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Comment by hackermailman | Hacker News Reader

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...

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> 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)

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