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Comment by xenopticon | Hacker News Reader

Two things that worked well for me:

1. Work on your hobbies _before_ your actual work (or when you feel rested the most).

Don't spend all of your "prime time" in your job. In the morning, when I am rested and focused, I dedicate the first one or two hours of the day to work on my things. Of course this pushes my schedule and I finish work later, but at the end it feels like an accomplished day. There's no feeling of guilt because you "only worked on your job". This of course only applies if you have a flexible job.

2. You cannot do everything at once.

I had very similar goals as you in the beginning of the year. I was trying to write posts for my blog, learn my partner's language, study for the Terraform associate exam, and exercise daily. All combined with a moderately demanding job. We simply cannot have that many things in our buffer. Try to focus on what's more urgent or important for you. Do one or two things at a time.

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This is the correct answer. The number of hours you can be productive is limited. Frontload your hobbies before work. Interestingly enough you won't underperform at work as much as you would think.

For me it used to be work 100%, hobbies 0-10%. By frontloading my hobbies and doing them first, it's now work 90%, hobbies 90%. A good net gain. At the same time my happiness has increased by a good 20%, because as you know, no one feels great watching TV for 3 hours.

The reason why this works is, if you work like a semi-normal human even if you are tired you will do the thing. However hobbies, being "optional" you will skip. By flipping things around you still have that push to perform well at work, so it stays relatively the same.

By the way, with kids, frontloading becomes even more important.

Edit: I try to have 5 main todos every day. 1 work, 4 hobbies. It averages out to about 11 hours (work being 8). I use my "hour" of lunch to play guitar, which is another hobby of mine, but it's the only time I can squeeze it in.

This is why companies enforce early morning hours so you cannot do this. It's literally physically impossible. And/or will ruin your social life since you will be sleeping when others are socializing.

Any bright ideas to apply when you have to run to work early?

Pick up a hobby you can do on the train or bus. Books and learning apps like the OP mentioned are ideal for this.

I know people that wake up at 3-4am to do their farm work before heading to their day job. You will end up going to sleep earlier though. But for some people, that's what it takes.

Is there evidence for your claim? Not trying to argue against it, but it'd be interesting to know if work culture literally tries to sabotage personal development in order to squeeze out more productivity from employees.

It doesn't have to be framed so negatively. Companies want to buy your prime time, and the market is priced for prime time hours.

> Interestingly enough you won't underperform at work as much as you would think.

I don't believe this, and I don't see how it squares with "the number of hours you can be productive is limited."

If I'm paying an employee $150k, and he says "the number of hours I can be productive is limited," and then I hear he's waking up early before work to put in 3 hours on a personal project... I'm going to assume that means I'm losing somewhere approaching 3 hours of his productivity.

> I don't believe this, and I don't see how it squares with "the number of hours you can be productive is limited."

If i had to guess, i'd say people don't perform well for 8 hours a day. A significant portion of people's butt-in-chair is just that, a butt in the chair. For sake of discussion, lets say only 5 hours of real work is done during that 8 hour stint.

So i think the real question is does 2 hours of side-work before the 8 hour butt-in-chair impact the 5 hours of primary-work? Because if 3 hours are wasted in your 8 hour butt-in-chair, they _might_ not matter where the waste/mental-breaks/whatever are allocated.

Ie, if you mentally need a break from the 2 hours of work, during your butt-in-chair time, perhaps that's a net-wash with other time-wasting behaviors already taking place.

All hypothetical of course. I do know that i've seen numerous studies about how efficient we actually are over 8 hours of butt-in-chair. It's not pretty.

Good thing what he does outside of work isn't any of your business. We should make decisions based on outcomes rather than our assumptions.

Fine. Then when his performance declines it's going to be the first thing I ask him about. My point is more about the juxtaposition of saying "I have limited productive hours in a day" and "because of that, I'm going to spend them before my paid job."

Then if his performance declines below what is expected of that grade level...

Fixed it for you

I pay for results, not "productivity."

I'd much rather have an employee work on personal things first then come in refreshed vs burning out and never recharging because I'm demanding their peak "productive" hours.

Every employee I've had that has medium or larger scale hobby outside of work (both in and out of domain) has been a better hire than those who don't. They attack problems differently, they're better organized, and have never complained about burnout.

However, teams that have had a string of mandatory meetings in the AM are measurably less productive in my experience. I think there's something to this.

I'd like a job that pays that much. That's basically double my salary.

If you're measuring your employees productivity in hours, you're doing a dis-service to your employees and yourself.

No, I'm measuring them in results. But the whole point of the OP was that you have a limited number of results per 24 hours. If that's true, then surely generating results on your personal project before work means you'll generate less at work?

Again, you have to define what is the expected results, and meet up with salary and other things.

You can't just demand all of the results.

Of the top of my head reasons why both things can be true at the same time:

1. "All other things equal" applies to productivity pool.

A happier person or a more flexible thinker might gain productive hours.

2. With hobbies you (probably) have to do everything by yourself.

At work you can lean on others for decisions, graphic design, frontend/backend and other things that might drain you more (because its not your expertise)

3. As others have said: Hobbies are optional

Which probably affects you eventhough you _might_ still have productivity-reserves

4. Work is SO much more than 100% productivity.

Meetings, social time, administration, clean-up, etc... might be things you can do while not 100% focused.

And as others have said, everyone will be better off if you start valuing outcome, employee happiness, and other things as well.

It comes of as kindoff entitled to presume that all personal productivity it something that you as an employer have "lost".

I would never work for you. Also $150k is really low, even for a junior position.

Wow, now I feel bad. I have 7 years of experience and I am just now nearing the $150k cash level.

Before you go through the trouble of feeling bad, make sure to ask about the cost of living.

$150k in the US Midwest is a lot better than $300k in SF or NY.

I started waking up 2 hours before work for avocational activities, and that gradually became 4 hours before. I feel as sharp as a razor once I wake up. Granted, I have to be asleep by 10, but I don't stress about working on my side projects after 9 hours of work. I can fill that time with audio books, cooking and working out.

Great point about the hobbies. Too many people are tied to the clock for when to do things. Get up at 6, go to work at 7, be home by x. Time is relative. I plan to now switch my clock to do my hobbies first. Thanks for the suggestion.

Remote work is a blessing. I don't miss the office, not the commute.

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