4 ms·
The article is BS. "He spent almost all of his time thinking and recording his ideas. He only came to campus on Tuesdays." The guy wrote 500+ memos on the non
by fxtentacle 3y ago
The article is BS.
"He spent almost all of his time thinking and recording his ideas. He only came to campus on Tuesdays."
The guy wrote 500+ memos on the non-Tuesday working days. That's very far off from a one-day workweek.
- krawczstef 3y agoyeah I think the point is a bit muddied. Academics are always working... to me, the main take-away is that he got 6 days to think, and only had a single day of "disruptive meetings" to help ground/discuss whatever he was thinking...
- passion__desire 3y ago> Academics are always working... Just like comedians. They are always playing scenarios in their head and playtesting jokes.
- rawoke083600 3y agoThat's probably true for authors as well (not that I am one).
- magospietato 3y agoI suspect these trades are artefacts of that way of thinking. Some people have a frequent flow of ideas they are compelled to capture in one way or another.
- commonlisp94 3y agoWhy do comedians feel the need to tell us how hard their life is all the time?
- waterhouse 3y agoBecause they want to talk about things from their life (which is because, among other reasons, having personal experience with the things they're talking about is rather helpful), and if they were saying how great their life was, that might evoke resentment. It also seems possible that the space of "funny things you can say about how something sucks" is bigger than the space of "funny things you can say about how something is good".
- helsinkiandrew 3y agoYes, his job was literally to spend his time "thinking and recording his ideas" which he did probably 6 days a week. I imagine the day he "gather likeminded colleagues to read papers and discuss ideas" was the 'fun' part of his time allowing him to decompress
- ldoughty 3y agoI think you can say the same for most non-physical labor jobs.. When I worked in sales I spent my weekends frequently answering emails and improving my knowledge in ways that specifically related to work. Now I work more in "engineering".. and when I'm gardening, or mowing, driving, I'm thinking about work projects at least half the time.
- throwaway14356 3y agoOne of the silly things of our culture is over-specialization. A human needs to challenge his or her memory, must do a good deal of thinking, must study but also must make strength and endurance efforts. Perhaps you don't need to but we should at least configure society to allow it if you desire it. The casual thoughts while doing manual work is lovely if you have something constructive to think about.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoAs always he was a trend setter with a hybrid work style.
- croes 3y agoIf I do the same, my employer would call it a one-day workweek
- fxtentacle 3y agoThey would call it remote work because you're still being highly productive on those days where they don't see you in person.
- littlestymaar 3y agoTry not answering email, chat, nor attending meeting 4 days a week while working remotely and see how long it takes before you get into troubles…
- fxtentacle 3y agoWhen I'm working on a new algorithm, nobody is going to be surprised if they don't hear from me for 2 weeks :) It all boils down to trust and managing expectations.
- tpoacher 3y ago> It all boils down to trust and managing expectations. Yes. Which is why both you and OP are correct.
- bil7 3y agowhat sort of team are you working in where communication can be so infrequent?
- ghaff 3y agoNot that I have to communicate a lot on a day-to-day basis today, but I worked for someone for a number of years where he traveled a lot, I traveled a lot, and I worked more or less independently. I'd be in contact with various people related to whatever I was doing at the time but I might not really be in touch with my manager or other people on his direct team (who were mostly doing things largely unrelated to what I was doing) for a few weeks at a time.
- teawrecks 3y agoEither it's a 1 day work week, or his work is his life.
- Skeime 3y agoI don’t think you can know that. He might be on campus on Tuesdays, work at home Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and enjoy a work-free weekend. (Though he’s an academic, so “his work is his life” is not unlikely.)
- coldtea 3y agoIt is an one-day workweek when the official duties and draggery of "office/uni" work is compressed into a single day.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blitz_skull 3y agoI mean, to be fair, the article isn't actually advocating that he was "only working a single day per week" despite what the title says. Furthermore, there's a big difference between "working" as defined by your employer, and "working" as defined by your productive contribution to society. I suppose by the latter, some people never work a day in their lives, eh? ;)
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoYeah, the title is clickbaity. It’s saying “Dijkstra was most productive when he went into the office one a week to tend to regular things and had the freedom to do whatever he wanted on other days”. Well, duh, I would also be more productive if I had the political freedom to collapse all of my meetings into one day and make them only about what I wanted to talk about and I could do whatever I wanted to on the remaining four. I’m sure if I was a Turing prize winner like he was I would also be afforded that same freedom.
- zerr 3y agoBeing a relatively highly paid "consultant"/"contractor" on an hourly basis grants you the same status - management tries to minimize bs on your way so the company pays for a real work done.
- couchand 3y agoKeep raising your rates and they'll keep guarding you from the trivia. Everyone wins!
- commonlisp94 3y ago> if I was a Turing prize winner like he was That came later. He just had a flexible gig that was common for researchers at the time. From what I can tell, none of his behavior would be accepted today: - participating in a new field without formal credentials - not writing papers or participating in peer review - writing books and papers without citing other works - bouncing between academic and industry roles Academic research is just a different world, with very different life tradeoffs, even for "big' names.
- _yb2s 3y agoIn what way is it BS? The title is misleading, but (as you pointed out) the article clarifies exactly the situation here.