The worst distractions are the ones we love
blog.rescuetime.com
blog.rescuetime.com
And then there is the nature of working for others, in that it requires a "sacrifice of ego." I shut down everything and become a work horse. I work for hours on end, because this is what I'm supposed to do for a living. I can't question if I really want to be doing this because that would cause me to procrastinate. Instead I become my work. Sometimes I enjoy what I do, but I am specialized in specific technologies so I'm doing a variation of the same tasks over and over. That's the life of this "modern worker."
It's like
A: Wow I respect people who can lift heavy stuff
B: Oh come on it's just a matter of workout
C: Holy shit I've had my share of trite flippant workout advice but I have myasthenia so workout won't cut it, come on.
(I react a bit strongly because I'd never give depression advice. I have no fucking clue about depression except that well-meant tips from people like me don't help, at best. I stay out of the way and leave depression to trained shrinks and people with experience)
A: "Im not sure I'd have the strength to do it myself if I had to" [because I'm depressed / have anxiety issues / am utterly burned out mentally].
B: "You'd have the strength to do that, too, if your (children's) livelihood depended on it. It's really not that hard if the other option is being evicted from your house."
C: You missed the [...] part.
The depression link is in square brackets. Can't say if it applies to 'HiroshiSan, but it applies to some people (to some extent, including myself - I had moments when I was barely hanging by a thread). Some people doubt they'd be able to handle it because they know they lack the psychological strength. And in depression, being threatened ("you have to do it, or else your family starves") may only makes things worse - it might just push someone past their breaking point.
Talking it through with her one day, it made great sense. At the end of her shift, once she'd tidied up and set up for the next shift, she would just walk of of the door and there would be no thoughts of work again until she clocked in the next time.
When I was programming my mind was always working, even on holidays ideas would pop up and I'd follow them. I am now in a family business which is with us 24 hours a day. There are times I'm envious of her ability to completely switch off.
I guess I adapted after working a stressful job at a gas station with lazy coworkers and bosses. I was also going to college and working at the same time. So I guess I needed to be able to leave work at work and do homework at home.
When I come home from work and I do some programming, the next day at work I am generally burnt out and don't do as well as a job if I had spent my time relaxing and resting.
I’m not. For me the hardest part is the switching back on bit. I’d rather not ‘switch off’ if it means having to ‘switch on’ a little while later.
I really don’t like weekends, for example. Not that I don’t like having two days off, but the fact that it is only temporary makes it somehow worse than not having it at all. Like you get a little taste of freedom and then it’s taken away. If given the choice I would rather work 7 shorter days than 5 normal days and a 2 day weekend.
I think everyone should do some boring work from time to time.
Thinking freely is fun. It's creative. It always feels productive. When you're letting your mind wander, you're laying the groundwork for a million future possibilities.
Deciding to actually do something that requires cognitive effort removes the freedom. You can no longer think about whatever you want. If you have a cool thought, you need to ignore it because it's distracting. Instead, you need to narrowly focus on one task. It feels like losing part of yourself.
Of course that's a terrible way to think about work and life, but it's how I find myself feeling at times.
"The need for cognition (NFC), in psychology, is a personality variable reflecting the extent to which individuals are inclined towards effortful cognitive activities."
Reminded me of http://existentialcomics.com/comic/13.
I feel this really hard right now. I’m in a polyamorous relationship with a married woman; I live with her and her husband.
I’m trying to build a practice around writing every day. I found a hole in the functional programming literature that I’m well suited to fill. Every time I sit down to write, words are flowing effortlessly, and I’ve gotten positive feedback so far.
What I find is that engaging with day to day, normal relationship affirming behaviors (“good morning!”), going on dates, etc edge out space in my head for this other thing. I have space to think deeply about one and a half things. Frequently I feel like I need to disconnect from her emotionally to have space to think about anything else.
I haven’t ever heard anyone else describe this experience. I wonder if others experience this?I thought this article might be about it. I have a lot of symptoms of high functioning autism, though, so maybe this is just the less maladapted version of getting upset that I can’t go read train schedules.
The partners with whom this did not happen were people who were as, if not more, driven than me when it came to working on side projects. They might be 3 feet away from me, but they're so deeply focused on what they're doing that it's contagious. It's hard to retroactively put into words, but the reality is that for some partners, any presence of theirs distracted me whereas others were so good at behaving as if they were alone that it made me believe that I was alone as well.
My take is that some people, even if you really like them in many ways, are just not great for you to be around.
(It is worth noting that I have a hard time focusing in general.)
This happens to me a lot. I have found 3 things are key to solving the problem:
1) Having an honest conversation with your Person about interacting with you during work hours. When you're working you do not exist. Eventually they get the hang of it and leave you be.
2) Noise cancelling headphones or some other form of controlling the soundscape around you. I find music helps me ignore distracting things happening around me.
3) A physical space dedicated to working. This helps both from building healthy habits and tricking your brain into work mode and from signaling to people around you that you are now working and are not to be disturbed unless you come out and interact first.
The part I have yet to figure out and probably never will is how to translate these habits into the day job office. Coworkers have a hard time understanding the idea of "leave you alone" because part of the job is to be available for questions and teamwork.
Can't have it all I guess.
Also, I have found this to be an issue more when I'm writing than when I'm coding and mostly just when I'm getting started. Once I'm in the flow you could set off a bomb near me and even if I did notice I'd just get right back to it.
Edit: Or maybe it's a fantastic fit and you ought to get used to being less of a technical fanatic.
I am fortunate to have a partner who is willing to face head on that I will never consent to making her my first priority. Just gotta keep making changes until something works. Worst comes to worst, an in-law suite will probably do the trick.
I know that my partner tends to feel neglected if I'm there, in the room, concentrating on something, and now I get too anxious about this reaction to go into flow-state around her anyways. So I actually go to the office a lot more than when I was single.
Luckily for our relationship, this is triggered by my physical presence, so I can be productive as long as I get out of the house.
It is better to see procrastination and other subconscious work avoidance as a symptom that you are trying to divorce your actions from your inner motivation. Needless to say, such split personality isn't going to last and your inner motivation will win one way or another.
So fuck the work and do something you actually enjoy for a while. You will be more happy that way and chances are you will be more productive too.
But yes, it's good idea to ask yourself is it actually fun for you.
For Raga, it prescribes the following mind exercise:
-Observe your mind – what is it drawn to?
-Recognize the desire you feel (This being the core of the affliction called Raga)
-Give this feeling a name and a space inside you
Now observe what happens if you don’t automatically follow through with it. Experience what it’s like to create some space between feeling a want/need and acting on it.
(An easier to read version is here - shrunk it for cosmetics - https://goo.gl/vo4En4)
It's an interesting way to think about priorities, but I think the missing step is to then go and make the lists again. My first cut of the lists included lots of individual skills that I wanted to build, and ignoring some felt wrong. I realized that I actually do have a high priority goal of building a broad set of skills, and that I care more about that then mastering any one of my top 5.
A lot of the advice in the article is aimed at folks trying to focus on one skill or habit. You can identify as the kind of person who masters chess, for example, practicing every day. It's equally valid to identify as somebody who has a passing interest in many games and prioritize accordingly.
Building the lists didn't make me focus on the top 5 items, but it did help me better express what I care about.
“Worker” is not a noun I would apply to myself. I'd say “person”. Yes, I “do work”, but that doesn't mean I “am a worker”. Turning the verb into a noun implies that that activity is somehow fundamental to your identity. (Look at a few bios and it's clear that being a parent and a spouse is very important to a lot of people.)
If you “are a worker”, you'll have no problem doing your work — that's who you are and what you do. If you're just a person who “does work”, well then the ideas around identity in this article won't be applicable.
The article talks about considering deeply what you really want to achieve, what type of person you want to be. And it kind of assumes the answer to that question is a glib “productive” or an exasperated “the sort of person who doesn't spend 2 hours on Facebook every night”. It doesn't ask “why?”, and I think that's more fundamental. This article seems quite shallow.
Perhaps if we're down the pub and I responded to a question about who I am by saying "I'm a programmer" it would be odd. If we're in a meeting at work and I'm just trying to distinguish the number of people available to program software rather than design UI, saying "we have x programmers and y UI designers" seems pretty reasonable to me. I think that also applies to the context where "worker" was used in the article.
But it's a perfectly cromulent way to use words! I'm not objecting to the turn of phrase at all.
My point is just that I draw this distinction (between “an Xer” and “a person who Xes”) when describing people, and I think it's a useful nuance.
I don't know whether the writer (and the word somehow loses its special significance after the definite article — I'm not saying it's logical; it's just how my mind reads these things) consciously chose “worker” rather than “hobbyist” or “busy person”.
But I think it shows how they see the (abstract) people they're describing. It made me realise that, yes, this advice is useful, but perhaps only to people who “are workers” rather than “do work”.
And I agree completely that in this context, “a programmer” or “a worker” is precisely what you need — you don't need a person, you need a function.
I mean, the abundance of advice that tell you that to be productive you need to cut distractions is maybe evidence of the opposite. Maybe it is deeply wrong. I am most productive when someone distracts me with urgent and somewhat game-like short task. Maybe creative one, or a small investigation.
Small tasks, small random rewards seems like way to go for me. Can we gamify most of work?
Edit: typos
the article does not actually imply that, e.g, family members are problems.
It is the single most effective countermeasure I've taken to reclaim my own thoughts, though slowly phasing out my use of all the shitty social media is a close second.