3 ms·

Let me start by saying... this is as must read article. I share it often. It is 1. extremely fascinating 2. patently ridiculous 3. something to learn from He

Let me start by saying... this is as must read article. I share it often. It is 1. extremely fascinating 2. patently ridiculous 3. something to learn from He documents almost every part of his daily work environment in painstaking detail. Much of it is ridiculous. All of it, including the article itself, is over the top. I am very appreciative that he chose to share. Stephen has optimized (for him! not for me) his life to an unbelievable degree. Whether that is walking outside with a laptop working because it slightly reduces his resting heart rate, the extensive renovations to his office to remove the sound of his computer fan, or the elaborate filing system he uses for his daily notes and mail. He also goes deep into his personal analytics. Stephen is working approximately 100% of the waking hours of the day as evidenced by the timestamps on the emails he sends, which are well plotted over 3 decades. (He's a night owl, sleeping 3am-9am). It also appears he is opening nearly 800 email every day and keeping his unreads below 200. I should add, partially because I read this article, I began tracking half hourly sprints in the pomodoro-style and have become more interested tracking parts of my own life.

1996 6y ago
> Much of it is ridiculous. All of it, including the article itself, is over the top I disagree. It gives an example of what you can achieve with large amounts of money, freedom and dedication. It also contain great advice possible on a budget: > When I was consulting at Bell Labs in the early 1980s I saw that a friend of mine had two garbage cans in his office. When I asked him why, he explained that one was for genuine garbage and the other was a buffer into which he would throw documents that he thought he’d probably never want again. He’d let the buffer garbage can fill up, and once it was full, he’d throw away the lower documents in it, since from the fact that he hadn’t fished them out, he figured he’d probably never miss them if they were thrown away permanently. Whether you may gain from the suggestions is up to you. For example, if you value your health, reducing your resting heart rate seems like a valuable thing to optimize for. > Whether that is walking outside with a laptop working because it slightly reduces his resting heart rate, the extensive renovations to his office to remove the sound of his computer fan This seems extremely valuable to me. He's in for the long game. So am I. Thanks to my work in the crypto space, I retired very young. I have great freedom to fail, but I remain time poor. Reading from his experiences gives me a better idea on what will provide me the most utility, without investing too much of my time in what seems to be a failure for other people (I considered doing the book thing, but in university I fortunately moved to everything PDF, so all paper books were trashed) Also it helps avoid what would be very little gains in practice. For ex, his note system: he had his box of archives digitized. I decided to throw everything away as his example of being able to access school notes about a rhinoceros talk strike me as a waste of time and a risk of potentially drawing wrong conclusions: > > So, for example, here are school geography notes from when I was 11 years old, together with the text of a speech I gave Yeah thanks but no thanks. Nostalgia is a powerful drug that can make you keep a wrong path. It is better to let yourself forget what is value less to make room for what is important. Let these unused neural pathware decay and go extinct!! Just one thing wrong from the article: > > How do I take notes when I’m “out and about”? I’ve tried various technological solutions, but in the end none have proved both practical and universally socially acceptable. So I’ve kept doing the same thing for 40 years: in my pocket I have a pen, together with a piece of paper folded three times (so it’s about the size of a credit card). It’s very low-tech, but it works. And when I come back from being out I always take a few moments to transcribe what I wrote down, send out emails, or whatever This is a big one. I have found a 14" Sony ebook to be the best notetaking device. Someone I otherwise found very wise told me it was a 1k etch-a-sketch replacement to folder pieces of paper. I disagree. The ability to backup and sync my notes everywhere is priceless - and developing the habit to review my objectives everyday even more so. It has allowed me to fully revamp my TODO system, but I found the lack of color problematic for some notes. So now I'm in the process of replacing it by a lenovo dual display solution (Yogabook C930) - one color side, one eink side. The eink can also work as a display for regular windows applications.
- Terretta 6y ago
  I think the bit of paper idea is that it’s so minimal it’s not even a thing, and brings all the pocket-ability, portability, works any time anywhere, benefits of not being a thing. Your alternative, a 14 inch electronic, or a laptop, is definitely a thing, with all the downsides of being a thing.
treeman79 6y ago
Had a first child, 2 years in I Was constantly stressed out. I started tracking time very closely. Both what was done, what needed to be done. Worked out that If there were no delays; I would have 5 minutes at 7:25 to myself. It was a much needed wake up call.
- zarp 6y ago
  I found myself in a similar situation to yours... and then had a second child. If I had the time to track it, I'm sure the results would not be much better. After that much needed wake up call, what did you end up doing?
  - treeman79 6y ago
    I did less. Changed jobs. Freed up 3 hours of commuting a day. Wife wasn’t pulling weight with errands. She refused to drive. So that needed fixing. Stop having to go to grocery store every single day. Organize house a lot better. Lots of time wasted looking for clothes. Get rid of anything not nailed down.
  - redisman 6y ago
    Lower your standards for everything. Work, cleanliness, relationships, hobbies. Try to get to a point where you do housework while the kiddo is awake and entertaining themselves. Some medium term planning helps. Cooking enough for 2-3 meals at a time so you don’t do it everyday. I used a meal plan that told me the groceries to get. Think of some other “life hacks” or corners you can cut for things you do a lot. Take some time for self care.
- zikzak 6y ago
  The biggest lesson I took away from this experience in my own life was learning to leave tasks in a resumable state. If I did get to work on something, I would do my utmost to leave it in a state where I could come back to it and dig in right away. For code at work, I might break the code where I wanted to jump back in (uncommitted change) so a build would show me what line of code I was editing when someone threw up or doorbell rang causing the baby to wake, the dog up freak out, and my train of thought to be derailed for the next hour. That, and learning how to survive on what is essentially polyphasic sleep.
m463 6y ago
This kind of "ridiculous" is laudable. Not his specific solutions, but the sort of "beginners mind" where you can solve things even if social convention dictates otherwise. Just as an example, using scissors in the kitchen where a "normal person" would bow to convention and use a knife.
agbell 6y ago
This essay was published as part of a book and I got an interview with Stephen setup by his publisher when it came out. The interview was so much fun. We had an hour booked and ended up talking for much much longer until he had to leave to teach kids programming. I spent some of the time quizzing him on whether he could answer things in his language and then him calculating the solution. He really likes what he does. My read is that he has setup the type of life he really wants to have. Gathering and tracking productivity data is something he likes. Here is the part of the interview that made it 'on air' https://www.se-radio.net/2019/12/episode-392-stephen-wolfram-on-mathematica/ https://www.se-radio.net/2019/12/episode-392-stephen-wolfram...

1996 6y ago

> Much of it is ridiculous. All of it, including the article itself, is over the top I disagree. It gives an example of what you can achieve with large amounts of money, freedom and dedication. It also contain great advice possible on a budget: > When I was consulting at Bell Labs in the early 1980s I saw that a friend of mine had two garbage cans in his office. When I asked him why, he explained that one was for genuine garbage and the other was a buffer into which he would throw documents that he thought he’d probably never want again. He’d let the buffer garbage can fill up, and once it was full, he’d throw away the lower documents in it, since from the fact that he hadn’t fished them out, he figured he’d probably never miss them if they were thrown away permanently. Whether you may gain from the suggestions is up to you. For example, if you value your health, reducing your resting heart rate seems like a valuable thing to optimize for. > Whether that is walking outside with a laptop working because it slightly reduces his resting heart rate, the extensive renovations to his office to remove the sound of his computer fan This seems extremely valuable to me. He's in for the long game. So am I. Thanks to my work in the crypto space, I retired very young. I have great freedom to fail, but I remain time poor. Reading from his experiences gives me a better idea on what will provide me the most utility, without investing too much of my time in what seems to be a failure for other people (I considered doing the book thing, but in university I fortunately moved to everything PDF, so all paper books were trashed) Also it helps avoid what would be very little gains in practice. For ex, his note system: he had his box of archives digitized. I decided to throw everything away as his example of being able to access school notes about a rhinoceros talk strike me as a waste of time and a risk of potentially drawing wrong conclusions: > > So, for example, here are school geography notes from when I was 11 years old, together with the text of a speech I gave Yeah thanks but no thanks. Nostalgia is a powerful drug that can make you keep a wrong path. It is better to let yourself forget what is value less to make room for what is important. Let these unused neural pathware decay and go extinct!! Just one thing wrong from the article: > > How do I take notes when I’m “out and about”? I’ve tried various technological solutions, but in the end none have proved both practical and universally socially acceptable. So I’ve kept doing the same thing for 40 years: in my pocket I have a pen, together with a piece of paper folded three times (so it’s about the size of a credit card). It’s very low-tech, but it works. And when I come back from being out I always take a few moments to transcribe what I wrote down, send out emails, or whatever This is a big one. I have found a 14" Sony ebook to be the best notetaking device. Someone I otherwise found very wise told me it was a 1k etch-a-sketch replacement to folder pieces of paper. I disagree. The ability to backup and sync my notes everywhere is priceless - and developing the habit to review my objectives everyday even more so. It has allowed me to fully revamp my TODO system, but I found the lack of color problematic for some notes. So now I'm in the process of replacing it by a lenovo dual display solution (Yogabook C930) - one color side, one eink side. The eink can also work as a display for regular windows applications.

Terretta 6y ago
I think the bit of paper idea is that it’s so minimal it’s not even a thing, and brings all the pocket-ability, portability, works any time anywhere, benefits of not being a thing. Your alternative, a 14 inch electronic, or a laptop, is definitely a thing, with all the downsides of being a thing.

treeman79 6y ago

Had a first child, 2 years in I Was constantly stressed out. I started tracking time very closely. Both what was done, what needed to be done. Worked out that If there were no delays; I would have 5 minutes at 7:25 to myself. It was a much needed wake up call.

zarp 6y ago
I found myself in a similar situation to yours... and then had a second child. If I had the time to track it, I'm sure the results would not be much better. After that much needed wake up call, what did you end up doing?
- treeman79 6y ago
  I did less. Changed jobs. Freed up 3 hours of commuting a day. Wife wasn’t pulling weight with errands. She refused to drive. So that needed fixing. Stop having to go to grocery store every single day. Organize house a lot better. Lots of time wasted looking for clothes. Get rid of anything not nailed down.
- redisman 6y ago
  Lower your standards for everything. Work, cleanliness, relationships, hobbies. Try to get to a point where you do housework while the kiddo is awake and entertaining themselves. Some medium term planning helps. Cooking enough for 2-3 meals at a time so you don’t do it everyday. I used a meal plan that told me the groceries to get. Think of some other “life hacks” or corners you can cut for things you do a lot. Take some time for self care.
zikzak 6y ago
The biggest lesson I took away from this experience in my own life was learning to leave tasks in a resumable state. If I did get to work on something, I would do my utmost to leave it in a state where I could come back to it and dig in right away. For code at work, I might break the code where I wanted to jump back in (uncommitted change) so a build would show me what line of code I was editing when someone threw up or doorbell rang causing the baby to wake, the dog up freak out, and my train of thought to be derailed for the next hour. That, and learning how to survive on what is essentially polyphasic sleep.

m463 6y ago

This kind of "ridiculous" is laudable. Not his specific solutions, but the sort of "beginners mind" where you can solve things even if social convention dictates otherwise. Just as an example, using scissors in the kitchen where a "normal person" would bow to convention and use a knife.

agbell 6y ago

This essay was published as part of a book and I got an interview with Stephen setup by his publisher when it came out. The interview was so much fun. We had an hour booked and ended up talking for much much longer until he had to leave to teach kids programming. I spent some of the time quizzing him on whether he could answer things in his language and then him calculating the solution. He really likes what he does. My read is that he has setup the type of life he really wants to have. Gathering and tracking productivity data is something he likes. Here is the part of the interview that made it 'on air' https://www.se-radio.net/2019/12/episode-392-stephen-wolfram-on-mathematica/ https://www.se-radio.net/2019/12/episode-392-stephen-wolfram...