[HN Gopher] Your work matters - Build your schedule accordingly
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Your work matters - Build your schedule accordingly
Author : yarapavan
Score : 113 points
Date : 2022-09-21 15:57 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.calnewport.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.calnewport.com)
| cgrealy wrote:
| Eh, I'm at the point in my life where a more relevant title would
| be "your life matters - if some work happens to get done, that's
| a bonus"
| LesZedCB wrote:
| i would prefer not to
|
| this whole story sounds like the "before" segment of an article
| on burnout.
| Swizec wrote:
| A quote I'll never forget: "Productivity is for people with no
| leverage"
|
| The correct way to optimize your schedule is to do less
| dangarbri3 wrote:
| How to get leverage
| skadamat wrote:
| One of Cal's earlier books is ALL about this:
|
| https://www.calnewport.com/books/so-good/
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| reduce dependency on other people
| manholio wrote:
| Leverage, by definition, is having others depend on you.
| teucris wrote:
| Be the one holding the purse strings.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| Gain experience, conviction, credibility, and wisdom.
|
| Make decisions.
|
| Drive initiatives.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Propose changing the title: "Your work matters (probably mostly
| for someone else) ..."
| bot41 wrote:
| That's a great quote!
| [deleted]
| jcowdy wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Cal Newport. His overarching theme is to be
| intentional about how you use your time. If you aren't
| specifically planning and blocking your schedule, it will turn
| into a fragmented mess and not allow you to get in the deep
| thinking periods that many projects require. This is a good
| reminder that you may need to advocate for yourself (and work
| with your partner) to establish these slots in your schedule.
| WesleyLivesay wrote:
| I think the theory of this article is fine, but the solution of
| sacrificing weekend time with family to eek out some time for
| work goals feels bad to me. It also involves pushing more child
| care onto the partner in the relationship, when it sounds like
| they are already sacrificing large chunks of their time on a
| commute so that the family can live close to the researchers
| place of work.
| musicale wrote:
| Replacing non-work time on the weekend (especially time with
| children or a partner, or personal time) with work seems like a
| bad idea.
|
| Moreover, from years of personal experience, I have found that
| working on weekends doesn't seem to improve productivity and is
| harmful to health and happiness.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| What I do, is schedule work tasks on the weekend that I know
| won't matter if they're not done, and then not do them. Works
| out great.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Turning her attention to the weekend, Elizabeth arranged for
| her husband to take the kids from 12:00 to 4:00 every Saturday,
| freeing up another four-hour research block.
|
| Being deliberate about schedule management is great.
|
| However, my goal with schedule management is to get work done
| during the work week so I can spend _more_ time with my kids, not
| carve out a large chunk of the weekend to avoid the kids while I
| work more.
|
| There were some decent points in this article, but it really
| needed some better examples. Obviously parents can get more work
| done if we conveniently have our spouses watch the kids alone
| every weekend while we work more on Saturday, but I didn't really
| need a long blog post to tell me that. Nor do I want it.
|
| Realistically, I've found a lot of success in being more ruthless
| about my own schedule management: Withdrawing from meetings I
| don't need to be in. Requesting smaller 30-minute time slots
| where people unnecessarily schedule 1-hour meetings. Leaving
| meetings entirely if the scheduler doesn't show up within 5
| minutes of the start time, sending them an e-mail asking to
| reschedule when they're available. Forcing meetings into e-mails
| when they don't need to be a meeting. Requesting agendas and pre-
| work before meetings so we avoid design by committee. Implemented
| tactfully, these can squeeze out a lot of the time wasters that
| happen during the course of a week. I'd much rather do things
| like that than to give up and work weekends.
| [deleted]
| voxmatt wrote:
| Plug for https://www.getclockwise.com/
|
| Cal's writing has been a key source of inspiration for what we
| build.
| skadamat wrote:
| Cal's key ideas for the uninitiated:
|
| - Deep Life: Kind of like essentialism / minimalism: Be
| intentional & focus on results / remove what matters. Create 5
| pillars for your life, and work fits into it:
| https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2020/04/20/cultivating-a-dee...
|
| - Deep Work: do one thing at a time, in a focused way. Context
| switching is expensive on the brain and stressful / anxiety
| inducing
|
| - Career Advice (So Good They Can't Ignore You book): become
| great at a skill or the intersection of multiple skills. When you
| become good, you'll learn to love it and you can trade in your
| expertise for more lifestyle traits (more pay or less hours or no
| boss)
|
| His podcast is awesome too: https://www.calnewport.com/podcast/
| molsongolden wrote:
| Any favorite podcast episodes you'd recommend for someone
| listening for the first time?
| sorry_i_lisp wrote:
| I think using the Core Ideas Playlist and starting there
| would be good: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8xK8kB
| HHUX43VVxO3b7s...
|
| I have never listened to a podcast, just the cut out snippts
| on the youtube channel.
| skadamat wrote:
| Good question!
|
| 1. Deep Life Principles:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-204-deep-life-
| princ...
|
| 2. Decoding the Deep Life:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-200-decoding-the-
| de...
|
| 3. Quieting the Ambitious Brain:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-199-quieting-an-
| amb...
|
| 4. Fun experimental episode on Shop Class as Soulcraft:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-116-re-reading-
| shop...
|
| Also as the person below me pointed out, the Core Ideas
| playlist is great: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8x
| K8kBHHUX43VVxO3b7s...
|
| Most of them have the same format (except the last one
| above):
|
| - Deep dive into a topic he's thinking about
|
| - Listener questions
|
| - Once a month update on books he's read
| tomcam wrote:
| Love this kind of curation. Thanks
| fhrow4484 wrote:
| > Your work matters. It's okay to fight for it in your schedule.
|
| Nice conclusion, but half of the solution in this article is to
| work "12:00 to 4:00 every Saturday"...
|
| Does your work matter that much that you have to sacrifice every
| weekends?
|
| My 2C/: fight harder to carve time during weekdays instead
| majikandy wrote:
| I think it really means fight hard to get the time, and
| choosing any time in particular doesn't matter, weekend or
| weekday is irrelevant, it is just an agreement with yourself
| and those close to you that those times are reserved, a bit
| like sleep at say 11pm to 7am is non negotiable (unless you
| choose to).
| mgkimsal wrote:
| If... you're being intentional about your time/schedule, do
| 'weekends' matter as much?
|
| EDIT: I can understand 'kids' aspect. Outside of that, if I'm
| doing the things I want to do at the times I want to do them,
| the notion of 'weekend=do_what_i_want' isn't as compelling. I
| try to schedule in things I want to do when I want, weekends be
| damned.
| david_allison wrote:
| Aside from kids: it's much easier to meet friends who have a
| 9-5 schedule on weekends
| drainyard wrote:
| If you have children weekends are incredibly important.
| manmal wrote:
| Only if you are unavailable on week days.
| cgrealy wrote:
| Even if you're available weekdays, the kids are not
| (they're in school)
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > do 'weekends' matter as much?
|
| I guess I would be fine if I was trading those 4 hours of
| freetime I normally would get on Saturday for 4 hours on a
| weekday. But that doesn't seem to be what's being suggested.
|
| Also, given the nature of how our days are organized in
| society, there tend to be events that happen on the weekends
| that do not happen on week days to accommodate people's work
| schedules - concerts in the park, community events, social
| events, etc. so moving some of your work to the weekends will
| mean you could miss out on those.
| the_af wrote:
| Yes, weekends matter a lot because it's your time with
| family, leisure and friends. Weekends matter if your life is
| not owned by the company where you work.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Weekends only matter as much as you argue here if your
| company owns your ass 9-5 Mon-Fri (plus commute,
| sometimes). If you're able to be more flexible, it's nice
| to go out when everyone else is working.
|
| I understand your point, though, I work max 30-35 hours a
| week, often on weekends, and spend as much time as I can
| with my son and wife.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I like a lot of ideas from Cal Newport but there is something
| wrong with our work culture when working on the weekend is now
| seen as a productivity hack.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I didn't realize this is where Newport was going. Most of what
| I've read of him in the past advocates for getting off of
| social media to gain control over your time - which I think is
| good advice.
|
| I'd recommend Oliver Burkeman's _Four Thousand Weeks: Time
| management for mortals_ as it 's very different from the
| productivity-oriented time management books that tend to
| dominate the genre.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| It's always worth remembering that Cal is an academic - a
| culture in which it is considered virtuous for your work to
| be your life, or at the very least the defining element of
| it.
|
| This is a source of a lot of the ongoing exploitive or
| outright abusive behaviours and treatments of those on the
| lower rungs of the academic totem pole that are frankly
| endemic in most institutions.
| cjpearson wrote:
| He is an academic, but in Deep Work he argues that
| excessive working hours are not necessary for success in
| the field, using himself and a few other academics as
| examples of successful academics who've achieved both a
| work-life balance and tenure.
|
| I assume that the weekdays which Elizabeth spends caring
| for her children are not spent working at the same time.
| She has an unusual schedule, but I doubt she works
| excessive hours. A big part of Deep Work is quality over
| quantity.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Academia is feudalism with an intellectual veneer.
|
| Source: Academic for 5 years.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I actually work half days during the week often, and then work
| part of the day on Saturday and/or Sunday. This allows me to
| work with my head down on a weekend day without co-workers
| messaging me, and the same for working early in the mornings on
| weekends when my family is still asleep. This actually allows
| me, personally, more flexibility on weekdays to go out with my
| family when there aren't as many people out and about, and go
| with my wife to our son's medical appointments and other
| important things like that.
|
| I wouldn't advocate everyone can or should do this, but I think
| that the "don't work outside working hours"/"must work during
| working hours" status quo can hurt flexibility a lot.
| Personally, weekends to me are just another day of the week,
| and I want to try normalize that wherever I go.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > This allows me to work with my head down on a weekend day
| without co-workers messaging me
|
| I appreciate that this works for you but to me this comes
| across more as an issue with work boundaries more than the
| benefits of weekend work.
|
| Advocate for 'no-meeting days' multiple times in the week.
| Advocate for blocks of half-days in the work week where the
| whole team goes radio silence. We implemented this in both
| the team I am working in now and in my previous gig.
|
| Managers will absolutely defend the team's time like this if
| you pitch it constructively and the team delivers results to
| back it up.
| wombat-man wrote:
| If you can go offline for half a day then I would think
| that you could block out "focus time" on your schedule.
| Some of my coworkers do this, and I do too from time to
| time.
| skadamat wrote:
| Eh, if you listen to his podcast episode you'll see that's not
| quite what he's advocating. He's advocating for intentionality
| and to design your life with work as a part of it. For some
| people that could mean that doing a creative work project on a
| Saturday is the best way to do that.
|
| His points are way more nuanced than "work on weekends". I
| think he mentions Laura's story as a case study in
| intentionality, not in "work life balance" etc
| jonas21 wrote:
| She's working partial days on Mon, Tues, and Fri, full days
| (and perhaps a bit more) on Wed and Thurs, and a 4-hour block
| on the weekend.
|
| It sounds like our work culture is doing a pretty good job at
| giving her the flexibility to schedule work around the rest of
| her life.
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