[HN Gopher] Third Time: a better way to work (2022)
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Third Time: a better way to work (2022)
Author : FigurativeVoid
Score : 40 points
Date : 2024-05-16 14:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lesswrong.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lesswrong.com)
| Swizec wrote:
| I love this idea and have often observed the effect they describe
| in the intro.
|
| > Instead of half-working all day, it's better to work in focused
| stints, with breaks in between to recover
|
| Yes! Super true. Strong agree.
|
| The discipline to actually do this I find harder to muster
| however. When you're tired it can be difficult to realize that
| you're tired and unproductive. Even when you do realize this, it
| can be harder still to muster the activation energy to stop what
| you're doing and take a break. I haven't found a solution to
| this.
|
| I have also found that for creative work especially (in
| particular for writing), I will often have long unsatisfying
| stints of working-but-not-working followed the next day by an
| amazingly productive burst of activity. That burst does not
| happen without the working-but-not-working period.
|
| Then there's the other problem of how you apply this third time
| idea to a workday. I would love to take a 20min break after every
| 1 hour meeting. There are not enough hours in the day to do this.
| arturkesik wrote:
| Instead of half-working all day I prefer to work for half a day
|
| Parkinson law: "Work expands so as to fill the time available
| for its completion"
|
| Horstman'a corollary: "Work contracts to fit in the time we
| give it"
|
| I used to give myself only 5 hours of work a day in given
| hours. My productivity was surprisingly better than with full 8
| hours, my stress was lower, and I had so much free time.
|
| I really should get back to doing that
| Swizec wrote:
| > Instead of half-working all day I prefer to work for half a
| day
|
| I have had a lot of success with this. I was also a stressed-
| out wreck the entire time.
|
| Turns out sprinting through all your work is exhausting. Who
| knew
|
| Ultimately I think the solution is to stop having more work
| than fits in a day. But my personality really _really_
| dislikes that reality.
| doubled112 wrote:
| I think this has been the biggest benefit to my mental health
| working from home.
|
| The ability to take a minute or thirty when I need it and not
| wonder what the perception of those around me is. Some of my
| best ideas come to me as I load the dishwasher.
|
| I tend get more done when I can bounce between ideas,
| projects, states of mind, locations, etc than when I'm
| powering through something at a desk for hours at a time.
| techdmn wrote:
| I could never begin to count the times I have been grinding
| away at something, making zero progress, and the right idea
| comes to me two minutes after I step away from my machine.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Hammock driven development
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
|
| When I worked in an office I'd get up and go on walks, or
| move to a sofa and let the problem simmer a bit, several
| times a day. I've been fortunate to work in companies which
| seem to, I think, recognize these are productive activities
| deepfriedchokes wrote:
| Reminds me of interval training for physical fitness.
| fight4ourrights wrote:
| If I take a break every time I'm bored, I'd be breaking all day.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| This seems like a huge pain to track if I'm being honest
| foobarian wrote:
| Well, time's a wastin'! First we'll write a little app, with a
| sqlite-powered backend maybe throw it behind organizr or
| something to run at home...
| wdh505 wrote:
| https://rationalbreaks.vercel.app/
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| When most of the work is to figure out what the other party wants
| and what can I take, productivity and motivation practically go
| down to zero.
|
| I need to get into some lower level programming job or a tool
| programming job.
| TOGoS wrote:
| Same. I wish I got to actually write code. I spend a lot of
| time at my job knowing that there are programming tasks to be
| done, but they're not in the sprint, and scrum master will
| scold me if I work on them, so instead I sit on my hands
| waiting for the middleware team to do some task or other that
| would be totally unnecessary if they had followed my advice in
| the first place.
| RIMR wrote:
| Just work on them anyway, save the code, and follow the
| ticket. Once it's in the sprint, copy+paste and commit.
| TOGoS wrote:
| That is one approach that I try to take sometimes. The real
| problem is more that having to report every morning on work
| I've done that _is_ in the sprint puts a real damper on my
| ability to focus on the other stuff. And if effort spent
| overcoming that isn 't even appreciated, why bother? It's
| just kind of demoralizing, especially after having spent a
| decade working at a job where I was able to get things
| done. Live and learn, then get demoted to a position where
| you can't apply any of it.
|
| I guess if you have a tendency to automate yourself out of
| a job, it's inevitable that you'll end up somewhere so
| dysfunctional that it's impossible to do so.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| Yeah it's difficult to handle especially if there are unknown
| unknowns. I prefer to find a coding job where my clients are
| programmers.
| episteme wrote:
| From an outside perspective it looks like you are saying you
| know what is best but can't convince anybody of it? Is
| everyone around you incompetent or is it possible there are
| different priorities?
| TOGoS wrote:
| I think it's not different priorities so much as an
| organization that has ossified around a particular way of
| doing things, and when problems are detected (like "why
| does it take 2 weeks to add a column to a table"), the
| solution is to cram more cooks into the kitchen. If I bring
| this up I am basically told "well we can't do anything
| about that." So I've learned to keep my mouth shut when the
| scrum leader asks if there's anything keeping me from doing
| my job rather than rattling off the latest of many
| organizational problems that have made my job 1000x harder
| than it needs to be.
|
| I have worked at places where people are competent and have
| slightly different priorities than I do. This is very
| different.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| I read a third of the article.
| wdh505 wrote:
| https://rationalbreaks.vercel.app/
|
| Per the comments someone made a web app for this already
| executive wrote:
| tldr: work 18 hours, sleep 6 hours
| hintymad wrote:
| > 1/5: 50 mins work + 10 mins breaks per hour. Working 5/6 of the
| time. Hard
|
| This is what school classes do? Not sure if that can be called
| hard.
| DylanDmitri wrote:
| Passive listening vs. Active creation. Also I supplemented my
| classes with doodle breaks.
| rwmj wrote:
| Is there some (or any) scientific basis for this? I couldn't find
| any justification or references in the article, although my
| apologies in advance if I missed them.
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