This is one of the things I noticed as well. About a year ago I started commuting via commuter rail (Boston), and my side project productivity sky rocketed.
I'm guaranteed a seat, and room to put my laptop on my lap for two 1 hour intervals, 5 days a week.
This is an option not many people have, especially in the US.
Previously I've commuted by driving (obviously can't get much coding done then), and subway (too crowded to pull out a laptop). By the time I got home, I'd have already worked at least 8 hours, and spent 2 miserable hours commuting. I was tired, hungry, and hadn't gotten any side project work done.
Now at least I can get 2 good hours in every day, and that productivity momentum sometimes will carry in to the evening now as well, since I'm already in the thick-of-it when I get home. But even if it doesn't I'm working 10 hours/week on something I enjoy, and can easily see steady progress in it. It doesn't even matter how much time I'm able to make for myself when at home now.
> This is an option not many people have, especially in the US.
Yeah. Those of in the Bay Area are stuck with CalTrain. You're not guaranteed a train (passengers are regularly "bumped", or denied boarding and told to wait for the next train, particularly bikers), let alone a seat; the trains are just incredibly oversubscribed / underprovisioned.
Also, IIRC, doesn't the MBTA commuter rail also offer free WiFi? CalTrain does not, and cell reception along the CalTrain corridor is flaky at best and outright terrible in some spots (San Antonio — Palo Alto…)
(The T, and the commuter rail, are compartively well run, IMO, and one of, if not the best, public transit systems in the nation.)
Does MA have anything close to CA's legal requirements that employers don't own employee's work when done on their own time with their own equipment?[1] (I.e., does your employer require you to sell your soul to them?)
[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
But still sitting in traffic ~2 hours a day was completely non-monetizable for me, and at the time monetization potential was important to me and this was a total waste.
Now of course, people in the bay area were telling me "wow a 40 minute commute you are so lucky", as many do 1.5-3 hour commutes one way, or they work longer than 8 hours to avoid traffic - for the same salary they would get if they worked less than 8 hours/day for these companies.
But I don't compare myself to them, to the average, its a non-factor for my goals, and I do have luxury of not being subscribed to a commute and was able to quickly remedy the situation. At the expense of no longer working at that job at that high salary.
I'm pretty sure there's plenty of jobs/careers that this type of thinking wouldn't work at, but to counter that, there's also plenty more where it would.
Not once were you told during the article that all eight hours have to be dedicated to working, i.e. wake and grab your laptop and start hacking.
Obviously the author is more intelligent than that and understands people need to poo, get ill, or sometimes want to hit the cinema. That's made clear in the article also.
I think your conclusion misses the point that you're meant to take that eight hours and use what you can of it to focus on goals. That's why Steph points out that just one hour of work towards a goal over 365 days has a compounding, exponential result.
It's also not a solution for everyone. Take it or leave it.
Her. Not just men are becoming makers. :)
Shame, HN.
I'm all about self improvement, side-projects, etc, but his numbers start with the bullshit assumption that someone who spends 8 hours at work is instantly free as soon as the clock strikes 5.