[HN Gopher] My Truck Desk
___________________________________________________________________
My Truck Desk
Author : zdw
Score : 411 points
Date : 2025-11-04 02:37 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theparisreview.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theparisreview.org)
| getpokedagain wrote:
| Awesome story. Sometimes over enough time a little is enough.
| herewulf wrote:
| From the title I had imagined that someone had turned the cab of
| a truck into a dedicated computer workspace. Hmm...
| hk1337 wrote:
| yeah, I feel like the missing desk could be resolved with a
| trip to Home Depot and a jig saw.
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| Lovely essay, tone reminds me this book which has a similar vibe.
|
| https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/truck-on-rebuilding-a-worn-out...
| jcjmcclean wrote:
| I think there may be an issue with your link, it's just taking
| me to the thrift books home page.
|
| I also really enjoyed the writing style.
| qmmmur wrote:
| I suspect it is this book.
|
| https://www.booktopia.com.au/truck-john-
| jerome/book/97808745...
| teiferer wrote:
| > I hadn't interacted with any of the office staff, but they'd
| seen me.
|
| This story would have taken a very different turn if early on he
| had realized that befriending the office staff would have scored
| him a permanent place in one of those empty unused cubicles. No
| need to be best friends, but just being friendly and forthcoming
| now and then would have avoided their attitude of "who's that
| weirdo let's involve the site manager to get rid of him". It fits
| with his lonely wolf persona though which makes it easier for him
| to be a hero in his story and which he seems to cultivate in
| purpose.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| " if early on he had realized that befriending the office staff
| would have scored him a permanent place"
|
| I feel like you don't have any first hand experience with the
| kind of classist horseshit that is endemic to these kinds of
| work environments.
| teiferer wrote:
| I do, thus my comment.
|
| The key is to use this to your advantage.
| arethuza wrote:
| It depends on the environment - many years ago I used to
| have temp job in the summer working on a large industrial
| plant that had a nice office building where the managers
| and admin staff were based. There were no signs saying
| "temp staff keep out" - and you did occasionally have to go
| in there but it was pretty clear to me that you couldn't go
| and hang out in there - particularly as the temps got all
| the muckiest, smelliest jobs in all weathers.
| criddell wrote:
| In my experience, it isn't necessarily classist horseshit
| that divides office and shop (or field) workers.
|
| > They'd followed my oily bootprints down the hallway and
| begun to leer. Who is this diesel-stinking contractor?
|
| That's probably the real reason. Being a welder is messy,
| stinky work and office workers don't want that in their
| space.
| ofalkaed wrote:
| Being the weirdo frees you from a great many time consuming
| pleasantries. Making friends might secure a permanent place but
| it also means a few minutes from every break will be lost to
| small talk and sometimes the entire break; you see a self
| serving lone wolf casting himself as the hero, I see someone
| just trying to find a way to do what is important to him. I am
| fairly certain that much of the eccentric artist image is just
| frustration over small talk.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| a great many time consuming pleasantries
|
| Oh the horror!
| user_7832 wrote:
| > a great many time consuming pleasantries
|
| > Oh the horror!
|
| Indeed, that is precisely the case for some folks - with
| social anxiety. Or autism. Or a number of other mental
| states.
|
| Maybe they're tired to their bones and barely have energy
| to even have one meal a day? Maybe they lost a loved one
| and never quite recovered since then?
|
| It costs nothing to be polite and assume best intentions
| from the other side.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| In this particular case, there's someone whose most
| precious moments are their breaks during the day, and
| rather than saying "good on them for finding a way to do
| the thing they are most passionate about" the response is
| "gee they should have used that extremely limited free time
| to.... have the most shallow of conversations"?
|
| Pleasantries are fine, but that was never going to be a
| long term solution for him. He needed a space that was
| always available to him, where he is always welcome. For
| better or worse, that's not the site office. (Even if it
| worked on that job, you don't stay in one place as a
| contractor)
| sam-cop-vimes wrote:
| Indeed - and break times don't seem to be very long. "fifteen
| minutes for coffee and then half an hour for lunch" - no time
| to waste on pleasantries when that is all the break you get!
|
| This guy is amazing - the dedication to his craft is
| inspiring!
| oofbey wrote:
| Super inspiring. A lot to read between the lines. Probably
| fairly introverted - prefers to be by himself than joking
| with coworkers. But not so much so that he can't. He's just
| really driven to be creative. And found a way, even though
| life took him down a very different path. "Let your wallet
| be your guide" is a good reminder that realistically
| there's probably no chance he could make a living as a
| writer - very few can. But he made it happen anyway. Bravo!
| wmeredith wrote:
| People doing exclusively what's important to them is fine
| until they need a network/community.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| Isn't the point of this essay that he doesn't? I'm so
| confused by these responses
|
| It's a great piece of writing. We don't have enough
| contractors with truck desks writing or programming or
| making art.
| saghm wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1332/
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> a great many time consuming pleasantries.
|
| It makes me sad that pleasantries are viewed by some as a
| time-consuming chore. You can recognize that person who
| really cares about how you are doing or what you did on the
| weekend, and it makes you warm inside. You don't need to
| shoot the shit for 30 minutes, but human interaction is what
| builds community, and most of us like that; all of us need
| it.
| layer8 wrote:
| For some people, "pleasantries" are mentally taxing, and
| while you can force yourself to feign interest in someone's
| random weekend activity, you can't force yourself to
| actually find it interesting if in reality you find it
| dull. The "chore" isn't that it consumes time, it's that
| not everyone finds it a pleasant thing to do with any
| random person.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| It's a mixture for sure. My time is divided between a WfH
| desk and a (shared with one coworker) private office at a
| Co-working space. I love my coworker dearly. I also have
| made a handful of friends in the space that, like you say,
| they truly care about how I'm found and that feeling is
| reciprocal and definitely makes me warm and fuzzy.
|
| And sometimes I just really need to be able to walk over to
| the coffee maker and refill my cup while processing a
| complex problem in my head. Unfortunately due to my brain
| wiring, having even that 5 minute conversation makes a ton
| of that problem solving context evaporate and it's
| exceptionally frustrating when that happens.
|
| I'm fortunate that I can plan where I'm going to be working
| based on the probability of working on hard problems on a
| given day. The pleasantries are deeply pleasing for me,
| except when they're not.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Community is built through third places, neighbourship,
| inter-family ties, and other deep and lasting connections
| between people. That a workplace is a place for community
| is an unfortunate belief that arose in the USA in recent
| _Bowling Alone_ decades just because Americans largely
| don't perceive any other time and place for community.
| jimbokun wrote:
| It's true that work place socialization is not
| sufficient, but back when all those forms of community
| were in abundance people still engaged in workplace
| pleasantries.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Yes, but they didn't _need_ workplace pleasantries in
| order to feel community like the OP suggested.
| jimbokun wrote:
| But when you are trying to finish writing projects in 10
| minute chunks that really adds up.
| ZiiS wrote:
| Someone who can write for the Paris Review and play politics
| would end up the site managers boss before he could stop it.
| ckemere wrote:
| I had a friend who worked at a plant and was an author on the
| side. I don't think there's any evidence that good novelists
| (let alone merely promising ones) are likely to have
| personalities that make them likely to be bosses.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| How does this union thing work - getting laid off then
| being brought back on again when work picks up? How do you
| get to be on the union list?
|
| (I'm in the UK, and I tend to associate that kind of
| approach to casual employment with dock work in sea ports.
| That ended with containerisation in the 1980s)
| runjake wrote:
| Former "scummy contractor" here. So, a "contractor" being in
| the office is considered a mortal sin.
|
| I don't know why this is, but it's always been this way.
| Workers _don't go into the building_.
|
| The office staff don't want you there and if you stay too long,
| your fellow workers will rib you for hours about going to "the
| dark side".
|
| In my few years at the job, I had only been in the office area
| for 5 minutes to fill out some sort of paperwork. Most of that
| from when I was hired.
|
| Seeing as he was in there on multiple occasions, he probably
| did establish rapport with the office staff, but left that out
| because it messed with the flow of the story.
| sarchertech wrote:
| I worked at a warehouse tech startup that had offices
| attached to our warehouse. The conference rooms looked out
| over the warehouse floor through big glass walls.
|
| The warehouse workers were explicitly banned from entering
| the office space. I assume because the company didn't want
| them enjoying the free snacks and catered lunches.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Reminds me of the ad I saw for the Ford transit van - whose
| steering wheel can be converted into a 'desk'/laptop table:
|
| https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a45497067/ford-transit-ste...
| wildzzz wrote:
| I've rented pickup trucks before and I've always been so
| fascinated with the hanging folder rails in the center console.
| I have no need to work out of a truck but the fact that you
| could turn it into a mobile office is very cool.
| bluGill wrote:
| It is very common. The foreman on a larger project drives a
| truck and uses it as an office. They need a truck for some
| activities so it can't be a car (often because the tools are
| in the back), but they are spend a significant amount of time
| in the truck doing paperwork. Large jobs will have mobile
| offices brought in for the job. Even if you are a small
| company (think pouring a sidewalk), you still need a place to
| fill out the paperwork so you can bill the customer.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I can see that 10 or more years ago but these days I'd
| think that would all be done on a laptop or tablet.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Lots of small businesses out there that still do
| everything with paper.
| bluGill wrote:
| You still are working with it for long enough to want to
| sit.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| It looks like a great steering wheel that won't fly out the
| window while driving.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| that is a good idea!
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That continent will do anything to avoid producing a work van
| that can outwork a mini-van.
| wmeredith wrote:
| We've got a lot of space.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are a lot of work that a transit van can do that a
| mini-van cannot. There is some work a mini-van is better at.
| Don't make universal statements just so you can snark on
| someone else.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The only thing it can do better than a minivan is haul more
| boxes of bagged air and fit a bigger Amazon decal on the
| side. They're all around under-built and under powered (and
| high strung for the power they do make) for work vehicles
| (beyond light parcel delivery or passenger service) and are
| utterly inappropriate to be upfit into box trucks, or any
| other heavier work vehicle. Whether you're talking about
| Fiat, Mercedes or Ford they're all rife with engineering
| tradeoffs that are moronic unless you intend to sell into a
| market where government inflates the cost of fielding an
| older fleet and your customers will turn their fleets over
| rapidly (Europe) or a market where gas is expensive and
| labor is cheap (ME, Africa).
|
| Want me to go over each make/model and their characteristic
| failures?
|
| They're all crap that will be run circles around by a GMC
| Savannah in every category except fuel economy.
| bradyd wrote:
| A GMC Savannah is not a mini-van.
| fragmede wrote:
| Explain how to fit a GMC Savannah into a compact car
| parking space that's 5 feet shorter than it, with
| vehicles on both ends of that parking space and also the
| GMC is two feet two wide for, and I'll listen to how the
| Nissan NV200 or the Ford Transit van isn't a two ton
| truck.
|
| Obviously if you're hauling a 4 ft cube of depleted
| uranium, it's not going up be up to the task. But getting
| 25 mpg vs a two-ton work truck's _eight_ mpg adds up. A
| lot if you 're driving 300 miles a day. If you're a
| locksmith in a city your hauling needs are different than
| the general contractor or someone more specialized, that
| actually has one ton of equipment and a trailer generator
| to bring to the job site.
|
| The argument that light work vans are small and
| underpowered so no one should use them is the same
| argument as big pickups are big and stupid and no one
| should use them, just from the other direction. Different
| strokes, as appropriate, for different folk who have
| different needs than you.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Explain how to fit a GMC Savannah into a compact car
| parking space that's 5 feet shorter than it
|
| The same way you do a Sprinter. <eyeroll>
|
| You are confusing the Transit and the Transit Connect. I
| actually really love the Transit Connect.
|
| I am complaining about the Transit, Sprinter and their
| ilk.
|
| As an aside, the Ducato is ironically actually best in
| North American markets because none of their the diesel
| engine options are great in terms of ownership cost or
| frequency of downtime but the Pentastar they got when
| they bought Chrysler is ok, if over-taxed to the point of
| lesser reliability in such an application.
| fragmede wrote:
| > I am complaining about the Transit, Sprinter and their
| ilk.
|
| Good thing you specified that in your comment [1] then,
| where you wrote
|
| > Fiat, Mercedes or Ford
|
| and never used the word Sprinter once, so of course I
| should deduce that was the vehicle you were talking
| about, along with the full size Transit, especially since
| the linked Road and Track article was discussing the
| Transit Custom, which has never reached the states and is
| of the smaller NV200 size class, so please forgive me for
| the confusion.
|
| The great thing about the Sprinter is that it's big and
| tall _and_ spacious inside. Unfortunately, the problem
| with the Sprinter is that it 's big and tall, which is a
| real problem in high wind conditions. Yeah it could stand
| to have a bigger engine and beefier chassis, no argument
| from me there, but I have a carpenter friend who uses it
| to haul around his tools and lumber and he loves his so
| much that he bought a second one. The Sprinter's not got
| the powertrain of a GMC Savannah or RAM 2500 or F-250
| Super Duty, but saying it's only good for moving boxes
| full of air is hyperbole.
|
| As far as vehicle turnover goes, given the stronger union
| protections that workers in the trades in Europe get,
| _not_ having to drive a busted 15 year old work truck
| that veers to the left because the suspension is shot and
| gets eight miles to the gallon doesn 't seem like, to me,
| a bad thing! The most brilliant electrician I know owns
| his own business, but is driving a 15-year work truck
| that should have been replaced 10 years ago, but he can't
| afford to replace it.
|
| IMO, the real question is who's going to be first to come
| out with a work truck/van that's comma.ai compatible.
| That thing makes driving long distances so much more
| stomachable. Not going to hold my breath for Waymo or
| Tesla or anybody else to compete there. Well except
| Mercedes, but that still likely to be a premium Mercedes
| car feature for a long time and not something on any of
| their brands work vehicles. Supposedly some F-150's can
| take it, but afaik those ones are the premium package,
| already have Blue Cruise, and aren't fleet vehicles
| anywhere (I'd love to be wrong though!).
|
| [1] https://archive.is/8X2MD
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The opinion that these vans are too light for the uses
| into which they are sold is not a novel one. It is
| probably the predominant one among people who turn
| wrenches on both the old ones and the new ones.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| This is just hubris. These vans are used hard every day
| by people all over Europe. It's not unusual for one to be
| caught loaded to double it's GVWR. Mechanics like what
| they know. The fact that the US manufacturers are
| building vans designed in the 90s using engines designed
| in the 50s undoubtedly means they are easier to work on.
| bluGill wrote:
| The transit has 3060-5110lbs cargo capacity. The pacifica
| minivan 1700 (that seems to be the most though I didn't
| look them all up).
|
| maybe you think they are under powered but the ratings
| allow it and they seem to have no problem when I see
| them. Winning races isn't the point.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| From bumper to bumper these euro vans are designed with
| stereotypical european "well if anything outside of spec
| happens the customer will bring it to the dealer/call a
| tow truck/solve it immediately" and "the customer will
| never exceed any rating" set of assumptions. This is bad
| for the american customer because these assumptions run
| counter to and are in conflict with the American
| customer's assumptions for how much fudge factor is built
| into commercial products. The OEM of course pockets the
| difference.
|
| >The transit has 3060-5110lbs cargo capacity.
|
| I assume that's half ton through 1-ton single rear wheel
| (because 5k would be comically low for a DRW).
|
| The axle they put in the half ton (ford 9.75 semi float)
| isn't gonna live a long life at 3k + vehicle weight. The
| bearing just isn't up to it. They use the same assembly
| on the E-150 so lateral move there. The full float is
| good, but they nerf'd it by spec'ing the bare minimum for
| tube diameter/thickness so you're one "oops that's a way
| bigger pothole than I thought" away from expensive
| problems though they did a very good job on the spindle
| and hubs. I don't think anyone even knows what the
| realistic capacity of a single rear wheel E-350 is. The
| axle tube, hubs, bearings, spindles, etc, are solidly in
| the 10k ballpark, but you literally can't buy a single
| 16" tire that'll get you there. The front suspension is
| also way more maintenance intensive and less stupid proof
| over its life than the I beam system in the E-series
| though I'd say the GMC is comparable. Brakes are probably
| a lateral move but the general unibody construction is
| just gonna have less margin for stupidity/error when
| operating at/above rated capacity. Do that habitually and
| you'll eventually break something that you're not
| supposed to break whereas the legacy van with it's body
| on frame construction will just wear out parts fast. Like
| imagine you get a little sideways in an icey parking lot
| at 10mph. In the old van that's just a bump and a scare.
| In the new van that could be a replacement subframe. The
| customer is expecting the former.
|
| >maybe you think they are under powered
|
| It's not that they're under powered so much as they're
| unnecessarily high strung and over-engineered in the name
| of fuel economy for whatever power level they do have. On
| the Fords you're gonna deal with stupid ecoboost
| problems, wet belts and that stupid valve that makes the
| transmission warm up faster (probably doesn't even pay
| for itself over its life) that you have to drop the
| transmission to replace and the 9.75 rear axle being
| generally unsuited to hauling (though maybe they've fixed
| that at this point, all they needed to do was spec a
| different bearing with more smaller rollers) and
| unnecessarily expensive brake jobs. Ironically, if you
| embrace the low end (which most buyers don't because on
| paper the ecoboost options will save you enough fuel to
| be worth it) Ford's NA V6 is actually really good.
|
| Then on the Mercedes side everything is typical german
| engineering. Tons of "gotta replace X before Y or it will
| Z" gotchas on the 07+ sprinter platforms. You basically
| wind up replacing everything outside the engine but in
| the engine bay over 200k. And everything inside it likes
| to fall apart. Mercedes loves to use over-engineered
| plastic for everything so it works great for the design
| life until the 1-millionth slam after which the door
| won't shut or whatever. Typical "Klaus got a bonus for
| reducing part count or labor operations" type behavior
| that the germans are stereotyped for. They generally buy
| decent transmission from ZF so those are solid
|
| >when I see them
|
| When was the last time you saw an 00s Sprinter? They're
| probably outnumbered by the Dodge vans they replaced at
| this point. When was the last time you saw a Transit that
| wasn't in "new enough to still be kinda nice" condition.
| There's a reason you see old E-series and not old
| Transits despite the overlapping production years putting
| the last of the E-series and first of the Transit right
| about what should be perfect "old work van" age.
|
| The problem with these Euro vans is that every
| maintenance event has one more digit in front of the
| decimal than the more well rounded north american vans
| they replaced and they don't require any less maintenance
| so they're a money suck to own unless you're turning your
| fleet over rapidly (like swanky airport shuttles and
| property management companies and whatnot do). This
| obviously doesn't matter if you expect your average
| customer to trade in a 5yr due to MOT nitpicking and the
| trade in will be sold to Africa where any work it needs
| can be done for peanuts.
|
| In conclusion, I'm not talking about a categorical
| difference, but European vans are just not properly
| engineered for the North American customer. Yes, the
| customer can make do, but they're making do with
| something that's a little worse across the board and will
| spend a little more time in the shop over its life and
| with higher bills for marginally better fuel economy they
| don't benefit from and interior space they weren't
| constrained by. This is why GM still sells the Savannah
| and Ford still doesn't consider the Transit a replacement
| for the E-series when it comes to selling cab and chassis
| vehicles.
| bluGill wrote:
| > When was the last time you saw an 00s Sprinter?
|
| Commercial vehicles are used hard and long. They wear out
| much faster than private cars. Sure they tend to go a lot
| more miles, but the time is not long. I don't see many
| vehicles from the 00s - the ones you do are either rusty
| (road salt gets them where I live), or they are collector
| vehicles that are rarely driven.
|
| I almost never see Dodge cans either - and when I do they
| don't look roadworthy.
| jorvi wrote:
| > They're all crap that will be run circles around by a
| GMC Savannah in every category except fuel economy.
|
| Well, when gasoline is nearly $10 a gallon a good fuel
| economy kind of becomes the primary goal.
|
| Its like complaining European and Japanese cars are bad
| at everything except being small.
|
| Good luck finding parking in Paris or Tokyo with a Ford
| F150 or Dodge Ram.
| fragmede wrote:
| For better or worse, "steering wheel lap desk" is what you've
| looking for, no Ford Transit van required.
| Gigamouse wrote:
| Lovely. I kind of wanted to hear this guy reading this out aloud
| metalman wrote:
| I know a good few who live versions of this particular life,
| feral creatives living inside the guts of our industrial
| complexes, working high steel, marine,etc. The drive for this
| goes way back, all the way to human origins, perhaps further to
| progenetor species, something to do with describing our world and
| rearanging the bits and pieces into a pleasant form, even in the
| harshest environments, something right, placed, just so the other
| impulse to then smash everything and have palaces and vast halls
| on the ruins is less explicable, inspite of the huge efforts at
| rationalisation, but also self evident
| probably_wrong wrote:
| > _" (...) I've written stories and parts of my novels during
| breaks--fifteen minutes for coffee and then half an hour for
| lunch. (...) Most artists I know are like this. Finding time to
| make art while working another job, or taking care of loved
| ones."_
|
| Has anyone had success finding a way do this, but for drawing?
| I've been trying to make time for a small comic project and,
| while I do have plenty of fifteen-minutes breaks I could use,
| those breaks are usually in places where drawing is impractical
| (such as buses).
| farleykr wrote:
| What are the aspects of working on a bus that make it
| impractical? When I find myself in your position usually I end
| up realizing I'm self-conscious about people seeing what I'm
| doing more than I'm concerned about any practical downside or
| benefit.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| In my case it's mostly the shaking - trains are mostly fine,
| but buses are just too unstable. They also tend to be more
| crowded, meaning I need to tuck my elbows in and adopt an
| even-less-stable position which compounds the problem.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| All I can suggest is to make it as easy and cheap as you can
| manage. Carry a sketchbook and just get in the habit of making
| quick drawings. If you're into painting, watercolor is pretty
| portable; oil is less so, but try a search for "pochade box" to
| get a few ideas.
| mailund wrote:
| I'm having the same question about sewing. I feel like the lead
| time to first stitch is quite high, but I think I could make
| quite significant progress on my projects if I could use the
| all small 15-minute breaks to make some progress.
| bluGill wrote:
| The question is how far can you break things down. Also what
| your job is (if you need to wash your hands before starting
| that matters)
|
| If you are sewing a ballroom dress (that is any very large
| project) you probably need longer stretches to get it
| together. However you could take an individual piece and put
| in a few embroidery stitches.
|
| Still it does feel like you get 2 minutes of work for your 15
| minute break
| fragmede wrote:
| This won't work for the sewing itself, but while Siri
| itself is still a hot mess, it can launch shortcuts into
| other apps. Aka can ask "Siri captains log" and I've
| configured my phone to launch voice recording so I can
| journal via voice. That isn't the same as actually sewing,
| but organizing my thoughts has value, especially if it's
| during time I otherwise would have burned.
| sussexby wrote:
| Roald Dahl approved.
|
| https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/literarytourist/?p=351
| neinuke wrote:
| Seems much better than a lap desk, as it probably gets air
| flow.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I use this:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/X8tBXUg
|
| https://www.amazon.com/JUSTTOP-Steering-Multifunctional-Port...
| geocrasher wrote:
| Just added to my cart. Thanks. Working from the car sucks, but
| it happens now and then. This should make it a lot easier.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Great!
| throw0101c wrote:
| Working on the road has become so prevalent for many field folks
| that Ford's F-150 has a "Center Console Work Surface" (at least
| as an option):
|
| * https://www.ford.ca/support/how-tos/more-vehicle-topics/f-se...
|
| * https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-the-for...
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GyZgeM7JM0
| munificent wrote:
| Annoying if you're a lefty. :(
| NAR8789 wrote:
| Import one from Australia or the UK? Someplace where they
| drive on the left?
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Or just learn not to be a lefty! So easy.
| RankingMember wrote:
| I'm very impressed by (and jealous of) anyone who can context
| switch fast enough to make use of 10 or 15 minutes here and there
| to do a completely different task (and actually have it be
| coherent).
| scandox wrote:
| Yes I also cannot do this. I comfort myself by believing the
| nature of their work allows them some sort of meditation on
| what they will do in those little gaps...but they may just have
| an enviable power that I do not have.
| dave78 wrote:
| I got much better at this when my kids were born, because it
| was the only way I could get work done on some of my
| (computing) side projects. I went from having hours of
| uninterrupted "in the zone" time during evenings and weekends
| to having much less time overall, and what time I did have was
| broken into smaller chunks.
|
| I got much more thoughtful about how I used my time and also
| got better at pre-planning what I had to do so as to make the
| best use of it. Mostly the key was to just try to tackle
| smaller tasks and accept that progress would be slow.
| cluoma wrote:
| That's been exactly my experience as well. Sometimes doing a
| little research on a lunch break gives enough direction on
| how to spend available time later on my project.
|
| Accepting that progress will be slow has been the most
| difficult adjustment, and applies to more than just side-
| projects. Choosing books or games also becomes a more
| strategic decision when what used to be a weekend sprint,
| turns into a several week marathon.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| I had a friend in college who was the ultimate expression of
| this. If he was in a line, waiting for someone, outside a
| professor's office hours, etc., he was working on SOMETHING,
| usually getting ahead of some reading for class. I asked him
| later, and he gave quite a compelling account of how if you
| truly added it all up, it had a pretty huge effect in how long
| it took him to get through his work. He was incredibly bright,
| went onto a PhD at MIT, and was also very sociable, which I
| suspect was helped by this strategy of aggressively seizing on
| these little breaks of time.
|
| I need a good chunk of time to settle into "productive" work,
| even if it is just reading. I suspect that what is needed is a
| little bit more discipline at first and slowly it gets easier,
| but I just never had the ethic to stick to it, and because of
| this friend I don't even have the ability to claim any doubt as
| to how impactful it would be.
| ekropotin wrote:
| Genetics also plays a significant role here. For example, one
| of the major symptoms of ADHD is inability to quickly shift
| into productive mindset.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| What is a "productive mindset"? Why do we so easily dismiss
| some things as due to genetics, while for others it's
| strictly taboo?
| thefringthing wrote:
| The causes and mechanisms of ADHD are reasonably well
| understood. Perhaps whatever other traits you have in
| mind are not.
| hbarka wrote:
| Isn't it the opposite? A common "superpower" observation
| for people with ADHD is they excel at rapid context
| switching and have an advantage with multitasking, like in
| crisis response, problem solving, or keeping track of
| multiple predators.
| ekropotin wrote:
| I'd love to see a source, because it's a first time I
| hear about it and it's definitely not a case for me, an
| ADHD person.
| hbarka wrote:
| I'll submit this one which is a broad review covering
| strengths and challenges: https://journals.sagepub.com/do
| i/10.1177/27546330241287655
| fragmede wrote:
| I doubt they were doing deep work in 3 minute chunks in line
| at the parking ticket office. One thing I realized for me is
| that simply priming the pump for later had non-zero benefits.
| Eg, doing a Google search for something, and just reading the
| result snippets counts for something in those 3 minutes.
| Reading the Wikipedia page on something isn't full actual
| proper research, but reading it five times (because you keep
| getting interrupted in the post office), but still managing
| to read it, counts as progress for later. Your brain simply
| just needs time to stew on things, hence the solution
| striking during a morning shower.
| michaelhoney wrote:
| And much of a project, like life, isn't deep work. It's the
| thousand little things, things which are indeed doable in
| the interstices
| dkarl wrote:
| I'm great at this if the other task is routine. For example, if
| I'm cooking a dish I've made dozens of times, I can context-
| switch between that and difficult work. If I'm making a recipe
| I don't know by heart, context-switching to another task ruins
| my ability to think about either.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I do this. The danger is that switching out is as easy as
| switching in. What one needs, in addition to the ability to
| refocus, is some actual discipline.
| munificent wrote:
| I wrote both "Game Programming Patterns" and "Crafting
| Interpreters" largely in chunks around half an hour between
| work, parenting, and other life duties. Likewise lots and lots
| of hobby programming projects.
|
| Context switching is a skill that gets easier the more you
| practice it, just like any other. There are techniques like
| leaving good notes to yourself to pick back up where you left
| off more easily, but a lot of it just mental training. You sort
| of learn to hold some of the context in your head all the time
| but keep it idle when you aren't using it.
|
| When I'm hacking on a hobby programming project, I can often
| fix a bug or tweak a small feature in fifteen minutes, make a
| commit, and get a little serotonin hit, all while I'm waiting
| for the wife and kids to get ready to leave the house.
|
| It doesn't always work for all kinds of tasks. Sometimes for
| more challenging stuff I really do need a larger chunk of time
| to load it all in my head. But you'd be surprised how easy it
| is to eat an elephant one tiny bite at a time if you really
| try.
| mhaberl wrote:
| ..and the Wren compiler :)
|
| > Context switching is a skill that gets easier the more you
| practice it, just like any other.
|
| Totally agree with this!!
|
| I learned this when I started off as a junior dev. We had
| some shitty machines and the project compiled for like almost
| 10mins. Most of the people just read the news and stuff and
| for some reason I started reading Clean code from Bob Martin
| (probabbly someone sent me a pdf of it or something). I
| remember reading it all in a few weeks using those breaks.
| Then I just kept the habit for almost a year (until we got
| some better workstations).
| fhd2 wrote:
| If you have an activity where you get to _think_ for hours
| about what you're gonna do, you can really do a lot in 15
| minutes.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Phase 2: replace makeup mirror with 27" lcd
| fragmede wrote:
| Have you seen the portable USB-C monitors they have theses
| days? That's a great idea! (Obvs don't use while driving.)
| jimbokun wrote:
| This is also perfect environment for Vision Pro to get
| unlimited screen real estate.
| ggm wrote:
| Victor Papanek approves.
| slow_typist wrote:
| What struck me most was "You've gotta make your own conditions"
| dfex wrote:
| Lovely story. I work out of the back seat(s) (Crew Model) of my
| Ford Transit pretty regularly and can relate.
|
| I'm astonished at how productive I can be while waiting around
| outside a job site for late deliveries/people or even my kids
| music lessons for an hour or two, or when sometimes I can sit at
| my desk and get nothing done in the same time. Maybe it's the
| constraints of the time/space? I (only half) jokingly wonder if
| some times I'd be more productive sitting in the van in my own
| driveway rather than in my home office.
|
| My "truck desk" is the rear parcel shelf/cargo blind out of a
| Hyundai Accent and the moulded counters fit my laptop and mouse
| pad perfectly. It also tucks nicely into the void behind the back
| seats when not in use.
|
| I recently acquired a Vision Pro and am still coming to terms
| with how incredible it can be sitting in the back of my van
| parked literally anywhere in the country and having a full ultra-
| wide desktop experience that packs away into something the size
| of a lunchbox.
|
| This is the cyberpunk future I dreamed of as a kid.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I'm the same way with working on a plane. 2 hours of plane work
| is worth 4 hours of desk work. Something about the ambient
| noise, incentive to stay in the seat, and strict time boxing.
| Shitty internet (if it works at all) means there's a high cost
| to trying to outsource my thinking to the internet, and there's
| no immediate reward for pursuing a distraction.
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