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Comment by mrfusion | Hacker News Reader

In all the workplaces I’ve seen it seems like everyone is on Facebook or reddit half the day. Why not give some of that time back to them?

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Not trying to justify slacking off, but I know that some times I just can't get in the zone in the morning. I could have the best of intentions, block FB/reddit in hosts, but I never really did get a whole lot done. It's why meetings are generally best in the morning (in my view), since meetings are mostly a waste anyway. Come 3 or 4:00 though I'm really getting in to the groove, but then the workday's nearly over (and since I wasn't able to arrive late to compensate, I wasn't about to stay until 8 or 9).

That was my last job, though. Now I work my own schedule and it's nice. WFH though so focus is even tougher. I find that if I start to tire in the afternooon a workout does wonders..

> It's why meetings are generally best in the morning (in my view), since meetings are mostly a waste anyway.

I wonder how much of meetings being "a waste" is from the people involved not being "in the zone."

My personal experience, 100% of the reasons for meetings being a waste of time was because the meeting was being held for the wrong reasons.

Or at the wrong time

Never seen that myself. Once there's no point to having a meeting, you can have it in the middle of the night, it's not going to affect the utility of the meeting :)

First rule of meet club: The meeting must have a purpose.

Second rule of meet club: The meeting MUST have a purpose. If there is no goal, there is no meeting.

Third rule of meet club: The meeting must end when that purpose is completed. If new problems arise, that is now a second meeting, not a continuation of the first.

Fourth rule of meet club: Only the people essential to the purpose may be invited. People who are nonessential may and should excuse themselves at any convenient time.

Fifth rule of meet club: Meetings must result in a defined action: Continued observation is an action, but doing nothing is not allowed.

Sixth rule of meet club: If you don't write down what the purpose was, who was there, and what action was taken, none of it counts.

I've never achieved flow in a meeting - I don't even know if it is possible. Having meetings interrupt me when I WAS coding in flow, that has happened, and generally I don't recover all day.

I find my focus and attention has the same rhythm you describe. I thought I was the only one!

I make sure I get a solid amount (7+ hours) of sleep every night and try to maintain consistency with sleep times - but I feel like I don't really "wake up" until after lunch. Even though I'm fully awake all morning - I feel like my mind doesn't focus or get into the groove, as you put it, until well after 4pm - and then its time go home.

Same experience here. All the work of any importance that I've ever done in my entire career of 18 years so far was achieved in the 4-9pm time frame.

I find that for me mornings are better for input (i.e. education/research/meetings/review) while afternoons are better for output ("productivity")

Luckily, my current role requires me to spend time staying up to date, so I can spend my mornings learning and my afternoons using that knowledge.

7+ hours may not be solid enough sleep for you. 8-9 for many people is a bit more par for the course, though a lot of neuro research is coming out supporting the fact that regardless of quantity the "when" of sleep matters more. So, sleeping from 1 am to 10 am is much worse than 10pm-6am. Anecdotally, I had a friend who lost fine motor control of his trombone playing muscles in his mouth due to his sleep schedule and had to have a 10pm-5am sleep schedule for about 6 months before he could play trombone again. Its a special case but illustrates a similar point.

How did they determine that it was his sleep schedule that was responsible for the motor control issue?

Can you include links to some of this research? That is fascinating.

I have a friend who is an extreme night owl who has long said then when he sleeps matters far more than how much—but in a negative sense. Even if he gets as much as 10 hours of sleep, if he has to go to sleep early in order to wake up early (6-7am), he’ll be miserable. If he goes to sleep at 3am and wakes up at 9:30am, he’ll feel great despite having gotten much less sleep.

So as someone who works 3rd shift, I'm just screwed? Kind of disappointing, but not unsurprising.

I'm just about exactly opposite. I can get a ton done in the morning, but then just loose focus around 2:30 and after. I tend to schedule meetings in the afternoon.

If I know I have a lot to do I'll sometimes come in early like 6:30 or 7:00 or something..

Interesting how different people work differently. I'm a big believer in flexible work scheduling that allows each person to optimize for themselves.

I know this is random health advice from someone on the internet, but you might consider recording how you feel and looking for correlation with carbohydrate intake for breakfast/lunch.

I've been this same way for years, and have been discovering that carbs trigger a hypoglycemic reaction that tanks my energy. Going low carb improved things quite a bit.

Anecdotally, for me it's vice versa, I find that without sufficient protein I run down quickly.

How is that vice versa? Low carb != low protein.

Rather than being "too much of a thing causes me to run down", it's "absence of a thing causes me to run down".

Partially due to an archaic corporate structure equating desk time to productivity.

This is called Fordism (in various forms)

I thought the exact same thing. What did people do before the internet? Read books at their desk? Or has "increases in productivity" really given us all this free time?

Solitaire and Minesweeper. Before that people used to bring in the paper.

Pre-Solitaire and Minesweeper. As I recall, read or at least pretend to. Whatever else you could read on a text screen--even most tech people didn't have Usenet or that sort of thing though. Made phone calls. Took a walk around the building or campus to chat with people.

There was probably less overt barely- or non-work-related fiddling but people weren't heads-down all day either.

3 hour boozy lunches, from stories I've heard.

Sounds like we've taken a step backward. ;-)

I remember cooping at an IBM site in the 1980's and the senior full time employees would often work on secondary pet projects at work or a few on their side gig, real estate investment/retirement planning. OTOH, one has to remember these employees only recently got freed from the responsibility of starting the work day singing the IBM songs.

As a programmer back then, finishing tasks early just meant more features were requested, and tasks added to my queue. Learning things meant reading lots of technical books/papers for work at work or maybe accessing usenet or IRC for cutting edge stuff. If one had access to a unix computer or terminal, lots of text games available for off hours goofing off like Rogue or Adventure.

Lengthy compiles/simulation runs might mean a little leisure time reading of the newspaper or a book as you suggest.

The only time I have as much idle time as the GP suggests is working in video games and that was only because we were encouraged to play other games during down time to see what the competition was up to and try to stay current with what was available and to get ideas so one is always analyzing the product while playing - i.e. work.

Did you just equate slacking off to working?

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