Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah honestly if it came down to this kind of to-the-second-planned lifestyle, just kill me now and get it over with. You can keep the money.

This is just me personally though. I'm sure Gates is used to it, and probably enjoys it. But it's certainly nothing that I would want to aspire to.

I'm reminded of the sentiment: "You have your place, and it's not more exalted, relevant, profitable, or contributing to the general advancement of humankind than that of a pretty good salesman possibly selling a decent product. Or that of a pretty decent java developer, or a decent graphics designer."

But I still admire parts of his approach to life and I think he's done some pretty cool stuff. The world is a beautiful place filled with many beautiful people, who are not heroes and can never be heroes...but can be wonderful human beings (which comes with all the faults of being human).

Ok let me stop talking before I go off on 20 other tangents. I haven't had my morning coffee yet.

Most successful people have a schedule planning out their days https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/08/daily-rituals-...

Your productivity skyrockets and it becomes automatic after a few weeks. I started by just getting up early and scheduling my mornings to finish technical books like CS:APP and it worked so well I now schedule my work week as much as possible http://calnewport.com/blog/2015/09/29/deep-habits-three-rece...

> Most successful people have a schedule planning out their days

Successful at what exactly? Enjoying life, earning money or something else?

I assume success at whatever it is they are seeking to accomplish! Even "enjoying life" can benefit from some time management I should think. :)

Really there's only one definition of success: Getting shit you want done.

Well, lots of succesful artists get "shit they want done", in that they leave a great body of work/legacy, and yet their days are nothing like micro-managed...

Mason Currey's book is full of examples of artists that micro managed their time like Mozart and Kafka's strict schedules

https://podio.com/site/creative-routines

That's because his book was all about "routines". That's selection bias right there.

If you read random artist biographies you're rarely gonna find the same emphasis on routines.

In science, major breakthroughs don't usually come from strained application of rational thinking, they come from spontaneous intuitive leaps. These leaps occur more readily when the mind is in a relaxed state free from worry and distractions, where you can just let your thoughts wander.

And that relaxed state comes from externalizing your process into structure and routine, so your mind can focus on high thinking and not juggling all your cluttered concerns

Not sure what kind of artist you're talking about - the stereotypical starving one, or the modern successful media personalities? In the latter case, I'm sure their time is micromanaged to the minute by a whole staff of professionals. In the former, well... if I had courage to just blow off errands and people and commitments to spend all time on my own projects, I guess I could be as productive too.

>Not sure what kind of artist you're talking about - the stereotypical starving one, or the modern successful media personalities?

I don't consider the "modern successful media personalities" artists.

So, yeah, the stereotypical starving ones (or not so starving, some of them went millionaires in their lifetimes and still led a blurry / non "optimized" life).

>I don't consider the "modern successful media personalities" artists.

Why not? What they make still qualifies as art.

I feel like a lot of successful artists though spend their whole days on art, so in terms of a schedule every slot of their time table is filled with doing exactly that.

Exactly and I for one do no need time management for that, so it is a personal preference.

if you get done what you need to do you should be default have more time to enjoy life simply because you know your life is in order.

frankly how can it be worse than wondering if something will get done or you forgot? build your life around a routine with built in you time (you/family/pets/etc) and stick to it. it will become natural and you will have more peace in your life.

Most successful people are able to hire someone to manage a schedule planning out their days.

I think having a schedule is perfectly fine, so long as one reserves the right to throw out the schedule whenever something spontaneous comes up. It becomes a matter of discipline to allow for spontaneous events that are enjoyable or beneficial, rather than anything that is an excuse to procrastinate on real tasks.

FWIW cal doesn't say you should schedule ever minute perfectly, just that you should have a flexible plan of what you wanna do every hour (can include just chilling)

Whenever you hear about a very tight schedule, it's because someone has ended up with more appointments in their day than is reasonable; our capacities as humans are good for socializing for hours on end every day, and not so much at physical or mental exertion. Athletes and top researchers most likely aren't engaging in this level of precision.

Basically, unless you're really ambitious about taking a "leadership" role, you aren't going to need to schedule your life at more than perhaps hourly intervals. It's still a good idea to have a little bit of scheduling to build up your day as an intentional lifestyle instead of a series of reactions(I tend to do the "calendar as to-do list" thing), but you can do so in moderation.

Exactly, I could not plan my day like this if I wanted to. There's simply not that many structured demands for my time. I'm not important enough.

I discovered that if I don't impose some structure on those "unstructured demands for my time", they tend to crowd out the whole day and give me lots of anxiety. Adult life is so full of bullshit erands, and other people are very time consuming...

Or maybe I'm just burned out.

Reduce bullshit errands as much as possible. Next reduce people to who you care about.

That desire and enjoyment of staying busy is the very reason he's a billionaire.

If his natural tendency was to relax and avoid these hard problems, he wouldn't have been so successful. It's one of the reasons many of us here won't become millionaires either.

This is just "shucks he's just like the rest of us PR". [1]

[1] I remember seeing, I think it was in the early 80's about Sam Walton "drives pickup truck, drinks cup of coffee at the local shop every morning).

My sister, the newly minted Chemical Bank rep, would visit Sam (no, he never wanted any credit lines) in the late 70's and early 80's, and, sure ' nuff, he'd take her down to the diner in town in his old pickup and offer a RC and moon pie. He was the real stuff.

Except Sam was the real deal. Even after he had hundreds of stores, he flew himself around in a single engine Cessna to check up and work with his managers. When they had annual corporate meetings with all the executives and managers, everyone received a box of walmart deli fried chicken for lunch. The culture was always to save on frivolity and pass the savings on. Even today, corporate headquarters are rather spartan. Mostly inside old converted store buildings.

I think there's a middle ground where you can make your work especially efficient so that you have more time/money to enjoy the rest of your life. As you acknowledged, many would enjoy aspects of the productivity challenge.

I feel the same way. I dislike "making" myself do things and being super scheduled sounds hellish. Having lots of demands on my time and attention also stresses me out and I need lots of decompression/restorative alone time afterwards.

Also quarter pounders are better than Big Macs.

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