17 ms·

Living on 24 hours a day

• aw9f70gae 5y ago
  I read a book called 4000 Weeks that mentions the book in the OP. It cautions us not to get too caught up in the need to use one’s time productively. I recommend at least reading the blurb.
• mshron 5y ago
  If you liked this article, the book Lost in Thought[0] also references Bennet and goes into more depth on why spending some of your time learning for its own sake leads to a more fulfilling life. I’d love more content like this on hn. Done right, tech jobs can afford a lot of leisure, and we don’t have generally good guidance from our culture on how to spend leisure time in a fulfilling way. [0]https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691178714/lost-in-thought https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691178714/lo...
  • ree-san 5y ago
    Thank you for this recommendation! I’d love to see more content like this too. Also I’d love to see more exploration of how those of us with young kids or other caring responsibilities can get a better balance and still keep pursuing learning for its’ own sake.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > In the worst case, those eight hours are frittered away. Not quite relaxing, not quite playing, not quite doing anything. We may pop Netflix on the TV and alternate between Twitter, Instagram, and the news, not quite focusing on anything. Maybe the reason feels valid. We’re too tired to really do anything but not sleepy, so it doesn’t make sense to go to bed. Besides, what else can you do on a weeknight without spending money? I was a mentor to a college students group a while ago (pre-COVID). It was fascinating to talk to students who couldn't figure out where all of their time was going. When we'd sit down and work on time management (if necessary, and it often was), they would often struggle to even recall what they had done all week. Almost without fail, they were all convinced that the majority of their time was going to classwork and homework. Yet when they'd do things like open up Screen Time on iOS or otherwise actually track their time during the week, they were always shocked at just how little of their time was actually spent doing some form of work. They were also often shocked at how much of their time went into their phone screens. It was helpful for me to observe how easily free time can simply slip away when people aren't deliberate about it. In some ways it was obvious because some students could maintain jobs, intensive hobbies, sports, and other large time commitments while also handling the exact same workload. Yet even without such extra obligations, their jobless peers were perceiving as much, if not more, pressure on their time. I've since learned to be much more mindful of exactly what I'm doing with my free time. Even still, I definitely pop open HN or Twitter more than I'd like. Also, I'd like to provide a counter-antidote to this section: > I often find that after work I’ll be “too tired” to play with my kids, but I know my wife needs help. So I’ll find ways to be around the kids without fully interacting with them. I know that certain things elicit complaints, such as being on my computer; I avoid those, but I still find other ways to distract myself from reality. When I do this, I don’t really enjoy my time with my kids, I don’t really rest. I’m just wasting time. Everyone is different, but I find that playing with kids actually energizes me rather than further draining anything. It's a wonderful way to reset and shift perspective. Even when I'm tired after work, I can almost always get a second wind by playing with the kids. The same can't be said for collapsing on the couch.
  • sp332 5y ago
    Playing with kids is fine if I've decided to dedicate time to it. It's when I sit around thinking of other things that I "should" be getting to that it's an emotional drag.
    • secabeen 5y ago
      It's a delicate balance to find things that are rejuvenating to do when you get home from work, yet are interruptible enough that you can easily stop them when your partner needs help, or your kids want to engage. That balance changes slowly as your kids get older, too.
    • beaconstudios 5y ago
      Unsolicited advice, but rather than thinking about what you "should" be doing, I've found it's good to train yourself to just start doing the first thing. Going into a self referential mental state is never helpful.
  • aaronblohowiak 5y ago
    Sometimes sitting and just watching them (put phone on charger early) is enough. They don’t need constant interaction to know I am interested and sometimes you see things you wouldn’t if you were directing/teaching/co-playing
• mkaic 5y ago
  I've recently been working on breaking my bad habit of getting home from work each day, taking out my phone, and then looking up 4 hours later to realize all my free time for the night has been consumed by The Algorithm. It's been pretty rough going so far. I find it particularly soul-crushing because I do have things that I consciously want to do during that time, like write music and film short films, but those things take effort and commitment, so instead I spend night after night doomscrolling Twitter/Reddit/YouTube/HN. I am hopeful, though, that I can break out of it. Last night, I even put together a little song. Sure, I only spent an hour on it, but that was an hour that I didn't spend on the Internet! I'm looking forward to the day I can say with certainty that I live on 24 hours a day.
  • putsjoe 5y ago
    Possibly off topic but could this be procrastination more than an addiction to the Algo? I've found my procrastination stems from a fear of failure. Maybe you doom scroll instead of do these other things because your afraid you'll 'fail' at them and feel bad rather than because they are effort and commitment.
  • LimitedInfo 5y ago
    I like your use of "The Algorithm." I think every one of us has an issue with The Algorithm, its just a difference of UI depending on which addicting service is the problem.
    • avg_dev 5y ago
      some of us run the gamut
    • serverlessmom 5y ago
      Yes, exactly. I would say that without moderation even the deep delving of information can be a tool for procrastination that is more easily justifiable to yourself for why you never seem to make any progress on your goals.
  • nerdponx 5y ago
    I almost feel like Gaming is better than Scrolling at this point. Of course, Reading a Book is probably better still, and has almost the same escapism potential, but also a lot less bad for your eyes and brain.
• paxys 5y ago
  Articles like these are always thinly-veiled judgement pieces in the guise of self help. The TL;DR is – spend your few hours a day of free time doing "good" things like writing poetry, painting and learning stuff rather than "bad" ones like watching Netflix, relaxing or socializing. My question – why? What is it that makes the former way of life so much better than the latter? Are people who study science in their free time that much happier/more fulfilled/more successful than those who just laze around? If happiness and mental health is what you want to prioritize, then I'd argue that you should be doing the opposite of what the author suggests. Don't set goals for yourself. Don't be on a permanent quest to amass more knowledge and skills. Don't feel like you have to put every minute of every day to good use, otherwise you are losing out.
  • askafriend 5y ago
    Netflix has a bunch of great documentaries.
  • superasn 5y ago
    Yeah one thing that these so called productivity hackers need to learn is the skill to Just be. No need to learn anything, improve yourself or get better. Just be. It's okay to watch Netflix and play candy crush. But no, you ought to live 24 hours a day and improve yourself for God knows what endgoal.
    • vasco 5y ago
      There's no goal, but people need a meaning for life and it's hard to find meaning in candy crush. You can avoid those questions and be happy but most people know they're avoiding it. Man's search for meaning is one hell of a thing.
      • notRobot 5y ago
        > people need a meaning for life I disagree. People say this, but it's really not true in my experience. Most people are actually just... going with it, to be honest. And they're often happy. There doesn't need to be a deep philosophical "search for meaning".
• thestruggl3 5y ago
  >I often find that after work I’ll be “too tired” to play with my kids, but I know my wife needs help. So I’ll find ways to be around the kids without fully interacting with them. I know that certain things elicit complaints, such as being on my computer; I avoid those, but I still find other ways to distract myself from reality. When I do this, I don’t really enjoy my time with my kids, I don’t really rest. I’m just wasting time. Respect to the author for the honesty. Comforting to know I'm not the only one who does this. It feels like such a tragic waste and the guilt is real but I'm just so tired WCYD...
• waynesonfire 5y ago
  Sleep less, try polyphasic sleeping
• karlicoss 5y ago
  I am kind of doing that, spending my most free time reading, studying, working on personal projects, etc. And 24 hours per day is still not nearly enough for all what I want to do and learn and achieve :(
  • beaconstudios 5y ago
    I can relate to your sentiment more than TFA these days. I spend very little time on here and youtube (my chief prior addictions) these days, but I have tons of things I want to do and little time to fit them in - projects, books to read, a blog/educational site to start, paintings to finish, etc etc. It's quite frustrating because I used to be very dissociative/escapist like the author and now I'm not I wish I could have all that time back! Especially now that I also have a baby on the way; much of my time is taken up preparing, and when he's here I'll be spending lots of time looking after him.
    • squam 5y ago
      > I used to be very dissociative/escapist like the author and now I'm not I would love to hear more about how that change happened. I'd like to make a similar transition myself.
      • beaconstudios 5y ago
        I realised that the dissociative response was due to a strong emotional response that I wasn't properly addressing. In my case there were a few causes: - I severely lacked the organisational skills required to break down big work into smaller pieces so I got overwhelmed easy - I had lacked confidence in things I was unfamiliar with like DIY or marketing - sometimes I wasn't sure of the concrete next step and avoided the task instead of figuring it out The way out for me was that through mindful meditation I learned to become aware of when I was checking out, and instead I would just think about what might be causing me strong emotions, usually the next thing I was supposed to be doing. Then I'd work through said emotion by solving the issue that was causing it. Happy to elaborate via email if you want (in my profile).
  • 5y ago
• axiosgunnar 5y ago
  I don't keep todo lists. Todo lists are for assistants and entry level engineers grinding away at bugs. (not to be disrespectful to those people, just trying to get my point across). Senior staff focuses on vision and long term goals of the company, which are mostly emotional and in your head anyways. And things like „fix broken bike bell“ - if it‘s important enough, it will come up often enough to bug me and I will get it fixed. Just make sure not to outsource reminders in other people, ie don‘t rely on people having to remind you several times before you actually do something. Delegate the task away right away, or reject it, or become passionate enough about it to not need a todo list.
  • jiggunjer 5y ago
    So how do you become passionate about doing your taxes. I see those deadlines come and go and feel nothing. At least the todo list won't let me push it out of my mind for days/weeks/months. Maybe I'll have a good day and look at the list and plough through some items.
  • serverlessmom 5y ago
    Do you not have any hobbies or other skills that you are working on that would benefit by being broken up into smaller tasks? I have about ten to do lists that cover a wide arrange of different subjects that help keep me on task and help me validate and track my progress.
• subpixel 5y ago
  This is fine advice and I think we all have a bit more time available to us than we imagine. But as a parent, I have at best time to workout before I drive myself to work and my munchkin to school, and then what time remains between their bedtime and my own - 90 min. I suspect with tech work and family responsibilities a better approach is to figure out how to achieve more professionally with less time, so an hour or two at your desk can be allocated to more fulfilling pursuits.
• tempestn 5y ago
  This reminds me of a book I've read a couple of times now, The Power of Full Engagement. Their very similar concept is that the limiting factor in most of our lives isn't really time, but energy. As described in the OP, most of us have experience evenings that felt wasted because we're too tired from work to do anything valuable, but trying to cram value into every moment of life also feels exhausting. The basic take of the book is that every area of our life needs periods of exertion and periods of rest, much like the body does in order to build muscle. The same is true of the mind and the emotional self. So for each of these realms, you ideally want to be either fully engaged, or fully at rest, not somewhere in-between. Then it gives various techniques to achieve this. One I liked in particular is to take opportunities that might otherwise be frustrating - stuck in traffic, in line at the bank, whatever - and see them as instead a time for mental rest. Anyway, might be a good read. FWIW I'm a big fan of GTD as well. Used properly I think a system like that can be a good complement to this philosophy. When it's time to work, you grab a task from your list and get right to it. And when it's not time to work, you can free your brain of any related distractions, confident that everything you need to remember will be in your GTD system when you need it again. (Likewise if you have a stray idea that you want to remember, instead of holding it in your brain, it can go in there.) Helps keep work (and by that I mean any jobs that need to be done, not just the 9-5) from dominating your thoughts all the time.
  • she11c0de 5y ago
    This. I'm surprised we still fall for the "use every waking hour productively" bs when it's clear once you try to implement it that really energy is the limiting factor, not time. Burnout is a real, you need to think seriously about rest.
    • zarzavat 5y ago
      Could it be however that our mindless scrolling on the internet is more exertion than rest? I certainly don’t feel rested after using it. Conversely many things which are in principle exertion can actually have restorative effect.
      • 5y ago
• dblooman 5y ago
  Honestly thought this was going to be satire about molly mae hague
• ab_testing 5y ago
  I have been trying these activities like Trello boards, daily routines and other things on and off for a couple of years. One thing I have noticed is that when you have small children, things can change very quickly. Your Trello board might tell you to concentrate on work or your daily workout, but when your little one needs you, then you invariably leave everything and tend to your kids.
  • ngngngng 5y ago
    This is an unsolved problem for me as well. How do I add focus to my free time, while giving meaningful time to my kids, and adjusting on a dime when they demand my attention? This is currently my biggest excuse to waste time. Why try to focus on hobbies or learning when at any second my wife or kids might need me at any moment and I've already spent 8ish hours of my day giving them zero of my attention?
    • orky56 5y ago
      This plus WFH is an even bigger challenge since the lines have blurred between free time between meetings and free time before and after work. At my wits end trying to be a serious working professional and a contributing father & husband.
      • CaptArmchair 5y ago
        Establish clear boundaries. Before WFH, you didn't have to do this because your commute / physical presence at home / office did that for you. Now you have to do it yourself. Keep a clear schedule when you're on the clock / off the clock. Work in a separate space (if you can / have one available). Lay out ground rules with your spouse / housemates when you can / can't be disturbed due to work. Clock in / out at the same times you did when you worked at the office. Use the time you'd spend commuting to take a walk before / after work: helps mark the transition between work / personal time. Personally, I close my laptop at the end of the day, get in the kitchen and start cooking dinner. Sure, WFH sounds attractive and there's the implicit promise that you can flexibly combine work with family life. But let's just admit that there are hard limits here. For instance, if you're still expected to be in meetings at 4PM, like in the old days, you just can't ensure your spouse you'll be able to pick up the kids from daycare / school every day. For instance, WFH has moved the office space into the digital realm with tools like Zoom, Teams, Slack, etc. But none of that implies you're now magically available at 9PM to answer any messages. It's up to you to set boundaries and enforce them. Yes, some people may not always like that. Frankly, they aren't you and they aren't living your life. Don't burn yourself up to keep everyone else warm.
• steve_adams_86 5y ago
  I have to say, making myself read before bed (I no longer need to make myself do it, I look forward to it) was a major game changer a couple years ago. I was pretty distraught because I was effectively diagnosed with a mental disability and was suddenly confronted with the reality of what I’d been living with. It was crushing to my self esteem in a way. I always knew something was wrong, but now there was this professionally diagnosed wart on my identity and self esteem. I felt pretty hopeless. I began reading about it. I began reading about self esteem, identity, introspection, and how to generally navigate this change in my life. I got into philosophy. I got into psychology. I began reading about childhood psychology specifically to understand better how my strengths and weaknesses might impact my kids. How could I manage my brain better in order to be a better dad for them? What mistakes had I already made than I could try to correct? I’ve become so much better for it. I still read the dry stuff because I love it, but I weave in fiction here and there as well. I’ve always got a couple books I’m excited to read. I use a kindle at the lowest light setting with no lights on. My rule is that it can’t be about work and it can’t be about a hobby, or I’m not giving myself a break and/or I won’t be able to stop reading. The goal is to read myself to sleep, not get too engaged (at least not too often). This does three things. It expands my mind, keeps me from doom scrolling, and it greatly improves my ability to get to sleep. These reinforce each other and the benefits really compound. I’m not a super-person now or anything. I’m just less dumb, usually better rested, and a little happier for it. I can’t recommend a night time reading habit enough. Fit that into your 24 hours. Reading and exercise.
  • scrapcode 5y ago
    When I moved into my new home about 18 months ago I decided to forego putting a television in my bedroom. Instead I throw a [wireless] earbud in and listen to a podcast or audio book set to a 30-minute sleep timer. I know this is not perfect, but is at least a step in the right direction as I very rarely am awake when the timer goes off. However, I don't feel that I retain much of the information. Do you feel like you retain most of what you have read before going to bed? Also, do you prefer print or ebooks?
    • lmas 5y ago
• AussieWog93 5y ago
  Just as you can go too hard on getting sucked into social media and other vices, you can definitely over-optimise your time and turn into a robot as well. Maybe it's important for your sanity to spend two hours a day reading Wikipedia articles about the Wehrmacht or playing Age of Empires 2. Then again, maybe it's not. But approaching your habits from an overly logical, optimisation-focused point of view will destroy your soul. You are a biologically-evolved animal; not an intellectual abstraction.
  • Liquix 5y ago
    There's nothing wrong with taking a little (or a lot) of leisure time. It's the mindless screen usage and not-relaxing/not-being-productive limbo that are problematic
    • Kifot 5y ago
      Exactly, I feel like the problem is that these days we no longer actually play Age of Empires (which, again, would be fine), we share this time between playing Age of Empires, looking at Instagram and checking out work emails
    • AussieWog93 5y ago
      Is it, though? I'm not a psychologist, but there must be some reason why people "veg out". Before Facebook and Instagram, it was TV. Before then, I'm honestly not sure.
• moneywoes 5y ago
  My condolences to the colleague RIP. Sounds like he lived a valued and actualized life.
• markus_zhang 5y ago
  With WFH implemented in a lot of companies, maybe it's easier and more fruitful to get up early and use the morning hours to work on hobbies and learning. Unless you are one of the lucky whose work involve a lot of brain juice spending, you probably feel tired because of something else. It could be office politics or endlessly pinging a colleague for permission to get real work rolled out. But neither of the situation involves a lot of brain juice and it's a total waste of energy. It is as if someone depreciate a battery not by connecting it to a circuit, but by slowly burning it on fire. By switching hobbies and learning, which probably need more brain juice, to morning hours, we spend energy more meaningfully, while not impacting our jobs by much. It introduces additional bonus that we can actually sit down and watch TV or play with kids without burning with anxiety. It's the ideal model IMHO.
• waingake 5y ago
  In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic. -- Karl Marx
  • mvind 5y ago
    * assuming you have a pagan slave population which can be worked to death in order to provide for the intelligentsia utopia fantasy
    • waingake 5y ago
      > a pagan slave population which can be worked to death in order to provide for the intelligentsia utopia fantasy Are you describing the people who made your iPhone?
    • weakfish 5y ago
      [dead]
• StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  For many (most?) of the working people I know in New York, 8/8/8 is a fantasy (or at least was before COVID/remote work). You rise at 5 am so that you can walk your dog, make some coffee, take a shower, get ready for work, eat a banana and leave by 6 in order to catch a 6:30 train to the city (if you can find parking at the train station where you pay a high monthly parking fee). If the train is on time, and the connecting subway(s) are on time, you arrive at work by 8:30. If you are lucky enough to work only an 8 hour day (with the 1 hour for lunch that you are mandated to take and extends your day at work but is unpaid) you gather your things and leave by 5:30 pm to try to fight the crowds at Penn Station and catch the 6 o'clock train. If the subway(s) and the train are all on time you get home by 7:30 pm. You walk your dog and by now you are too tired to cook so you order food and by the time it gets there and you eat its 9 pm and if you go to sleep right now you can get 8 hours sleep. And this is all if your day goes smoothly! If you can't find parking, the train is late, the subway is late, you have to stay longer at work or you miss the fastest train home (all things which happen multiple times per week), you are behind the 8-ball on your 8 hours! This also pushes all of the chores that have to be done (laundry, cleaning the house, getting the car serviced, mowing the lawn, taking the dog to the vet, shopping for food, ect) to the weekend which ensures that there won't be much spare time to schedule for elective activities. This may seem like a pessimistic picture but it is reality for hundreds of thousands/millions of commuters in the NY/metro area. If you ever happen to be in New York take a ride on the LIRR or the Metro North on a weekday at 7 am to witness real misery!
  • cm2012 5y ago
    I did this for 8 years, started working from home 6 years ago and would never ever go back.
    • StanislavPetrov 5y ago
      Did it briefly, took a look at how miserable it made everyone around me, and decided very quickly I'd rather make less money and be able to live life. Have many friends who live this lifestyle and are more "well off" in the sense that they make more money and drive more expensive cars but it always seems like a tragedy to me to see them burning up years in the prime of their life that they will never get back.
• jimmyed 5y ago
  Great insights. It was somewhat distracting to see the word "deep" overused. A whopping 7 times, sprinkled like resins on a cookie.
  • iamjfu 5y ago
    OP here. This is my favorite comment in the entire thread. Thank you!
    • iamjfu 5y ago
      My wife has similar feelings about my semicolon usage.
• 12907835202 5y ago
  I completely revitalised my life by deciding to treat myself as the primary focus of my day and my job as the extra that fit in around it i.e. working 8-10am and 5-11pm and having each day to myself. I was living in Australia but working remotely for a company UK. I got into a terrible habit of waking up at 7-8am and reading and replying to all the emails and slack chats that had happened over night for an hour or two. Then I'd work alone without interruption 9-5 then around 5pm the UK would wake up and I'd get emails and slack notifications on my phone which i'd dip in and out of until 11-12pm when I'd go to bed. I'd essentially be switched on to work 16 hours a day. So I swapped it and decided I would take 9-5 everyday for myself and only work the hours around it. I'd wake up at 8am and do all my emails and chats from bed on my phone then jump up and be on my laptop while eating breakfast. Maybe do a couple of small easy tasks. I'd do that till about 10am. Then 10-5 was me time. I'd go to the gym, go to the park, play computer games, read, work on hobbies etc. I'd travel and meet friends for lunch if I could. Reading and listening to music as I travelled to their work. I also had alot of friends who worked hospitality so they would also often be free. Then I'd get to my rented co-working space at 5pm and work for 6 hours till 11pm. Eating dinner at my desk, usually something I'd made in bulk on Sunday that I could reheat. I'd then walk 10 mins home and either jump straight into bed or do a couple of chores and be in bed by midnight. If someone wanted to socialise in the evening I'd just tell my colleagues and work during the day that day. Doing this was amazing. I felt like had so much free time, I'd even sometimes get bored. I definitely wasn't productive during all these 9-5s, sometimes the time would just vanish and I'd have nothing to show for it. But that's fine. I made the most of all the sunlight hours rather than being stuck in doors which was amazing. I don't think my work suffered, I think they preffered it as I was available to talk and join meetings. I also found it really helpful to spend 8-10am planning my tasks for the day, then letting it all stew in the back of my head for 7 hours before working on it. I'd generally have some eureka moments mid afternoon and excitedly crack on when 5pm came around. Obviously this isn't possible for everyone and it did cause some issues particularly with dating, but it was alot better than the 9-5 grind.
• khazhoux 5y ago
  Why am I reading all the comments in this thread???
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• evancoop 5y ago
  A college friend wandered the dorm bleary-eyed. His aspirations were pre-med. In a moment of revelation, he noted that if he were so inclined, he could find enough material to spend every waking hour studying. He also recognized that this was college, and he was planning to use at least some of those hours sleeping or socializing. Therefore, he concluded, he wasn't going to "work as hard as he could" or any such phrase about maximizing one's output/accomplishment. All that remained was satisfying himself. He went on to study music. He is a professor of musicology now. I never saw him comparably stressed thereafter.
• nathias 5y ago
  Generalized tools breed bad habits. If you want to break your bad internet habits reclaim the content away from the browsers into other programs. If you want to break your bad smartphone habits reclaim content away from the phone and use specialized tools.
• Nero001 5y ago