How do you manage / plan your life? | Hacker News Reader

How do you manage / plan your life?

82 pointsnextos64 comments

I think having the right priorities, and a constancy of purpose is key towards a successful and happy life.

But I often find myself using most of my efforts in vain, on unimportant problems. This is partly due to working on chaotic organizations, receiving an overwhelming amount of daily information to process and, ultimately, my incompetency at staying focused on tasks worth doing.

How do successful HNers manage their lives? What are some principles and methods that have made your success possible?

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a constancy of purpose is key towards a successful and happy life

Doesn't work like that for me though. I'd just be unhappy if I'd constantly be setting big life goals and not reaching them when planned, or at all. I don't do much long term planning at all. I just let things happen as they come by and manage fine with just shorter term planning (e.g. 'next week I'll work on that, week after that maybe on that'). I never planned for a job or a certain hobby or a girlfriend or a house. Yet I do have all of that. A lot of it due to mere coincidence. I thought of those things, of course, but never actively took up any long term plans to steer my life into some direction. That feels too limiting for me, I like to keep possibilities open. Which leads to me now doing and liking things I couldn't even imagine doing even a couple of years ago. No idea if that's a causal effect, but I also don't really care. And by society's measures I'm succesful. Though a bit weird.

I agree totally.

If you are not repeatedly looking for an out in your relationship or for other sides/partners, you are showing constancy of purpose, which does not have to be forever, either the constancy or the purpose.

Studying at school for ~ 22 years until I got my Ph.D. only occasionally second-guessing myself as everybody should do, showed constancy of purpose. Which I found way more fulfilling than, hypothetically, having done the same with inconstancy of purpose.

> I'd just be unhappy if I'd constantly be setting big life goals and not reaching them when planned, or at all.

This is key, I think. You need to have some acceptance that you actually have very little control over your life. Plan for and manage the parts of your life that you do have control over, and keep an open mind about the rest. Some of the unhappiest people I know are those with lofty goals that they either fail to meet, or have unrealistic expectations about what they will get for meeting them.

But this isn’t true. You have a lot of control over your life. You just should keep your goals realistic, which is a completely different thing.

If you set a goal to be your own boss, to save money to travel the world, to reach financial independence / retire early, those are all “big” goals that can give purpose to your life.

You have a tremendous amount of control over your own life, to shape it and achieve happiness. It’s just that many people are too busy with distractions to see the bigger picture and plan accordingly.

You could strike out on your own only to find out there's not enough of a market to support yourself with your skills and you have to get a job again. You could set a goal to save money to travel the world and have it all be depleted recovering from a medical emergency that leaves you disabled. You could invest all of your money for retirement only to see it vanish in an economic crisis.

These are more realistic but there's still an element of chance that could wrestle control away from you. If you use goals to give purpose to your life, what will you do if you discover that you absolutely cannot meet them? If it was the source of your drive, will you be able to laugh it off? What if you get there and discover that meeting your goal was not something that you even wanted at all?

My point was that you could instead focus on things immediately under your control: you could learn skills and network which may help you become your own boss, but it may also help you get a better job or start a new career if you'd rather. You could save money which would allow you to possibly travel the world one day, or it might allow you to indulge in some other nice experience or simply help reduce stress in your life. You maintain control over your life and can seize opportunities as they come, but you're not constrained by stuff outside your control, or even your past self who was setting the goals to begin with.

OP here. By constancy of purpose I meant a more or less stable set of habits or processes, not goals.

I agree big goals are difficult to achieve because as von Moltke said, "no plan survives contact with the enemy". They can also be limiting, as you pointed out, because your interests may change.

There's the tech question and the choice question.

Tech: I use an open-source knowledge graph system, Semantic Synchrony: https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/wiki It uses Neo4j, so it's fast and it scales enormously; it offers a true graph, not a tree; it offers full-text boolean search via Apache Lucene; it lets you connect public and private notes in the same graph, and lets you merge (some or all of) your graph with someone else's.

Choice: I believe in introspection and sharing, and not willpower. If I feel like I have to force myself to do something, it is because I am at war with myself. Instead I meditate, journal (using SmSn), do "knowledge gardening" of the earlier things I've journaled (using SmSn), try to talk to different kinds of friends, for different kinds of perspectives.

I studied economics, and it changed my life, and I recommend it to everybody. It's hard to make good decisions in the labor market, for example, without a deep understanding of it. But econ is not just about money; it's about constrained optimization generally, and applies to time management, reading, travel, love, literally everything we do.

"It's hard to make good decisions in the labor market, for example, without a deep understanding of it."

- Can you provide an example? Last job I took I considered money, job specifics, hours, vacation, career growth, the usual stuff. No deep understanding of the labor market.

You’ve just described a tool I’ve felt should have existed a long time ago. Thank you for sharing.

This is really interesting. I think many of us would find it useful if you had the chance to expand these ideas into a blog post. Cheers!

Don't make the mistake of thinking life goals will play out the same as work/project goals. Setting deadlines on major life goals leads to increased stress and can make you feel like a failure. (I'm 30 and haven't started my own company! 28 are haven't started a family! 35 and haven't saved for retirement!) Forget all those types of timings. Do set goals. Do move towards them. But only worry about the direction you are going.

Life is both long and short. Live long enough, headed in the right direction, and you'll get where you want to be. But life can also end suddenly, unexpectedly. And will some day. So be happy on the path... because ultimately, you will live your entire life on your own path... and then die. Make sure you are enjoying the journey.

Separate your life into things that give you energy, and things that take energy. For introverts, going out to a bar or party may take away energy, for extroverts, it may give them energy. It doesn't really matter whether something gives or takes energy, but it's important that you're realistic with yourself about it. Socializing with friends may be good, but it may be an energy-taker.

Once you know what gives/takes energy, create a mock schedule that provides balance between the two. Then, play with the numbers to create an ideal balance.

For me, work is an energy-taker, but it's essential so I can do things that give me energy, like play games, volunteer, work out, etc. I've found that when I work 50-60 hours per week, I really just need about a solid day where I can just do things that give me energy, so Saturdays I keep free to play, hang out, and only do things that give me energy. Sundays I balance my time with things that give me energy (like watching football) and things that take energy (like chores).

That's sort of the high-level planning I do. On the micro-level, whenever I do something that gives me energy, I devote as much time to it at once, in bulk. This allows me enough time to become bored with it (if it's video games or working out), and make me _want_ to spend my energy that I've accumulated.

When doing something that takes energy, I do the pomodoro technique, where I spend 25 minutes working, 5 minutes off. I do email, get some water, stretch during that 5 minutes, and then immediately get back to work. That essentially gives me 16-20 "buckets" of time to work on my projects (8-10 hours), so I break my work out into those buckets, and plan accordingly.

I'm an accountant, so this may be different. I know some people love their work and work gives them energy, so they could have a totally different style. But I'm happy :)

I like the metaphor of gardening.

It's almost so literally applicable to everything that it seems like a fundamental principle.

By gardening, I mean something like... tending lovingly to a system of interconnected complex tree-like structures.

Is personal life anything like that? Yeah, because friends and loved ones are plants with roots and offshoots, subterraneously connected to one another yet also independent life forms, dependent on light, warmth, and nutrition to stimulate their growing complexity.

Is work anything like that? Well, look at GitHub and say it isn't a garden of interdependent tree structures.

There's growth but also death and decay, and both are necessary. My little palm tree always has a couple of leaves that are dying, and for its health, I have to rip them off. Programs too need pruning—and relationships too.

Hierarchy is everywhere, for this same reason I've found hierarchical note taking tools to be the most effective by far. No matter what you're doing, no matter how complex, it can be broken down into manageable pieces and executed on bit by bit.

I'm a little bit disappointed with the static hierarchies that organizational tools seem to encourage. Though I use org-mode lovingly, my system isn't yet to a point where it's fully sustainable...

I really wonder how to cultivate a notes ecosystem in a healthy way, and what would be the byproducts of that. I think it has to do with different temporalities: chats, threads, notes, essays, books...

It should also have to do with pruning, weeding, rearranging, combining... maybe the occasional forest fire...

Have you tried org-velocity?

I have been thinking of a knowledge system with two linked guiding principles:

1. Every element is owned by a person. 2. Every element has a “decay rate” or automatic time to be trashed.

I think this would make it a lot easier to track knowledge in organizations. When something becomes outdated, its owner can just let it die without having to go out and proactively prune every bit of old documentation. When a person leaves the company, his “knowledge items” can be flagged as “soon to not have an owner.”

Ultimately I’d actually like to build code projects this way. It probably seems insane to a lot of people to think of the idea of letting little pieces of the code base die and stop functioning, but the benefit I perceive is that our systems would always be tied to some degree to a human understander.

Right on, I'm a huge fan of the idea of decay in information systems!

Love the gardening/farming metaphor. I also use it in the context of investing in myself and those around me, not necessarily for immediately perceivable results. Anytime we do something like reading it's planting a seed for ourselves at some unknowable time in the future for harvesting. I actually themed a passive learning app I made (https://harvest.li) around it :p

It's really easy: You just need to get very lucky once - After that, the luck will keep coming on its own.

Before I got lucky, all my plans were essentially useless - But on 12 Jul 2017 at 12:35 PM I got very lucky and now good things keep happening to me.

Making plans and being good at something is not that useful. As Woody Allen would say "I'd rather be lucky than good."

I understand this is not in line with the hn planability mindset, but there is some truth to that stody. I am also follow this idea - you need ambitious projects which have a low predictability of success. But if you try often/hard enough occasionally one actually works out. To me this makes life a lot more exciting than working/achieving small predictable goals. Life is too short to play it save.

I agree. When they ask me where I see myself in 5 years, I answer that while I appreciate where the question is coming from, my life was so different since 5 years ago and the changes have been so unexpected, that I would lie to you and myself if I gave you the impression of having any sort of roadmap.

Being very competitive and quite unsatisfied is enough for pushing forward.

I don't understand why people down-vote my comments whenever I emphasise the importance of luck in everything.

I worked bastard hard for almost 10 years with no social life and was making $0. I'd love to be able to say that it was all hard work and will power that eventually got me though but it just feels like a lie.

If I am to really succeed, I'll do it whilst being honest with myself.

> As Woody Allen would say "I'd rather be lucky than good."

That line is generally attributed to pitcher Lefty Gomez. I've mostly heard it used in the context of sports, particularly pitching in baseball.

"But on 12 Jul 2017 at 12:35 PM I got very lucky and now good things keep happening to me."

What time zone?

So tell us what happened on the 12th!

Agreed. IMO there’s people out there trying every permutation of what could be successful. Some of them are going to be lucky and hit gold.

Taleb covers this in one of his books: Fooled by Randomness https://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Markets-Ince...

Most people focus on trying to fit more things into their day. The people I see who are massively successful are very good at choosing what things they don't do. Just like you have to remove items from your budget that aren't providing value, you must remove items from your schedule and commitments.

Winnowing your commitments in this way creates the space you need to learn, grow and try new things. Most of those new things will turn out not to be valuable and you'll drop them, but some may turn out to be immensely valuable. When you see people that appear to be very lucky, often they have a way of increasing their chances of discovering things they find valuable. Intentionally stopping things that fall below a certain threshold of value/importance is a great way to give yourself room to discover things that are above the threshold.

I like this answer. It's the same in essence as Derek Sivers 'Hell yeah, or no' rule.

I don't have a good answer to the big-picture question, but one trick I've had a lot of success with over the years is building my own suite of life-logging tools.

I have my own system for food tracking, TODO list management, pomodoros, chore reminders, clothing and stuff management, contact tracking, a mini-Wiki, link management, and many others. They all connect to and cross-reference each other in helpful ways. If you are a good coder and have a simple web framework, it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to build a new widget, and in principle the benefit will accrue for years.

My theory is that off-the-shelf life-logging and productivity tools don't work very well because people actually have very different lifestyles, work habits, and so on. So to actually boost productivity you need something very closely tailored to your own life.

My life whirls around in a pool of chaos and everything sort of lines up at the end via a galactic coincidence.

I tried managing and bringing order to it etc but it takes a lot of work and the outcome is the same anyway.

This doesn't stop you from achieving goals which is important.

Not defining a metric for success is important. Be happy with the small steps, not the large leaps.

Someone to love, something to do, something to hope for. I keep lists that I add to when I have inspiration because I know my memory is faulty. I meditate on the knowledge that most success is hereditary, the rest is luck, luck favours the hard-working only a little, but it also favours the lazy. We can't all be everything we want to be, and happiness = satisfaction / desire.

First, know who you are. What you like. Who you like. How you tick. Whether you like change or routine. Those are your first principles.

Then you build the tactics from there. The specifics should match your personal quirks and needs.

Step One: Identify the thing you enjoy most in life.

Step Two: Arrange your life so that you can do as much of that thing as possible.

For me, that "thing" was climbing and traveling. So I got good at writing software and spent the time and effort to shift into contracting. That let me work short gigs in high cost-of-living places and sock away enough to travel most of the year, setting up shop at various good climbing spots as and when necessary.

Step Three: As your priorities shift, alter the above as necessary.

Eventually, having wives and kids seemed to also be a good idea, so we're living in a place where, in addition to having the best concentration of high quality bouldering in the world, they also have an international airport and good schools. (And patisseries).

Find the thing you want to do, then arrange life so you can do it.

Absolutely!

btw Fontainebleau rules! I have a couple of friends who are avid climbers earning money by programming, or like me, born with a VR headset on, and only getting back into the body by bouldering.

Good climbing and good coding require / nurture similar skill sets: choosing a problem wisely, working slow and steady, recovering from setbacks.

At the end of every working day, I type up a short list of what I intend to achieve tomorrow.

When tomorrow rolls around, I divide my work into periods with a minor variant of the Pomodoro technique, using a tool that locks my screen every 25 minutes.

This has really helped constrain my tendency to become distracted by Interesting Things. It’s a bi-hourly opportunity to mentally review what I’ve just achieved, and consider what I’m doing in the next timeslot.

This has proved incredibly valuable over the course of a working day. Since adopting it, my productivity has been consistently improved an order-of-magnitude w.r.t. my intentions.

I’m also better hydrated.

A good technique is to design life so you're efficient by default. For example I live 2.5 miles from work on the other side of the city centre, so getting a bus takes an age, thus I run or walk everyday to and from, because it's the easiest, fastest option. It's a small thing but 5+ miles walking everyday keeps you relatively fit and because it's the easiest option it's my default.

Similar idea is to delete your newsfeeds and stop posting on social media. You'll find yourself looking for distraction and having nothing you do. So you'll get back to work. Or if at home you'll do dishes, read that book etc.

Another side of it is perception. As much as we try not to we compare ourselves with our peers we all do to an extent. A good technique to defeat this is to have hobbies or side projects completely unrelated to your main career. For me my career is engineering and my hobby theatre. If I'm ever jealous of a peer at work I remind myself that I can sing and act far better than them. On the flip side If I don't get a cast in a show I remind myself I have a great career, at one of the best employers in my city. Admittedly it's healthier to try not compare in the first place but if you do give into it that's a way to do it. :)

I agree, having the right priorities and a sense and constancy of purpose is key for a life that is more than asking yourself and other people what you are going to do this weekend.

It follows that if you keep your priorities straight, most of your efforts will be directed toward those priorities and won't be in vain. However, that is a neverending struggle against the desires of other people, society, and, ultimately, entropy.

Personally, I never used any pomodoro, GTDs etc., and I have been pretty successful in my personal and professional life. I think keeping your priorities straight is difficult enough and I trust that if I am successful there, everything else will fall into, more or less, the right place.

Let me add an example. Sports and physical activity have always been very important to me, in part because of my personality and in part because I believe prowess in both physical and intellectual activities make the person I aspire to be every single day. It means that, apart from once-a-year exceptions, 6 pm Mondays and Wednesdays are training time. Conflicts? I know where my priorities are and everything else will fall into place.

Beware of False Hope Syndrome - if you don't break down your hopes/goals into realistic steps you won't know if they are achievable.

At any given time I have goals for the next week, the next month, the next year, and the next four years. Periodically I'll spend some time reflecting and update the goals as new opportunities appear or major life transitions occur. Keeping the long-term goals in mind alongside shorter term goals is surprisingly helpful. So far this strategy has been pretty successful for me.

I've been using taskwarrior [0] along with some shell scripts allowing me to keep separate notes on tasks/projects as my "life management tool" for the past couple years, and it's helped tremendously. I don't follow any particular methodology, but since I'm constantly looking at my todo list, I'm constantly tweaking it, reprioritizing things, and removing unimportant tasks.

I think the most important principle for me has been to make sure that I capture new tasks or ideas immediately. If I do that, I end up interacting with my todo list so much, that prioritization falls out kind of naturally.

[0] https://taskwarrior.org/

I use 2Do app on macOS for actionable GTD tasks together with Ship app for managing GitHub issues.

And finally I just write everything else I need to reference at any point in my blog and wiki.

Wiki : https://nikitavoloboev.gitbooks.io/knowledge/content/

2Do app : https://www.2doapp.com/

Ship app : https://www.realartists.com

While it's easier said than done, find what makes you happy. Most people think this means "find a job you somewhat like / don't hate", but I'd apply it much more broadly. Find a mode of earning your living expenses that makes you happy (work remotely; manage an AirBnB; do consulting work), everything else will fall into place.

Wing it!

Using Evernote: * I have a note for things I want to learn. * I have a note for books I want read. * I have notebook for school. * I create a new note for every project.

GDocs:

* Sheets for finances.

Trying notion soon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM-0XEOGTvc

> a constancy of purpose is key towards a successful and happy life.

Shouldn't your purpose have a meaning per se? You don't want to be Don Quixote.

> You don't want to be Don Quixote.

It's been a while since I read the book, but I don't recall Don Quixote as being particularly unhappy. If anything, he was significantly happier than those around him, because he had a purpose.

If you choose to make your purpose in life to solve a problem that matters and is in fact solvable, then perhaps choosing the right problem is a large part of your life's meaning.

Disclaimer : I never read the book, but it's so famous the character seemed to me like a decent analogy to what I was trying to say.

Don Quixote has a goal, but he's also completely delusional.

Is it ok to live in delusion if that brings you happiness? Shouldn't happiness be grounded in some sort objectivity?

Otherwise, what's to stop people from seeking a chemical path to happiness? Like with drugs, as with the soma in "brave new world"?

Habitica (habitrpg.com).

Bullet journal technique in a paper book.

We start out playing, I don't think we should ever stop doing that.

If more knowledge was the answer, then all the super smart people of the world would have everything. But it's often total idiots who end up having the most fun.

But we're all idiots, nobody knows what they are doing.

All knowledge has a thread which goes back through history. For example, all this Bitcoin stuff is new and nobody knows what's going to happen with it. But the whole is made up of pieces which have a long thread of history. Each of these threads themselves contains key pieces and key people. Rather than reading that new best selling book, look at the sources and read those sources instead. Then follow the trail of sources to find the keys to the subject. Ignore all the surrounding noise.

Your brain can do maybe 4-ish hours of hard work and in maybe 1.5 hour-ish bursts. You will likely have a few times per day where your energy is high. Your day of productivity is that quiet burst in the morning. You only get one of those each day. You probably get another nice high productivity chunk in the evening. Maybe you get another in between. Make those periods your most brilliant creative periods. Take some time to play. Take some time to read from that key list you put together from the last point. Then fill remaining time with whatever.

Once you get the effort and the creative part right, then it's luck which does much of the rest. That's why idiots who create, play and put in the effort are able to have so much fun, they get lucky too.

You don't get lucky unless you fully jump in and just start trying things.

Constraints are good. Read into people who have done well with debilitating injuries. Read about people who have done well with lots of kids. If you are single and have a difficult time managing 16 hours of your day, imagine yourself as only having 4 hours per day.

Much of the problem with moving forward in the face of overwhelming information is just picking something. How many threads have you read in which someone is asking about Ruby vs Python. Months later this same person hasn't done anything because he or she still hasn't been able to make a decision. We can't move forward because we're afraid of committing. We instead might spend time on low commitment actions such as browsing news. The key is that it doesn't matter and that you should just get moving. The most important information isn't what you are looking at when you are trying to decide, but that information which comes when you are on the road. A heavy effort is a far better gain in life tokens than you lose by making the wrong decision. You will make wrong choices all the time, but you will overcome those decisions with a solid and consistent effort.

Just choose. Get moving. And have fun.

Personally, that's note taking.

I've been using Evernote quite heavily over the last few years. Originally as a replacement for Google Keep and Pocket/SaveForLater. Lots of notebooks and an organised tagging system seem to be the key for me.

I use it for jotting random thoughts on the train, as well as a variety of journalling purposes (everything from tracking training courses watched to having little retros after cooking something - so I can memo tweaks to make next time). I also use it to help me internalise keyboard shortcuts of the things I use the most of the time. Random memories from childhood as they occur to collate and print, in case my memory isn't so great when I get much older.

More relevant to the question, I use tags like "#StartDoingThis" in a variety of contexts, which are different notebooks. Could be related to programming, household stuff, music, health - anything really. I set an alarm at the weekend to review the stuff that received that tag during the previous week.

Also tried using Evernote for a 'Return on the day' sort of note, where I jot down a few worthwhile things I'd like to have done by the end of the day to have felt there was some sort of gain.

Taking a quick glance, I also have notebooks for things I tried differently that made a noticeable difference, old habits that I should bring back that were better, resources I've noticed that have been overlooked (that book on Kindle, a saved training video), technical videos I saw on YouTube that made an impression. A list of positive things as they happen, to reflect on later and feel happy about... Activities that made me feel particularly enthusiastic or engaged, so I can dig that out and try the same sort of thing again if stuck in a rut.

I'm really into playing instruments and home recording, so if I hear a piece of audio I like, I record a ten second snippet of it, and put it in a notebook with tags detailing what I liked about it (arrangement, production, effects, bass part, groove, riff, solo, harmonies, technique) so that I can dial in on one particular tag and listen to all the clips if I need some inspiration.

All sorts of things, really. It's good to periodically drill down on a tag or notebook and see there's some worthwhile content or good insight there.

During my working day, I use a program called Marxico that's a great Markdown editor that stores notes within Evernote organised by notebook and one or more tags. I like it because it's based on the Ace editor, so the Vim keymap works really well. Writing well structured documents in Markdown is really easy now. When I start a new Scrum or Kanban story, I have a note associated with it. I first define sections for things like 'objective', 'reference notes', 'problems' and 'tasks', and use bullet points obsessively to structure hierarchies. I used to try and do this with mindmaps, but it's much quicker with Markdown and bullet points - especially when you're tearing around with Vim expressions. That task sheet really dictates how I work on a story, and it's incredibly quick to take quick screenshots and paste them into various levels of the document as and when needed. When the story's over, it will be automatically synced to Evernote for future searching. Really helps me to keep focussed on important details.

Will have to keep looking at some way of automatically backing it up locally in a neutral format, though, to offset the vendor lock-in.

>> Will have to keep looking at some way of automatically backing it up locally in a neutral format, though, to offset the vendor lock-in.

http://nixnote.org

https://cellard0-0r.github.io/whatever/

I try to think about how my life goals and ambitions would look like in Material Design. This usually resolves all of my issues.

This is the most intriguing HN post I've ever read.

Same here! It'd be great if Numberwang could clarify this.

Please elaborate.

I try to focus on what I like doing and who I like spending my time with. I have found that doing things with the aim of one day being a better or different person than I am just leads to distress. You’ll change anyway, but planning it out doesn’t work so well in my experience.

I abide by David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method. I use OmniFocus as my tool.

I also think the ideas in Extreme Ownership are useful to stay motivated.

I write unit, integration, and behavioral, tests that fail for their first dozen runs. Then I fix everything until the tests pass. Then I write more tests.

Did you misunderstand the question, or do you have an interesting take on "test-driven living"?

Isn't living test-driven by design?

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