Your work matters – Build your schedule accordingly | Hacker News Reader

Your work matters – Build your schedule accordingly

calnewport.com

185 pointsyarapavan60 comments

> Turning her attention to the weekend, Elizabeth arranged for her husband to take the kids from 12:00 to 4:00 every Saturday, freeing up another four-hour research block.

Being deliberate about schedule management is great.

However, my goal with schedule management is to get work done during the work week so I can spend more time with my kids, not carve out a large chunk of the weekend to avoid the kids while I work more.

There were some decent points in this article, but it really needed some better examples. Obviously parents can get more work done if we conveniently have our spouses watch the kids alone every weekend while we work more on Saturday, but I didn't really need a long blog post to tell me that. Nor do I want it.

Realistically, I've found a lot of success in being more ruthless about my own schedule management: Withdrawing from meetings I don't need to be in. Requesting smaller 30-minute time slots where people unnecessarily schedule 1-hour meetings. Leaving meetings entirely if the scheduler doesn't show up within 5 minutes of the start time, sending them an e-mail asking to reschedule when they're available. Forcing meetings into e-mails when they don't need to be a meeting. Requesting agendas and pre-work before meetings so we avoid design by committee. Implemented tactfully, these can squeeze out a lot of the time wasters that happen during the course of a week. I'd much rather do things like that than to give up and work weekends.

Absolutely agree. Having finished my PhD 7 years ago, now with a child of 4 years, more work does not work if you look at your life holistically. My strategies evolve around: Gradual, incremental, consistent and focused steps, instead of bold deadlines, weekend work, and trying to press in more. While having a family is great, I still want to deliver quality at work. In the past, weekend shifts have always resulting in quality deteriorating. Skip what is not necessary, decline what is impossible within the given time frame, ignore requests to deliver more in less. It will look as if your chances of staying employed decline, but the opposite was the case for me: People seem to expect that things cannot be done as fast as they wish and will trust you more, if you deliver consistently but slighlty beyond schedule.

As a PM —- you know the guy who is filling your calendar up with meetings and preventing you from doing the real work —- I love this. Please send us and others signals. Be brutal and direct.

“This meeting doesn’t have an agenda, so I won’t attend. Feel free to send me notes and highlight your ask.”

“I am happy to meet, but only for 15 minutes instead of 30.”

You don’t even need to justify it, unless that justification is intended to send a signal to the person trying to take up your time that they must do better if they want to succeed in doing so.

My other favourite tactic is block booking my own time. When I was doing more dev, I'd quite happily block 4 hours out of my calendar to do some coding, and if you're booking a meeting during that time, the world better be exploding.

Here's the thing with academia and why you do want the weekends. She was on a tenure track. Essentially that's an up or out situation. She has 7 years or so to get tenure and then she's set for life. Case in point Amy Wax from Harvard who is a tenured professor and is hugely controversial but still cannot be fired. That's the sort of job security you're aiming for. It's the only one possible - if you're not granted tenure its a massive miss and you need to begin your professional life anew.

So given that context, weekend work makes sense. It's not ideal but neither is the academic tenure track.

Cal's key ideas for the uninitiated:

- Deep Life: Kind of like essentialism / minimalism: Be intentional & focus on results / remove what matters. Create 5 pillars for your life, and work fits into it: https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2020/04/20/cultivating-a-dee...

- Deep Work: do one thing at a time, in a focused way. Context switching is expensive on the brain and stressful / anxiety inducing

- Career Advice (So Good They Can't Ignore You book): become great at a skill or the intersection of multiple skills. When you become good, you'll learn to love it and you can trade in your expertise for more lifestyle traits (more pay or less hours or no boss)

His podcast is awesome too: https://www.calnewport.com/podcast/

Any favorite podcast episodes you'd recommend for someone listening for the first time?

I think using the Core Ideas Playlist and starting there would be good: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8xK8kBHHUX43VVxO3b7s...

I have never listened to a podcast, just the cut out snippts on the youtube channel.

Good question!

1. Deep Life Principles: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-204-deep-life-princ...

2. Decoding the Deep Life: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-200-decoding-the-de...

3. Quieting the Ambitious Brain: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-199-quieting-an-amb...

4. Fun experimental episode on Shop Class as Soulcraft: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-116-re-reading-shop...

Also as the person below me pointed out, the Core Ideas playlist is great: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8xK8kBHHUX43VVxO3b7s...

Most of them have the same format (except the last one above):

- Deep dive into a topic he's thinking about

- Listener questions

- Once a month update on books he's read

Love this kind of curation. Thanks

> His podcast is awesome too: https://www.calnewport.com/podcast/

Keep track of his activity in the podcast sphere here: https://jkstream.com/#/personality-cal-newport-Q16733303

I think the theory of this article is fine, but the solution of sacrificing weekend time with family to eek out some time for work goals feels bad to me. It also involves pushing more child care onto the partner in the relationship, when it sounds like they are already sacrificing large chunks of their time on a commute so that the family can live close to the researchers place of work.

Replacing non-work time on the weekend (especially time with children or a partner, or personal time) with work seems like a bad idea.

Moreover, from years of personal experience, I have found that working on weekends doesn't seem to improve productivity and is harmful to health and happiness.

What I do, is schedule work tasks on the weekend that I know won't matter if they're not done, and then not do them. Works out great.

I don’t know about this attitude. In my experience, family is all the time. Sure, it’s great when we do special trips together. But “weekend time with family” is not necessary a recharge for oneself or for the kids. We shouldn’t feel guilty about making time for deep work on the weekends. Often, two parents and kids on a weekend day are worse than one parent—more conflict, less flow, less fun. Take turns, get “me time!”

My wife and I have recently come up with a series of agreements on time that have substantially improved both our work and home life.

I like a lot of ideas from Cal Newport but there is something wrong with our work culture when working on the weekend is now seen as a productivity hack.

I didn't realize this is where Newport was going. Most of what I've read of him in the past advocates for getting off of social media to gain control over your time - which I think is good advice.

I'd recommend Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks: Time management for mortals as it's very different from the productivity-oriented time management books that tend to dominate the genre.

It's always worth remembering that Cal is an academic - a culture in which it is considered virtuous for your work to be your life, or at the very least the defining element of it.

This is a source of a lot of the ongoing exploitive or outright abusive behaviours and treatments of those on the lower rungs of the academic totem pole that are frankly endemic in most institutions.

Academia is feudalism with an intellectual veneer.

Source: Academic for 5 years.

He is an academic, but in Deep Work he argues that excessive working hours are not necessary for success in the field, using himself and a few other academics as examples of successful academics who've achieved both a work-life balance and tenure.

I assume that the weekdays which Elizabeth spends caring for her children are not spent working at the same time. She has an unusual schedule, but I doubt she works excessive hours. A big part of Deep Work is quality over quantity.

Eh, if you listen to his podcast episode you'll see that's not quite what he's advocating. He's advocating for intentionality and to design your life with work as a part of it. For some people that could mean that doing a creative work project on a Saturday is the best way to do that.

His points are way more nuanced than "work on weekends". I think he mentions Laura's story as a case study in intentionality, not in "work life balance" etc

I actually work half days during the week often, and then work part of the day on Saturday and/or Sunday. This allows me to work with my head down on a weekend day without co-workers messaging me, and the same for working early in the mornings on weekends when my family is still asleep. This actually allows me, personally, more flexibility on weekdays to go out with my family when there aren't as many people out and about, and go with my wife to our son's medical appointments and other important things like that.

I wouldn't advocate everyone can or should do this, but I think that the "don't work outside working hours"/"must work during working hours" status quo can hurt flexibility a lot. Personally, weekends to me are just another day of the week, and I want to try normalize that wherever I go.

> This allows me to work with my head down on a weekend day without co-workers messaging me

I appreciate that this works for you but to me this comes across more as an issue with work boundaries more than the benefits of weekend work.

Advocate for 'no-meeting days' multiple times in the week. Advocate for blocks of half-days in the work week where the whole team goes radio silence. We implemented this in both the team I am working in now and in my previous gig.

Managers will absolutely defend the team's time like this if you pitch it constructively and the team delivers results to back it up.

If you can go offline for half a day then I would think that you could block out "focus time" on your schedule. Some of my coworkers do this, and I do too from time to time.

I really don’t care about weekend days, though, and I don’t work any more than usual. I prefer it this way. Like I said, it’s but for everyone but it’s not like I’m some company tool working all the time haha.

She's working partial days on Mon, Tues, and Fri, full days (and perhaps a bit more) on Wed and Thurs, and a 4-hour block on the weekend.

It sounds like our work culture is doing a pretty good job at giving her the flexibility to schedule work around the rest of her life.

Eh, I’m at the point in my life where a more relevant title would be “your life matters - if some work happens to get done, that’s a bonus”

This is an appealing sentiment, but I have so many counter-examples it's laughable. Including:

- Senior citizens who are homeless because they were too busy "living life" to hold a job (read: life-long hippy types living on mexican beaches)

- Middle-aged friends who are waking up and realizing they don't have careers, just a string of jobs that paid for the weekend getaways.

- Colleagues (across multiple jobs) who show up with this attitude and, quite clearly, do absolutely nothing on average. Nowadays, I push them out if they land on my team. Don't worry, they usually pick up another gig fairly easy.

Everyone has their own priorities in life, so people who have “wasted their younger years” might have been happy during that time. From my years of meeting random people, I’ve been more fascinated with people who took a lot of time offs and didn’t grind for the career. Especially people in their 60s/70s with a lot of life experience sounded like they feel more “fulfilled”, than some career chasing SVPs. Even with those, they’d mostly talk about non-work stuff.

Long story short, life is fairly different for everyone, thus min/maxing DPS like you’d do in an RPG probably won’t work. Everyone has retroactive regrets, but we can’t really say whether throwing money on weekend getaways or working on a side project over a weekend is objectively better.

There is a middle ground between being homeless on a beach* and deciding to work 4 hours on a Saturday just to get stuff done.

My point is that the reason I can take this attitude now is that I have spent 25 years getting to the point where I am paid well and I can negotiate my time so that I don't have to work evenings and weekends.

* if I was going to be homeless, living on a Mexican beach sounds like a pretty good option.

> - Colleagues (across multiple jobs) who show up with this attitude and, quite clearly, do absolutely nothing on average. Nowadays, I push them out if they land on my team. Don't worry, they usually pick up another gig fairly easy.

Sounds like it's working out great for them, where's the downside?

I'm with you on this one, I'm an extremely productive person when I put my head down. But with age, the terms have changed, they're on my terms now.

Family goes first, if it didn't, I couldn't concentrate anyway!

I got myself in deep doodoo physically and mentally trying to push push constantly.

Now, I live on Hawaiian time. I get there when I get there, I start when I start, I finish when I finish.

Believe me when I say I'm only 10% less productive, and the quality is usually better as the reflection on the work is much deeper.

I feel like I’m on that track these days. In the last 2 years or so I’ve maintained my passion for my work and the aspects of it I feel are a craft, but I’ve gradually begun feeling much less urgent about it and far more interested in feeling good about what I’m doing and how I do it.

I went from scrambling to fit things in, terrible sleep, never fitting in exercise, eating poorly, not seeing family enough, etc… To getting only slightly less done in what feels like half the time, sleeping better than I have since my early teens, eating better than I have in my life, enjoying a ritual of sunrise walks and pre-sunrise runs, vacationing more, diving more, tending to hobbies, spending more time with my family…

I know it sounds cheesy as hell but I read a lot of stoic philosophy a few years ago and I think it made something click. I’d read bits and pieces before, I certainly wasn’t a stranger to the philosophy, but reading a few pieces in particular pertaining to time and the limitations of control in life really resonated with me. The more I thought about it, the more I read and reread it, the more it has seemed to guide my behaviour. I’m not a Stoic by any measure, but I’m grateful for what I’ve taken from it.

A quote I’ll never forget: “Productivity is for people with no leverage”

The correct way to optimize your schedule is to do less

Propose changing the title: "Your work matters (probably mostly for someone else) ..."

How to get leverage

reduce dependency on other people

Leverage, by definition, is having others depend on you.

Gain experience, conviction, credibility, and wisdom.

Make decisions.

Drive initiatives.

Be the one holding the purse strings.

One of Cal's earlier books is ALL about this:

https://www.calnewport.com/books/so-good/

That's a great quote!

I’m a big fan of Cal Newport. His overarching theme is to be intentional about how you use your time. If you aren’t specifically planning and blocking your schedule, it will turn into a fragmented mess and not allow you to get in the deep thinking periods that many projects require. This is a good reminder that you may need to advocate for yourself (and work with your partner) to establish these slots in your schedule.

> Your work matters. It’s okay to fight for it in your schedule.

Nice conclusion, but half of the solution in this article is to work "12:00 to 4:00 every Saturday"...

Does your work matter that much that you have to sacrifice every weekends?

My 2¢: fight harder to carve time during weekdays instead

If... you're being intentional about your time/schedule, do 'weekends' matter as much?

EDIT: I can understand 'kids' aspect. Outside of that, if I'm doing the things I want to do at the times I want to do them, the notion of 'weekend=do_what_i_want' isn't as compelling. I try to schedule in things I want to do when I want, weekends be damned.

If you have children weekends are incredibly important.

Only if you are unavailable on week days.

Even if you’re available weekdays, the kids are not (they’re in school)

My kids are home at 1:30. When they are older, 3:00 twice a week, and 1:30 thrice a week. No homework. So there’s a sizable amount of hours every day to spend time with them.

Blanket statements like GP made are not true for everybody.

That's a good point. My daughter is in daycare so I could take her home anytime I want if I'm home.

If I (and my partner) had the opportunity to work less during weekdays and more in the weekends I'm still not sure we would do it. There is something mental about it for me at least.

Besides she's a nurse, so she works every third weekend anyway. In that case weekends become really important for me.

Yes, weekends matter a lot because it's your time with family, leisure and friends. Weekends matter if your life is not owned by the company where you work.

Weekends only matter as much as you argue here if your company owns your ass 9-5 Mon-Fri (plus commute, sometimes). If you're able to be more flexible, it's nice to go out when everyone else is working.

I understand your point, though, I work max 30-35 hours a week, often on weekends, and spend as much time as I can with my son and wife.

> Weekends only matter as much as you argue here if your company owns your ass 9-5 Mon-Fri (plus commute, sometimes). If you're able to be more flexible, it's nice to go out when everyone else is working.

I'd adjust that to "If you and your family and most of your friends are able to be more flexible". I went back to a mostly conventional schedule after I realised that while I was doing a lot that I wanted to on my own, spending more time with friends was a higher priority. I can see that if most of your friends are academics or similar then it could work better (indeed I found that in this remote work era it's become easier to meet people during "work hours", so if that sticks then maybe it'll be time to reevaluate).

Aside from kids: it's much easier to meet friends who have a 9-5 schedule on weekends

> do 'weekends' matter as much?

I guess I would be fine if I was trading those 4 hours of freetime I normally would get on Saturday for 4 hours on a weekday. But that doesn't seem to be what's being suggested.

Also, given the nature of how our days are organized in society, there tend to be events that happen on the weekends that do not happen on week days to accommodate people's work schedules - concerts in the park, community events, social events, etc. so moving some of your work to the weekends will mean you could miss out on those.

I think it really means fight hard to get the time, and choosing any time in particular doesn’t matter, weekend or weekday is irrelevant, it is just an agreement with yourself and those close to you that those times are reserved, a bit like sleep at say 11pm to 7am is non negotiable (unless you choose to).

i would prefer not to

this whole story sounds like the "before" segment of an article on burnout.

Plug for https://www.getclockwise.com/

Cal's writing has been a key source of inspiration for what we build.

Laura should join a union. if she's teaching so many classes she can't do any research it's her employer's problem not her weekends with her kids problem.

that's why usa academia is dead since the 80s.

Why do we celebrate working in the weekends ?

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