So, if you're getting a full 8hrs sleep, how much time does that leave you on an avg work night to do things that _you_ want to do? Like 4hrs? And do you really want to spend all those 4hrs being productive? People need to relax and unwind at some point. If you follow the pomodoro technique and use 5min for leisure every 30 mins, you end up with only ~40mins of "leisure" in that type of day.
What if you want to do things like spend an hour working out at the gym / looking after physical health? What if you are single and want to spend some time dating? It quickly drains away at any time you would have to spend on your own personal projects, interests, hobbies.
Reading your comment and others beneath you, I sense many of you have a weird idea of what a city is.
What you describe is true only for a minority of cities. I live in a city with above median housing prices. I live a 10 minute drive from my work. My house is not expensive - in fact, the expensive neighborhoods are farther away.
Initially you may not have much of a choice on where you work, but if you go through your whole career not having that choice, you probably need to work on your career a bit. For everyone I know, they decided to make that compromise (don't want to leave awesome city, etc). For them, not having enough time in the day definitely is a choice.
I agree with the rest of your accounting, but will note that there are weekends. As for gym, I just figured out exercises I can do at home with minimal equipment. It's a lot more flexible (and takes less time) than going to a gym.
And frankly, even looking at some of the top 20 areas, some of them have pretty decent traffic. I know people who live in Phoenix (ranked 10th) whose commute is definitely under half an hour one way. And they live in nice areas.
Houston: Some of the major employers are in a crappy part of town. Very easy to find houses nearby, but few do so because they don't like the neighborhood. Still, the long commute is an active choice and not about affordability.
Take Manhattan. I got a call from a well known company to work there. I said "No way. Expensive and long commutes." The recruiter explained: No - just live in New Jersey. If you get the right neighborhood, the commute to work by public transit will be 30-40 minutes. I checked - he was right. Those New Jersey neighborhoods were decent ones, and the houses were about the same price as mine.
I haven't checked Chicago recently, but 10-15 years ago, you could easily find houses near enough the L-train such that your commute to downtown would be about 30 minutes.
>If you get the right neighborhood, the commute to work by public transit will be 30-40 minutes.
Okay, so one of your idealized cases and it's still closer to the "1 hour by public transit" scenario than "10 minutes by driving" you originally chose. But you know people in Phoenix so case closed.
>The majority of people who live in cities in the US are not in the top 20 metropolitan areas
I'm curious where you get this, too. The top 5 MSAs already cover 25% of the population.
Your statement is true. And it's also true when we switch the pronouns. What's your point?
"Plenty" is not the same as "majority", which was your original claim.
> Okay, so one of your idealized cases and it's still closer
How is it one of my "idealized" cases? Putting words in my mouth isn't going to help this conversation.
> to the "1 hour by public transit" scenario than "10 minutes by driving" you originally chose.
1. I never claimed you will always find affordable houses within 10 minutes drive. I was countering the claim that it need be an hour or more. That it took 40 minutes is still in support of my claim. That it took more than 10 minutes doesn't refute my point.
2. It was fairly clear from my original comment that the point was one can move to a city where you can find sub-hour commutes. From that it's clear that I am not implying you'll find it with every employer or in every city. The whole comment was about choosing where you work.
> I'm curious where you get this, too. The top 5 MSAs already cover 25% of the population.
Simple: Look up a list of metro areas in the US. Add up the top 20. Then add up the rest.
Hint: A city of 100K is still a city. Trying to claim that this is a minority position will again get the same response: Given that most people who live in 100K (or even smaller) cities believe they live in a city, it would be incorrect to claim that the majority do not view such places as cities. There may far fewer employers for engineering in such cities, but I can assure you there are still plenty.
(And no, you don't need to go as low as 100K to get a cumulative greater than your top 20).
Your statement was:
> I'd wager most people think of something like the top 20 metropolitan statistical areas by population when they hear the term.
Baltimore is not in the top 20. Nor is San Antonio. Nor is Portland. Nor is Milwaukee. The list goes on and on. Do you think these people do not think of their own cities when using the word?
Here’s a suggestion: don’t live an hour away from work?
With more companies going permanent remote, I find the whole concept of commuting for 2 hours round trip a day unimaginable. Especially for those of us working in Tech that don’t need a physical presence to deliver results.
A friend used to say that majority of people who work from home fall into one of two types of people, the kind that never go to work or the kind that never come home.
So sorry, it's not that simple.
I thought the same thing, until I focused on tightening up my schedule and making active choices to minimize wasted time.
If you want to live somewhere that requires 2 hours (!!) of commuting each day, take long lunch breaks away from the office, have relaxed mornings with hours between alarm going off and leaving the house, that's fine.
However, you have to recognize where you're making personal choices. You don't have to choose a job and house combination that requires an hour long commute each way. You don't have to leave the office for lunch every day. You don't have to have leisurely mornings. It's perfectly fine if you choose to do those things, but you're not being completely honest with yourself if you start portraying those personal choices as completely out of your control.
> And do you really want to spend all those 4hrs being productive?
It's not about being productive all day every day. You can spend those 4 hours watching TV if you want, or you can spend those 4 hours going to dinner with friends, or going to the gym. It's your choice.
> If you follow the pomodoro technique and use 5min for leisure every 30 mins, you end up with only ~40mins of "leisure" in that type of day.
The Pomodoro technique is for work time. You shouldn't be Pomodoring you personal time after work.
> What if you want to do things like spend an hour working out at the gym / looking after physical health?
Make a priority and make it happen.
If you spend 1 hour at the gym 3 times per week, that's less than 3% of your waking hours. Surely you can find 3% slack in your schedule somewhere?
> It quickly drains away at any time you would have to spend on your own personal projects, interests, hobbies.
The idea of "side projects" has become a major problem for many new grads growing up the internet era. For some reason, many of them feel obligated to be working on side projects when they're not working. They basically end up with two jobs, a day job and tending to their side projects, and then they wonder where all of their time has gone.
The solution is simple: Don't do side projects if you would prefer to spend your time on something else.
It's all about making active choices in how you spend your time. Once you go down the spiral of assuming everything is an obligation in your life, your schedule starts to feel out of your control. Start being honest about the choices you're making and what you want to do with your time and it becomes much easier to take control again.
That’s true with all those things you wanted to do but didn’t realize that there is actually a hidden time sink that nearly doubles the duration.
This is actually a big reason why people don’t accomplish everything they set out to do because they didn’t budget for all the extra non value add things
It’s maybe not as effective as barbells, but I also hurt myself sometimes with those. My home routine hasn’t hurt me yet.
Basic equipment:
* Chinup bar above doorframe. I like the rogue jammer. You can still shut the door.
* Dip bar, for dips and rows
* Exercise bike, for sprints
Other exercises are pushups, planks, and bodyweight squats. I have a weight vest for when I need to add more to squats, but don’t need it yet. Am doing 50 squats, and they’re still hard just with bodyweight.
Also have a powerblock, but haven’t used it recently. However, it’s a great addition to a home gym, and would go well with a bench.
Cost of equipment I am using was $400 or less. Comparatively affordable, especially if it cuts a gym membership.
Time savings:
* No commute, changing
* No waiting for machines
* Can use rest breaks efficiently preparing food, a mindless task that doesn’t interfere
Will not go back to gym
What kind of connective tissues do they maintain?
Connective tissue = tendons, fascia, muscles themselves When working with machines like at many gyms, the movement is really isolated. Free weights are better since they kind of force your muscles into different directions. Kettlebells are a bit better in that regard and are more versatile and easier to use sporadically like in a home office environment.
I don't know man, I've been struggling with this myself. Obviously it's not literally true, but the problem is that after you account for 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work and chores/eating/hygiene/cooking/commute, every thing you want to do starts seriously cutting into the time that's left.
Need an hour more sleep than average? Wanna do some kind of workout on regular basis? Go out with friends, on a date, see a movie? Have a serious hobby that takes 2-3 hours 2-3 times a week? If you put it on spreadsheet it will fit but it's just seriously exhausting (yeah, better hope you actually have pretty high energy levels, that also varies from person to person). There is not much slack there.
Most of it distills down to being honest about your priorities. If you value relaxed mornings, relaxed evenings, and never feeling rushed before or after work, then there's nothing wrong with that. You're not obligated to go out with friends or allocate hours to hobbies during the weekday.
The problem comes when people say they value one thing, but when decision time arrives they do something else. If you have a hobby that requires 2-3 hours per week, then you make time a few nights per week to do it. If you want to go out with friends, then you make time to go out with friends.
Going to the gym is perhaps the easiest example. If you really value going to the gym, finding one hour three times per week is only about 3% of your waking hours. Find a gym located between your house and your office and travel time falls out of the equation.
Personally, I freed up an enormous amount of time by tightening up my schedule. Learning how to get out of bed, get dressed, eat breakfast, and get out the door in under 30 minutes was a game changer for me, and it wasn't even that difficult. Likewise, learning how to consolidate my chores and meal prep into small windows of time was an enormous improvement.
If you sleep 8 hours per night, you have 112 waking hours per week. If you spend 40 hours working and have a 30-minute commute each way (5 hours commuting per week), that leaves 67 hours of your own time. Even if you allocate half of that to chores and meal prep, you're still left with 34 hours, or basically an entire work week of personal time. Realistically, you're not going to spend 33 hours on chores, though.
It's all about priorities. If you don't want to real rushed or pressured during your off time, you don't have to, but you can't have it all.
That is entirely reasonable and correct, but it's also really just saying "suck it up". Having a relaxed day vs. doing hobbies on weekdays is a hell of a dichotomy. It's a shitty choice. I think that lies at the root of your colleagues' complaints, even if they don't express it like that.
> Learning how to get out of bed, get dressed, eat breakfast, and get out the door in under 30 minutes was a game changer for me, and it wasn't even that difficult.
Yeah, I was pretty good at this. In addition to saving time, the main result was being filled with dread about the next day every time I went to sleep.
> If you don't want to real rushed or pressured during your off time, you don't have to, but you can't have it all.
I mean, I could if I just didn't have to work 8 goddamn hours 5 days/week :) It annoys me to no end that 6 hour workdays or 4 day work weeks are not more common.
That being said - I have tried and somewhat succeeded to resolve this by transitioning to freelancing. Many of the gigs will still require full time, but at least I get to have as much time as I want (or can afford) between them, and can also better control my schedule. But it's more stressful, comes with more uncertainty and if I'm for some reason unable to continue working I'm fucked.
You bet it is. And the sooner you realize that most of life is this way the better off you will be.
Adopting this perspective is the only way you're going to change the status quo. Change isn't created by endlessly scrolling or complaining on twitter; recognizing that you must be hardworking and focus your energy where it's most effective is a precondition to creating it.
Reducing this to "suck it up" seems like a lack of listening/understanding to me.
-lots of passive pleasures can be enjoyed while commuting, shopping or dishwashing. You can read, listen, move. Some people even manage to produce (eg write novels) on the train to work.
-lots of stuff can be done by other people. Eat takeaway, have your clothes and house professionally cleaned if you don’t enjoy doing it. Is it expensive? Yes. But if you’re a high achiever you’ll get a lot more ROI out of putting the energy you’re saving by delegating into either work or more rest.
-still unnafordable to eat out every meal even if it’s a good idea? Cool once a month or once a week. Shop once a month or once a week. It’ll save you oodles of time and money. Apply to every possible chore.
-still taking too much time and energy to take care of everything in your life? Pull a Soylent. Delete entire categories of concerns. Adopt a uniform. Get brutal with time wasters.
As I've become more conscious of the benefits of making that effort, it's also become a bit easier to 'break' the day's first internet surfing time. Immediately after this post I'm getting back off my ass to do some yard work.
YMMV, but it worked well for me as a focus to reduce pointless browsing hours.
How do you do that? Am assuming you include a shower. It seems like there is not enough time to do all those things unless breakfast is just milk/cereal or eaten on the go. Or prepped (you allude to that)
> Likewise, learning how to consolidate my chores and meal prep into small windows of time was an enormous improvement.
Got any tips in the chore department or meal prepping?
But I’ll try timing breakfast etc
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/17/what-billionaire-ray-dalio-t...
There seems to be a an expectation that everyone should have a side hustle or has a creative outlet outside of work so they can get ahead or explore their true passions. But employment is structured in a way that your employer gets first dibs on your time and energy.
I'm a senior SRE in Google. I've got myself a NAS to back up my photos. Guess how many weeks it has been before I got the first terabyte of stuff onto it... Wrong, I'm still procrastinating on it :(
1) Any action is greater than no action. It doesn't matter how much you suck at something. Do it. Congrats, you've beaten everyone who never started.
2) Finish things. No matter how ugly it is. Even if you have to half-kill yourself to drag it that last inch over the line. Congrats, you've beaten everyone who never finished.
3) Your worst effort is probably better than average. Stop obsessing about the 1% best. That's not who you're competing against. You're competing against the pool of real people a company / project could afford to hire, who are available to hire.
4) Everyone starts off terrible at everything. No movie covers the 10,000 hours someone is learning: that's why training montages are a cliché.
5) Forgive yourself. It's okay not to be spectacular every minute of every day. Consistency of effort is more valuable than cyclical manic-depression. The key to becoming better starts with accepting and being happy with where you're starting from.
With the caveat that you should abandon things you've realized you don't value. I've seen far too many people spend too much time to "finish what they started" as a principle, even when they no longer valued the goal. Time is a zero sum game. All that time you spent on it is time you could have been spending on the other goals you have.
People like me have more goals than time. Gotta pick wisely.
> Any action is greater than no action. It doesn't matter how much you suck at something. Do it. Congrats, you've beaten everyone who never started.
Similar comment :-) Too many times in my life I was glad I didn't act (where all choices involving action would have led to negative consequences).
> That's not who you're competing against. You're competing against the pool of real people a company / project could afford to hire, who are available to hire.
Depends on your goals. For most of my projects, I'm competing with myself, not with others.
But I've found the previous to be right, more often than not.
Hope the inspiration helps you get out of your own way. :)
There's a significant lack of guidance in WEIRD societies about how to be a person, and this is topped off by the limited maturation rituals: learning to drive, first full-time job, graduating and buying a house come to mind - but we've somehow come to a consensus that putting a giant paywall in front of them and creating dependencies between them is fine.
Putting it like that, it's no wonder that so many young people are staying home, whittling their time away on scraps of "advice" on how to get on in life.
I've come to pity people who plug such "productivity" advice online, because I feel like they must be suppressing (or missing) an idea of the Good Life: a notion of using one's actions, or speech, to contribute to the common good.
I'm hopeful newer generations in the West will have the nous to reject false idols like "productivity" or extreme wealth, but I think it's on us to expose the painful lessons learned as we're transitioning into a cyborg society.
Where you live and your social circle dictate the comparisons that are made. These are not universal - moving to another part of the country will result in fairly different standards. Some of my friends (now acquaintances?) liked to spend a lot of money at expensive restaurants, hotels, etc. It's my choice whether to spend time with them (I don't spend much). Folks who need to change their wardrobe every so many months? Not in my circle.
Life is great if you set your own standards. It's liberating. Also, I've learned that the guy who makes $1M+ on Youtube is also living a very different life - one I don't want to have. Yes, I'd love the money, but not the sacrifices.
I don't get paid as much as most SV types - but whenever I audit my life, I realize that's the only thing "missing". Almost everything in my life is the way I wanted it to be (by design). I know what I value, and I both consciously and unconsciously achieved it. More money would be awesome, but do I want to sacrifice what I have? I doubt it.
It is incredibly disingenuous to think all you need is a little time management and all will be right in the world.
Sometimes it takes a couple hours after a full days work just to recharge and focus deeply on a task again.
Lets not forget about the physical and psychological impact of shorter days in the winter time too.
Sincerely, a hardened in the trenches 10 year vet.
My personal theory backed only by my own professional history is that most people are only working about 3 or 4 hours a day, tops. Certain tasks like writing code or authoring content cannot be time hacked; it takes the time it takes. But I joke that I never worked LESS than I did once I became a VP and had very little tactical work to do. Most of the workday in many fields and sectors actually doesn't take all that long.
You're just bombarded with the stuff that you should know - well, according to internet forums, at least.
On top of your basic CS curriculum, you should also be "crushing it" in:
- Full-stack development - Research-level Machine Learning - Heavy side projects like creating your own crypto currency, algorithmic trading platform, or whatever.
All while burning through the tens to hundreds of leetcode problems.
And of course, if you're a frequent visitor of certain forums or blogging platforms, you will find some user that's doing all of the above. Flashy website, writing research papers on the latest ML/Deep Learning models, writing interactive and insightful tutorials on leetcode problems, all while keeping a 4.0 throughout their CS-studies and climbing up the career-ladder and getting better internships every year.
I think that if you're comparing yourself to those types, and trying to keep up with them, you're gonna end up spending a lot of time without getting much done.
Of course, all while visiting the usual suspects of time-thieves (FB, Twitter, HN, Reddit, etc.)
There's this myth being perpetuated on most CS career forums (where 99% of the posters are other CS students) that you need to be some super-human rock star to even be worthy of the most lowly position. It's that, or bust.
This is of course given you are in your prime health, family, and other life situations. Its like CS and programming jobs in general are acting like a filter to promote only the candidates who in their best form at the moment.
My guess is this illusion will shatter around the next recession/depression. When people will realize they had more than work, and bazillion tons of luck going on for them, to be the superstars they thought they were.
The gravy train always stops somewhere.
This house project, some other mini-projects that i’ve done and the 2/3 books I read since last month is something i can now do because now I avoid HN (and the whole internet) by default..
I encourage you to look into it: https://www.pushbullet.com/
I've been complaining like that when I've been spending around 3h on commute per day
Remote is life changer
On the other hand I've been commuting by public transport, so I had a lot of time to read books :P
That’s because I listen to a lot of Spotify.
Wasting free time, a.k.a living? Capitalist propaganda is so godamn effective. People now believe that every minute you spend not working is wasted time.
Dear lord.
Every minute spent not working is free time, that's pretty much true no matter how much work you do.
And you can use that free time to actually live, i.e. have deep, meaningful experiences, or waste it by consuming cheap, addictive and mostly fake content on the social network du jour.
Nobody likes to be told that they're wasting their free time, but I've had mild success encouraging people to use basic time tracking utilities like the Screen Time feature in iOS. It's eye-opening to watch people estimate their daily screen time around 30 minutes and then be shocked when their reports come back at 2-3 hours or more.
Of course, some amount of leisure activity is necessary throughout the day. It's important to not shame people for spending time on things they enjoy (Hacker News, video games, Reddit, Twitter), but it is important that they can be honest with themselves about how much time they're spending on those activities.
Measuring time spent in leisure activities is the only real way to start closing the feedback loop. Structured procrastination (Spending 5 timed minutes out of every 30 minutes on leisure activities, aka Pomodoro technique) is a good way to start getting a handle on this.