- sjg007 6y agoTracking your schedule is a good way to curb procrastination. Track everything except work. Then see what time you have left and don’t fill in those times with work tasks you can’t get done. Scheduling free time and vacations is also a good way to reward yourself for doing work. So schedule work around your life and not your life against work.
- khazhoux 6y agoI want productivity tips for us non-billionaires. My day is about 40% calendar-based, and at the end of every week I feel like I've gotten nearly zero done. I've tried to cut out all the meetings I can, but still. Between must-attend review meetings, 1:1s, "planning sessions"... and then it's brutally difficult to make the 1-hour breaks between meetings to be actually productive. Anyone doing better than me at this, or do I need to just accept the feeling of non-productivity?
- arikr 6y agoYou could check out the book 'Essentialism'
- khazhoux 6y agoI'm sure I get the gist from just the Amazon summary: focus on the essential and throw away everything else. Except... I need to have 1:1s with team, and I need to attend my manager's staff meeting, and his 1:1, and his weekly status review, and my own reviews, and my director's weekly meeting, and our division's weekly all-hands, and standups. Holy fucking shit. Maybe it's just time to send my own management a note on how much overhead we're drowning in.
- stevesimmons 6y agoAt one time I was involved with 4 major programs of work and saw my whole week disappear in a patchwork of weekly scheduled meetings. My solution was to get really pushy with meeting organisers to (a) cut the default time from an hour to 30 minutes; (b) schedule them back-to-back (if not, I'd decline and ask them to be rescheduled); (c) merge similar meetings; (d) tell each program manager I'd attend max 1 weekly meeting and one monthly steering committee, and everything else would be async; (e) drop off any call that didn't have a clear agenda and deliverables. Before doing this, I told each of the programs' execs and dev leads what I was doing, making it clear it was the only way I could balance my roles as team lead, workstream lead and individual contributor. The other thing is to drop any feeling of guilt for dropping off calls that aren't productive.
- BLKNSLVR 6y ago
- lmedinas 6y agoOften when i see these productivity and private/working habits interviews i cannot stop thinking if people live in the same world as me. I saw a similar approach recently by Lex Fridman but i saw in the past similar tech people with very similar schedules. At the same time i cannot stop thinking how much real it is, lets see in a period of 1 month. Example if you have to go outside you cannot easily predict and keep your schedule since you depend on lots of external factors like: traffic, weather, etc... etc... Instead i want to think that these people try to follow some sort of schedule during their routines and they mention whatever they feel it should be the perfect schedule for them. If, for one day, i would follow a similar schedule i would be actually very surprised. In my actual life, i work more hours (but not crazy non-sense 60h week like tech people often say), need to have lunch and dinner breaks, take a shower, breakfast, take care of kids and play with them, find time to go to grocery, help with the usual homework, find sometime for myself to watch netflix or play some game in my PC, go outside and then at the end of the day find sometime to sleep. On weekends plan something with family, take longer breaks for lunch/dinner, etc... So yeah, i guess thats how life is.
- kevindeasis 6y agoIm a little surprised everyone is commenting about Marc's quality of life. And yet fail to mention Ben. You guys know that they work together right? Ben literally has a book, and it literally sounds like he has a high quality of life. They pretty much have the same job, and you can infer that they prob have the same quality of life Anyways, his workout schedule and his reading schedule doesnt really look efficient (unless if he is training to compete or includes shower time / sauna). It looks very inefficient. He has a lot of money, i wonder why he hasnt consider optimizing those instead and have more time on his hands
- fuzzfactor 6y ago>It’s things like — I want to be able to own a house, I want to live in a nice neighborhood, and I want to be able to send my kids to a really good school and I want to have really good healthcare. And those are the three things where the price levels are increasingly out of reach. However we built those systems in the past, it’s failing us. And so we need to rethink. Quite literally, it’s like, okay, where are the schools? Where are the hospitals? Where are the houses? The way these systems are assembled now is the more miserable failure, not the past. Those institutions that remain successful are noticeably those that were actually built in the past, and worked even better until demand outstripped supply. Working people can't afford that kind of thing or standard of living any more, so companies that want to survive can't afford to sell to or build things for average working people. We just have to continue getting by on the remaining wealth left over from a time when greed, dishonesty, and predatory behavior were not as acceptable or prevalent.