[HN Gopher] Poisoning the Day
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Poisoning the Day
Author : tollandlebas
Score : 163 points
Date : 2024-11-22 11:23 UTC (4 days ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (ashore.io)
| rob74 wrote:
| > _the producer of pretty much every contemporary pop singer
| you've heard of_
|
| While his portfolio is no doubt impressive (including names such
| as Taylor Swift, Lana del Rey and Lorde), this is still a bit too
| much hyperbole for my taste...
| jheriko wrote:
| but none of these people are actually good, so its ok.
| aflukasz wrote:
| Fun take.
|
| I suggest countering it with a concept of "day reusability". You
| know, just as with rockets...
| cadamsau wrote:
| Seems to be the exhaustion that happens when you've built up
| waste products that need to be cleared by sleep.
|
| But has anyone found success re-establishing that fresh mind
| without sleeping?
|
| Maybe meditation can help?
| ClearAndPresent wrote:
| You might enjoy this discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41942096
| sudahtigabulan wrote:
| The pattern didn't work on me, but maybe because I only
| watched a couple of cycles on my phone.
|
| Has anyone had the experience where if you try to watch an
| anthill (or just many ants in one place), your vision gets
| out of focus after a couple of seconds? And you can't just
| re-focus, even after turning away from the ants. It takes a
| while until you are able to focus again.
|
| It's very relaxing. I'm wondering if this is the same effect
| they are after with the animation.
| GistNoesis wrote:
| The Magic of Not Giving a F** :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwRzjFQa_Og
| WJW wrote:
| It's always been ironic that a book about not caring what
| other people think needs to censor the word "fuck" in its
| very title.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| That book is full of ironies. It is the energy drink
| equivalent of motivation.
| dainiusse wrote:
| Perhaps nsdr (popularized by Huberman).
| cess11 wrote:
| "Helpfully, this is one area of productivity where people with
| children are actually ahead of the curve.
|
| Because kids are professional day poisoners."
|
| When it's legal and otherwise sound I prefer to work and do
| business with parents for partly this reason. If they've managed
| to navigate the first few years of broken sleep and don't use
| work as escapism, then they're probably pretty hardy.
| ndjdjddjsjj wrote:
| If you want something done ask the busiest person you know
| Etheryte wrote:
| This feels like an incredibly elaborate way to say that he's a
| morning person. There's plenty of people for whom the entire
| thing works the exact opposite, and of course loads of people
| everywhere in between. I wouldn't really read deep into this,
| it's one of those takes that tries really hard to sound profound,
| but it really isn't.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| Did you read the article?, is about doing the importnat stuff
| when no one is around to distract you. >Not an early riser? No
| problem, just flip it.
|
| Avoid the day. And when it's done, that's when your focussed
| work starts (my favourite adherent of this approach is Demis
| Hassabis: who works a "second day" from between 11pm and 4am).
| Y_Y wrote:
| I read the article and had the same response as GP. I don't
| know on what basis the author believes you can "flip it", but
| it seems at odds with the idea that at some point your day is
| "poisoned" and the rest must be written off, presumably until
| you can reset it by sleeping.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I guess it follows that one should... take a nap in
| between?
| UnreachableCode wrote:
| How do you flip it though? What does that really mean?
| ted_bunny wrote:
| Maybe it means finding an antidote rather than a poison.
| Dealing with bullshit first until you get inspired, and
| then doing the focused work.
| boo-ga-ga wrote:
| It can be a different thing for each person. For example,
| you might have some evening ritual that allows you to
| refresh your mind. Like an easy nice run. And then, with
| disabled notifications and clear mind, you can tackle your
| creative endeavors:).
| Tade0 wrote:
| I find that advice vague. What does "avoiding the day" even
| mean?
|
| Anyway, for me it was easier to wake up earlier than try to
| do focused work after an exhausting day with children. Doing
| stuff in the middle of the night is a privilege of the
| childless anyway.
| jeltz wrote:
| Nah, I have several friends who work in the middle of the
| night after the kids have gone to sleep. That seems to be
| the the optimal solution for evening persons with kids.
| glitchc wrote:
| This is not possible to do in most workplaces, unless it's
| remote and the time zone difference works in your favour.
| frou_dh wrote:
| If you don't wanna read elaborations on known concepts then
| don't read articles.
|
| I think simplistic terms like "morning person" and "night owl"
| are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_cliche
| applied to identity. Much like "introvert" and "extrovert".
| card_zero wrote:
| Well I think they refer to the genetic make-up of the
| circadian timing system, as mentioned in
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_owl .
| vundercind wrote:
| Most modern night owls just have very bright whole-house
| lighting and a world-class 24/7 carnival in their pockets.
| neilv wrote:
| Does the following part mean they're a morning person, or is it
| orthogonal?
|
| > _"Every day is a new beginning. You wake up and at some point
| in the day, someone shoots up a school, or something's going on
| with your family, or you wake up and eat the wrong thing. And
| then you're done. Emotionally cooked. Literally and emotionally
| poisoned._
|
| > _Every day I wake up and can get to the studio before
| something has shattered my existence, I am grateful. And I can
| do things._
| safety1st wrote:
| Yeah it sounds like he's just terminally online. The whole
| idea here did not resonate with me at all. If I have serious
| work to do I isolate myself and do it until it's done or I'm
| out of steam.
|
| If the day "poisons" me that means I should have been more
| disciplined - the correct answer to consuming news media, for
| instance, is always to consume less of it. If someone is
| consistently poisoning my day the answer is to reduce contact
| with them.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| That's what he says, though, at least in the context of
| Antonoff. He gets to the studio and gets to work without
| being sidetracked or letting other things sidetrack him.
| The "poison" is just the distractions to avoid.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Yes, this means he's a morning person. I feel great in the
| evening because I'm done with all the shit that happened
| during the day, now it's finally "me-time". There's nothing
| like a sudden wave of energy at 3AM. In the mornings I always
| think about all the unpleasant stuff that is going to happen
| during the day.
| nomilk wrote:
| Tangental but I noted this quote from 4HWW:
|
| > Ask: if this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be
| satisfied with my day? Don't ever arrive at your computer
| without a clear list of priorities, you'll just read
| unassociated email and scramble your brain for the day.
|
| When I read that last bit ("scramble your brain") I had a
| profound sense of agreement that this was incredibly applicable
| to me. I feel like distractions 'poison' my vibe, productivity,
| priorities, and most importantly, distract that bit of my brain
| that ticks away in the background working on important creative
| stuff. When it's distracted with news, emails, or other junk,
| it's unavailable to work on creative/important problems that
| actually matter.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Is 4hww 4 hour work week, the book, that you're referring to?
| It's a good quote!
| postoplust wrote:
| (not OP) Yes, the quoted strategy is from The 4-Hour
| Workweek (Ferriss 2007)
| omgtehlion wrote:
| Maybe he is, but the advice stays for "evening-persons" too.
| I'm not an early bird, but I noticed that I am most productive
| when I pull all-nighters, when nothing happens and when no one
| bothers me. With age it is harder and harder to do though...
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Exactly this.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > This feels like an incredibly elaborate way to say that he's
| a morning person.
|
| If you read the whole article there's a section dedicated to
| evening people.
|
| Regardless, the advice is about avoiding emotionally draining
| stimuli until you've accomplished what you want to do for the
| day.
|
| You can wake up at noon and still do that. The root problem is
| that people are consuming large amounts of negative news and
| social media early in the day and draining their mental
| capacity before they even get started on what they want to do.
|
| I see this all the time in, for example, junior hires. Some of
| them will tell me they're exhausted or they have no time to do
| anything outside of their 40 hour workweek. When I ask some
| questions to figure out where their time is going every day, it
| always comes down to spending so much time on phones and
| watching Netflix that their time and energy are fully consumed
| before they have a chance at anything else.
|
| The advice in the article is good and it's not about being a
| morning person.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > You can wake up at noon and still do that.
|
| That's not necessarily true. If you're a morning person
| managing other people that are not morning people but insist
| on having daily meetings in the morning, you're an asshole. I
| find meetings early in the morning sadistic and way more
| draining than reading the news, but I'm not the type that
| gets emotional about the news while I will react negatively
| in an early meeting at the drop of a pin. It's not about
| needing coffee nor did I get up on the wrong side of the bed
| or whatever demeaning quip you want to offer. I'm not up to
| speed until later in the day, and forcing me to pretend I am
| is just rude. This is the biggest downside to WFH where
| everyone can live in whatever timezone so someone's afternoon
| meeting is my morning rather than just scheduling the meeting
| where everyone is on the same schedule. It's one of the few
| things about working in an office I can appreciate.
| Definitely not to be misread as a vote for RTO.
| adamauckland wrote:
| If you're a morning person and you're scheduling meetings
| for the morning you're literally wasting your period of
| productivity.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I couldn't agree more
| tdeck wrote:
| Unless the closest you ever get to productivity is having
| meetings :).
| groby_b wrote:
| > If you're a morning person managing other people that are
| not morning people but insist on having daily meetings in
| the morning, you're an asshole.
|
| This of course raises the question why forcing morning
| meetings on morning people is an asshole move, but forcing
| morning people to meet afternoon people in the afternoon is
| OK.
|
| Can I suggest that maybe we all need to put on our big-
| boy/girl pants and accept that the world has more people
| than ourselves? And that this means we all need to
| compromise from time to time?
|
| It is absolutely impossible to get any team efforts done in
| a world where everybody insists we all exclusively work in
| their own preferred style of work.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _If you read the whole article there's a section dedicated
| to evening people._
|
| It's a perfunctory mention of the exact kind morning people
| commonly throw out to superficially address an evening
| person's actual constraints.
|
| The article's whole thesis is that after some point in the
| day your emotions will end up fried. An evening person can't
| simply flip the arrow of time to make it so that _before_
| that point in the day, their emotions have started off fried
| but then get unfried afterwards. Rather completely different
| approaches are needed.
|
| The most important part of any meta thinking is to know
| thyself. I'm sure this article is thoroughly useful for a
| subset of people, but not me. It would be nice if authors
| were upfront about the constraints they are writing from, and
| especially if they didn't try to hand wave them away.
|
| For myself, the news does not significantly affect my
| emotions more than a handful of times per year. I'm certainly
| not getting exposed to it or other goings-on through
| adversarial notifications. And my actual mobile pocket device
| generally lives by the door. Those are basic table stakes for
| _my own_ existence.
| rolisz wrote:
| I have small kids, so at the moment I'm a "whenever I have
| 5-10 quiet minutes" at a time person.
|
| But I remember that I used to be an evening person. And
| what I remember is that in the evening things got quiet in
| my head. Yes, usually "emotional" things happened during
| the day, but after 8-9 PM I had a boost of clarity and
| could get some difficult tasks.
| pseudosavant wrote:
| No matter what time you are getting up, I think this is
| suggesting that if there is something important for you to
| get done, it is better to get it done sooner than later. I
| am a complete night owl, but leaving the most important
| items to the end of the day has rarely been a winning plan
| for me.
| vonnik wrote:
| He's really talking about how to maintain focus and
| neurological energy, but doesn't have the right words.
|
| Fwiw, I wrote about it here:
|
| https://vonnik.substack.com/p/the-inner-game-of-knowledge-wo...
|
| It's something I struggle with, too.
| high_priest wrote:
| I love how you have connected the dots between evaluation of
| ideas, metaphorisation & invention of consciousness. Linking
| to relevant book.
|
| I've come up with the same, internalised, realisation, based
| on my relation with religion & science. Both are a way to
| describe our world with metaphors (e.g. electric & water
| currents). At some point, for some people, one is a more
| attractive way, to describe our relation with the
| environment.
| julianeon wrote:
| There's something it it though that's not interchangeable, that
| becomes a bigger factor as you age (see: that Bezos quote).
|
| The brain is becoming more physically tired during the day. At
| a certain point, say 5pm, it's done: the accumulated wear and
| tear is too much. Try again after sleeping.
|
| This might not be a concern at 20 but is at 60 (Bezos' age).
| devjab wrote:
| I think there is some sound advice in there that just happens
| to fit into his mornings. Take always like having your day
| poisoned by news, stuff in your life and so on would also occur
| for you if you woke up later. I do agree that it's not that
| deep. Anyone who's bipolar has ADHD or other "doesn't fit into
| the 9-5 society" issues can likely tell you how their emotions
| will fuck with their productivity.
|
| There isn't a whole lot you can do with it if you don't have
| the freedom to work when you're energised and stop when you're
| not. A lot of us in the software industry have the advantage of
| being able to not work a lot during "normal hours" and then
| pull off an entire weeks worth of work on a Saturday, but a lot
| of us don't. I worked 30 hours a week for a while (37 is normal
| in Denmark) and I consistently scores between 20-30% better on
| our infernal measurements for quality and productivity than I
| did when I went back to a 37 hour week. Not because I was doing
| anything different, felt less motivated or was intentionally
| trying to do anything different. I was simply more tired and it
| impacted me more than it might do to neurotypical (or whatever
| we call healthy people these days). Of course for me personally
| the 37 hours are way better because it pays 20% more.
|
| Anyway, even if you aren't neurodivergent like me I still
| suspect you're not cut out to do office work as though you were
| at an assembly line. Which is really where the modern "work
| week" originated. Cutting down on distractions, getting enough
| sleep and so on will obviously work in your favour. So yeah, I
| agree with you.
| shubhamjain wrote:
| Focusing on a small unit of work (e.g, a day), can make you lose
| sight of the bigger picture, like how you need a break, or what
| you're working on isn't motivating anymore, which is why I kind
| of dislike most productivity advice.
|
| Too much focus on how to optimise your day, your schedule and not
| much emphasis on how to feel motivated about work you're doing.
| f3b5 wrote:
| > _I sincerely doubt that anything great in the history of
| humanity has been built in the post-lunch afternoon_
|
| Interestingly, late afternoon is the time that I am most
| productive when coding. At 6pm when work ends I often feel that I
| could easily go on for another few hours
| import_gravity wrote:
| I'm in the same boat where 6pm comes and I actually have a hard
| time shifting gears from writing code or thinking intensely
| about my project. I've been working on my focus and starting
| earlier in the day. The difference is when I get on track
| earlier I still chug along until the end of the day. Then by
| night I'm exhausted and go to bed early.
|
| Work/life balance is important so I should probably listen to
| my body and focus when it wants to.
| brador wrote:
| There is option 2: work slower, with a list.
| afh1 wrote:
| If you don't have a good night's sleep your day is poisoned from
| the start. That compounds to life-ruining status if not quickly
| addressed.
| j_crick wrote:
| > no sudden alert about Putin's latest military actions
|
| I think it's a bit condescending towards people whose day quite
| physically depends on the absence of this kind of news. It's not
| like Putin is invading Manhattan currently.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Having moved to an entirely on-sore job, I really long for the
| days when I could wake up around noon and be incredibly
| productive after 20:00. Nowadays, it is a struggle to wake up at
| 06:00 and get to the office to get some things done before the
| heat of the day sets in. I resonate with this deeply.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This is good advice, though people are getting distracted by the
| unnecessary morning/evening talk.
|
| This is a real problem for people who have a habit of reading a
| lot of news and social media first thing in the morning. Some
| people show up to work having consumed hours of the latest rage-
| bait on Reddit, sky-is-falling takes on Twitter, and news about
| the latest wars, disasters, and political problems. They're
| emotionally and mentally burdened before they even get started on
| work.
|
| It often manifests as people claiming they don't have any time to
| do anything outside of their 40 hour work weeks. I've mentored
| several early 20s people working relatively easy jobs, having no
| significant other or kids, and no real obligations who lament how
| they never have time or energy to do anything after working 40
| hour jobs. Every single time having them check their screen time
| stats results in eye-popping amounts of Reddit, Twitter, TikTok,
| and other endless streams of stress and ragebait content. Putting
| a 30 minute limit on these apps with their phone's built-in tools
| can work wonders on fixing their lives.
| jheriko wrote:
| there are some interesting points here but a lot of it is just
| acknowledging lack of quality and willpower.
|
| do better. try harder.
| world2vec wrote:
| This was a vapid and useless article. "Just be a morning person",
| gee thanks that sounds awful to me.
| cocacola1 wrote:
| What they're saying is that I shouldn't be scrolling Hacker News
| at 7:28am. Understood.
|
| This advice holds true for me. The days I don't have anything
| bother me go well. The days that I do, don't.
| brailsafe wrote:
| True, this is why Deep Work is a book people like. Optimizing how
| much time you can spend without any interruption, immersed in
| where you attention needs to be and not where it doesn't, but
| don't expect too much of it, it'll get poisoned and it's not
| sustainable to think or act otherwise.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Generally agree with the sentiment that you should stop trying to
| create if you lose the spark. Don't understand this idea that you
| HAVE to pay attention to social media and world news. Just don't?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm definitely also heading increasingly to "digital minimalism".
|
| Or maybe _online_ minimalism. The "digital" is kind of
| orthogonal.
| ddellacosta wrote:
| For someone who suffers from anxiety like myself, and therefore
| empathizes well with the perspective in the article (i.e. an
| emotionally-charged event can have an impact on my productivity):
|
| I think a better approach is to focus on becoming emotionally
| resilient so that things don't overwhelm so easily, or so it's
| possible to reset even given an emotional challenge. At least,
| that has been critical in my life to avoid spirals of self-
| recrimination or agonizing over things I can't affect or control.
| munificent wrote:
| I agree with this, but I also don't think the strategies are
| mutually exclusive.
|
| Especially if what you want to be productive on is art, it's
| good to take advantage of the time when you feel most connected
| to yourself. But I find that connection requires lowering _all_
| of my defenses, including to the outside world. So it 's still
| best to do that before I've been beset by the news.
|
| At the same time, being more resilient can help me get other
| useful stuff done through the rest of the day, including stuff
| that is sort of adjacent to the art-making process. (For
| example, I make music and it's hard to find an inspired melody
| later in the afternoon when my head is aswirl with the chaos of
| the world, but I can still putter around with sound design and
| mixing.)
| ddellacosta wrote:
| > I agree with this, but I also don't think the strategies
| are mutually exclusive.
|
| Yes I absolutely agree, and I should have said it. Thank you
| for making this point.
|
| Emotional resiliency is not just about receiving negative
| stimuli and recovering from that. It's as much about knowing
| yourself well, knowing what kinds of situations or stimuli
| you should try to avoid or minimize, and knowing where and
| when you can best function to your full potential. So I very
| much agree with what you're saying.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Weird pattern, that posts with titles like that seem to surface
| around Thanksgiving.
|
| Russian? Chinese?
| workflowing wrote:
| American?
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Could be. The time I noticed it in a travel nexus, everyone
| (young adult, white) was speaking unaccented English. (again,
| just before TG)
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I think I'm pretty good at productivity, and to me it's the
| opposite. You don't let the outside events poison the day. You
| know how to get things done despite all that. If your day is
| controlling you, you'll never control your destiny.
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