[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 : 105 points
Date : 2024-05-16 14:35 UTC (2 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.
| sambazi wrote:
| > 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.
|
| think of a handyman that works so efficiently that he
| effectively has no margin.
| 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.
| boppo1 wrote:
| >scrum master will scold me if I work on them, so instead I
| sit on my hands
|
| Do the programming tasks anyway. I have found that being
| productive will not get you fired, even if it makes a power-
| junkie mad that you're not on their leash.
| pacifi30 wrote:
| Even more meta, make food for a family?
| pif wrote:
| Welcome to the software development world!
|
| Software developing is so much more than web programming, oh
| boy!
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| I'm actually a DE but with this market it's difficult to
| transfer to anything else. I'll probably just switch jobs
| frequently and keep the freshness, grit for 10 years and get
| the hell of the indistry.
| 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
| em-bee wrote:
| you got the math wrong. that's a quarter break
|
| it's 12 hours of work and 8 hours of sleep.
|
| and suddenly it all makes sense. while your mind takes a break
| from work, your body isn't, and that's why it needs those 8
| hours of sleep.
| pif wrote:
| actually, it's 16 work and 8 sleep
| em-bee wrote:
| _facepalm_
|
| yes of course!
|
| _scrambles off to look for a brown paper bag_
| quectophoton wrote:
| There seems to be confusion in replies, but this math seems
| correct to me (assuming I understood the article correctly):
| 18 + (18/3) = 24
| 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.
| benatkin wrote:
| > This kind of pattern is natural; research confirms that
| people tend to take longer breaks after working for longer.
| (One-third is just a recommendation; you can use other break
| fractions if you prefer.)
|
| There is a link on the word _research_. That seems like a
| justification to me. I prefer just to casually take it into
| account though.
| telotortium wrote:
| I made an Emacs Org-mode package for this:
| https://github.com/telotortium/org-pomodoro-third-time
| timwaagh wrote:
| If you're enjoying it well enough this is typically not a
| concern. I do take breaks when the program is building though. Or
| when I'm not feeling it. Please don't try to replace your
| feelings by ridiculously rigid schemes.
| gregoriol wrote:
| Same here: using timing for things like breaks is stressful and
| adds constraints, when the idea of a break is actually to get
| away from those
| em-bee wrote:
| right. the time tracking needs to be automatic in some form.
| a small tool that tracks your working time (plenty of those
| to choose from, and maybe there is even one that tracks your
| pause time too) and then a break activity that is easy to
| measure.
|
| the important part is to set things up in a way so i don't
| have to think about it.
| em-bee wrote:
| i like the idea of breaktime accumulating based on the time
| worked. it makes sense. it also means that after an 8 hour work
| day i deserve to sit down in the evening and relax for an hour or
| two without feeling guilty.
|
| however i disagree that an interruption at the door, or going out
| for errands counts as break time. it depends on what exactly
| happens, but dealing with an interruption, or driving a car,
| paying attention to catch a bus or train, are not relaxing.
| personally i try to combine errands with going for a walk, so
| that partly counts as a break. but dealing with other people can
| be stressful (especially for introverts) so that's not a valid
| break.
|
| for a break you need an activity that you enjoy and that allows
| you to relax.
|
| when i am dealing with people a lot, then hacking on a side
| project for fun becomes my break.
|
| when i work alone on the computer, socializing with others can be
| my break.
|
| but after a day of working and socializing i need some alone time
| to unwind.
| EmilioPeJu wrote:
| The way I prefer is slightly different: I work for as long as I
| like, then I break for as long as I like.
| nicbou wrote:
| I found that I'm a lot happier doing things "according to need"
| instead of forcing my human body to follow machine patterns.
|
| However forcing myself to take a break every hour helped a lot
| with chores, and with eating and hydrating properly.
| zacharylee wrote:
| It's really more important to have your own alone time.
| fenesiistvan wrote:
| Yeah. Treat yourself like a robot. What can go wrong... :)
| washywashy wrote:
| I might find this ultra-productivity useful if it was at a
| business or side-project I owned or ran, where I have a large
| stake in the outcomes and there's not enough people to do
| everything. But, if working for a medium to large-sized company,
| the ROI on this type of productivity just isn't there. I'm not
| saying don't be professional and work hard and do your job, but
| in my experience if you race ahead because of some productivity
| hack you often end up either completing something that has
| changed from how you did it by the time it is needed, or no one
| really notices that you're cranking out extra tasks all the time.
| I guess I could see a benefit if you use this to work smarter not
| harder and automate out a lot of mundane drudgery in your day-to-
| day.
| x1xx wrote:
| After reading the title I was hoping to find something about
| third time, same as third space: time that's neither work nor
| rest. That would be something!
| GodotX wrote:
| I love this so much that I actually made a gamified version of it
| a few months ago! https://focumon.com/about
| navane wrote:
| This reads like a skit.
|
| Divide your time in communication and focus work. After 3 units
| of work, do 1 unit of communication. Or any other ratio.
|
| Work from home for x days l, then work at the office for y days.
|
| Work for five units of time, then don't work for two units of
| time. We can call it week and weekend.
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