I need structure in my life
janellsihay.com
janellsihay.com
He actually decided to get a job as an Amazon warehouse worker for 6 weeks for exactly the reason OP is struggling with: to get structure.
> In November, I suddenly thought, "I should at least get some sort of job somewhere just to have some regularity to my schedule, to enforce some daily practices". My number one priority was just to have structured work that would force me to get up every day—work that was very different from white collar jobs, in that I did not want to be asked to make a lot of decisions everyday.
> I didn't want the stress of managing people and teams. I didn't want the politics of subjective decisions being debated amongst team members. I wanted literally to be told what to do every day and I wanted that structure to be rigorous. I strongly felt that would help me get out of my depression.
https://www.jasonshen.com/120/
Update: posted this on HN since it seems to resonate https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33072083
Once you got good at it you could zoom through your day on auto pilot. Drive to aisle X, pick up N boxes at rack Y, rinse and repeat.
A hybrid 3-4 in office / 1-2 out of office per week seems to be prime for my personal and social values at work.
For home office I shut off the work PC and turn on the gaming PC where I am not logged in on work accounts. Work phone on disturb mode.
Or go take a walk.
Its not "impossible to shut it all out"
I think this highly depends on the person. For me, it wasn't just about enforcing separation of equipment.
For a time, I was using the same desk for work during the day and then switching inputs on my screen to use my personal gaming PC in the evenings. I still shut off notifications, never had notifications on my phone, etc.
This wasn't enough.
So I set up a small desk in another part of the apartment and made that the work desk. It was better than using the same desk.
This wasn't enough.
I've realized that a lot of my emotional states and memory recall are very anchored to where I am physically. Just being in the same physical space after a stressful workday was the problem. Glancing at the plant in the corner that I was staring at while contemplating a challenging problem earlier in the day immediately made me start thinking about work again.
> Or go take a walk.
Walking is one of the best ways I've coped. But I also live in a four seasons climate, and this isn't always possible.
As much as I dislike the idea of going back to a physical office space, I think this is one of the hidden costs of WFH.
It's not insurmountable, but neither is it easy.
I mean yea I have this too but I don't actively look at notifications. I'm constantly "on" and nervous but Ive just been that most of my life.
And now I'm in office. I do not know if its gonna get better.
Kind of curious what season it’s impossible to walk in, and how it’s related to 4 seasons?
I’ve lived in 4 season climates my whole live, and the only time I can think of it would be inadvisable to take a walk (though not impossible) is in the middle of a thunderstorm/typhoon.
Sure, you can walk in a snowstorm, when it's -15F, when it's downpouring, when it's 100F, but these are hardly a refuge from the inside environment in many cases.
Don't get me wrong. I've spent plenty of time doing exactly this, but my underlying point is that it's not a consistent or low friction option.
Commutes can be terrible but they do serve an important role in decompressing and separating spaces in our brains through a repeated ritual.
Someone I knew told me I could work in his warehouse. It's too bad that it was so low pay. If the pay wasn't the issue, I wonder if staying at that kind of job would actually be really good for me. I would be physically healthy, my mind would be clear and refreshed all the time, and I would feel good about having worked hard every day. Would the positive effect still last if I did that work for years, or was the positive effect only temporary because it was a novel experience to me at the time (and I didn't care about the low pay at the time)? Interesting to consider.
I didn't stay in that one past one day, far too boring.
Let's not romanticise these jobs. I think you're confusing the endorphins from exercise, which most warehouse jobs don't need, with the job.
Most warehouse jobs completely suck.
These sort of people can always go back to what they were doing after they got fit from the gym work, and of course they can always do another gym work sort of job at will.
This is far different than somebody working these jobs to put food on the table.
It was almost therapeutic.
I don't know, I feel like this is just a retread of "Office Space" and office employees yearning to do construction work.
An ideal world would be one where someone was able to do focused creative work for a few months and then mindless manual labor for a few months and trade back and forth as desired. That will never happen but I would love it.
If anything it’s amazing that he stuck it out for 1.5 months without a financial incentive to do so.
It's a free country (the U.S. is at least) and by working in one job you are always implicity creating an opening in whatever other jobs you have opted not to take. I do understand your argument, and theoretically you are right: he perhaps took a job from someone who needed it more. But I can make the same argument about the service economy: if I mow my own lawn, am I taking money away from landscapers? If I cook at home, if I learn to fix my own bike, etc. etc. That kind of think is deeply disturbing to me. We each have to live our own lives at the end of the day.
Working manual labour jobs is deeply humbling and in my opinion actually builds solidarity with the working class in ways you simply can't by intellectualizing from afar. If more people in privileged positions did this, I believe the world might be better.
Your judgement doesn't feel helpful.
Some time ago, John Stewart made the observation to Bezos that people would not want to just spend their working lives doing errands for the wealthy and would rebel. I suppose it's mindset like that of Bezos or the person in the post that made me react with disgust. I am failing to propose a solution, but the problem seems to be in part a lack of awareness from the well-to-do of this world that has dangerous consequences for the rest. After reading the post, I can't even think of something to suggest to the interviewee because the mental and class distance to be bridged seems so vast.
"I took a warehouse job at Amazon". Then 1 year later they wrote a fascinating tale of the subcultures that develop within an Amazon warehouses, the stories and aspirations of people who arrived at that job, and how this quiet army of faceless people enable a service that even kings 100 years ago would have killed for.
Would that not be equally as bad since at the end of the day they took a job from someone that needed it?
I dream of a future of tech work that is more similar to the gym, rather than sitting at a desk. Some kind of augmented reality work space where you intentionally add physical friction (reaching, pulling, pushing), physical objects, human interactions, etc and lots of standing. I imagine the mental rewards of this approach would be really interesting, and you might finish the work day feeling physically energized.
If something bridged those two, like Minority report but with even more movement, it would be gold.
Someone ITT mentioned warehouse jobs and workout endorphins coloring our view, but I think its more missing just moving things around with your hands.
Walking meetings, some type of AR technology so we can perform email responses/research while moving, and physical interaction with digital systems is the future I want.
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2019/02/seeking-the-prod...
Anyhow, I say embrace your chores. Don't pay somebody to do them for you.
Cooking is another one I really leaned into during COVID. I think it's important to scratch a creative itch in these activities since many of my hobbies are consumption-oriented e.g. video games.
The thing in my life that most rigidly enforces a schedule on me is definitely not my job. It's my dog. No weekends off there, and I haven't slept past 6:30am in years.
I made the mistake of trying to organize a master plan for how I would live my days. In my experience, it just doesn’t work out the way you plan it. Daily life is too chaotic.
I now use a much simpler approach instead. 8am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm. These are the times by which I need to get something done.
For example, 8am: Walk the dog. By 8, it should be done. If it gets done before 7, even better. If it gets done at 8:10, start earlier tomorrow. 12pm: Fold the laundry. 4pm: Go to the store, call mom, read. 8pm: Make dinner, take out the trash.
When you are comfortable with how many tasks you assign yourself, add more tasks. But don’t go crazy when you’re just starting off. Keeping one habit is better than flirting with five.
I found the same to be true with dieting. You shouldn't plan your diet around single days of eating, you should plan it around an entire week of eating.
Some days I just wander for 15 minutes and look at the sun or feel the air and enjoy the moment. Other days maybe I'll start around 5:30 and carry on for an hour or two, then come home and get my kids ready for their day. It doesn't matter, and that's kind of the point. As long as I've made the time for it, as long as I get up and do it, I can feel it out and do what feels good.
It means I'm always awake and ready when I start my day. There's no dragging myself to my computer or trying to keep up with getting the kids ready. By letting myself ease into the day, energizing myself with fresh air and movement, I get way ahead of where I used to be despite spending far more time "doing nothing".
My other ritual, I suppose, is bed time. I get to sleep around 9:30, no matter what. Didn't work enough? Didn't make lunches? It doesn't matter. Just rest. I'll catch up in the morning after I wander aimlessly and find myself again.
My wife doesn't like my early bed time (she's a night owl), but I've begun guarding it closely. The structure isn't much, but it's enough. Like the author suspects for themselves, I really do need it.
Everything that happens in between is usually chunked into loose "get work done" and "hang out with family" – specific tasks are pretty easy to schedule into there, and I'm just careful to ensure there's little overlap. The boundaries of the day being clear makes it way easier to remain focused and ensure I don't end up trying to do everything at once.
I suspect if everyone made sure they got good sleep and had consistent wake and sleep structure, so many other parts of their days would fall into place as well.
I kept a log of my job applications from last year. Going over them recently, I noticed that the timestamps gradually creeped up from afternoon to late evening as the year ended. I had a set "application window" of an hour but that window gradually shifted more and more into the night. I now go to bed very late around 4am and usually wake up at 1pm.
For some reason I find it hard to give the morning a "greater purpose" when you don't have a 9-5. There's not much in outdoor hobbies that I want to do (or afford to do) and I clean sporadically, no set schedule. I feel much less worse being awake and inside in the late night hours than to be up in the morning hours with nothing productive, so I just sleep through those morning hours. My peak energy has shifted more towards the late night.
Looking to see if I perhaps need an accountability partner. I am single and don't talk to close friends as much and even if I did they wouldn't be available most of the day because of their work schedules.
Even if you prioritize flexibility, if your position is at the bottom of the totem pole, you will find it exceedingly difficult to get even minute changes in it. Those employees are increasingly monitored to the point I would not have accepted as a kid, but it seems a more and more common practice today.
I guess what I am saying is that what you do matters, but not nearly as much as you give it credit for. Some of it is just dumb luck.
Not having kids/pets is a huge choice to make to have flexibility. If you don't have dependents you don't need to spend time looking after them. You also don't need to make as much money so you can take a lower paying job. By being in the position to take a lower paying job, you can negotiate more flexibility etc.
Obviously that doesn't apply if you were forced to drop out of highschool to get a minimum wage job to take care of your sick parents/siblings.
Some people are less lucky than others, but I'd be willing to bet that a large percentage of HN readers that finds themselves with no flexibility have made many choices to end up where they are.
I count myself as ridiculously lucky that I am where I am doing what I do. Here I am mid-day, discussing non-work related items in my down time. I have the flexibility ( and a pet and a kid although that is basically like having two kids ), but I am unable to dismiss the idea that it is not just me factor that got me to that point. Looking back, there were tons of things that could have gone wrong that would put me on the wrong track ( and as is often with life, some things did ).
Otoh, I am not that much smarter than my sister and yet we are in very different places despite having the same upbringing, access and so on. You could argue that she is not on HN, but I would say that is a self-selecting process..
I'm talking about choices like kids, prioritizing salary over flexibility etc. I am not arguing that people in tech are there purely based on merit and no luck.
I am saying people that are already in tech make choices that give them more or less flexibility. Chasing a job at FAANG to get a massive salary and then using the salary to get an expensive car and massive mortgage is the wrong choice if you want flexibility. But it probably is the right choice if you want an expensive car and expensive house.
I'm talking about not having kids/pets (which is applicable to everyone) as a choice to make for more flexibility where as you are talking about careers.
Also you're talking about good VS bad choices. I don't think having kids is necessarily bad or good, it just depends on what you want or priorities are.
In other words, though it's true that outcomes are linked to choices, just the ability to make real choices (flexibility vs. salary or family, to name one) is predicated on a large dose of prior luck.
Travel more. Follow your passion. Forget labels and work hard to get what you want. Work isn’t 9-5. It’s 24/7, who you work for changes.
Treat yourself like a friend who you are looking out for.
Asking genuinely, because I struggle with determining how much of what I don't get can be attributed to me:
What if I wanted to be healthy, but have $<any number of chronic, debilitating conditions with no clear identified cause, mechanism, and or cure>? I recently listened to a podcast where two people try to follow life-advice books and determine if it actually helped them, and one of the hosts had an extremely distressing time trying to attribute why her abnormal mammogram result wasn't being followed up on by her doctor, despite daily calls for two weeks, was something that was due to her decisions.
[How does this apply to being abused as a child? Being a domestic abuse survivor? Being the victim of a hate crime, displaced due to war or other disaster?]
Personally, I struggled with thinking about events in my life and my decisions leading to those events precisely because of seeing other people try to take that logic and apply it in good faith, resulting in horrible conclusions. That someone could've prevented their fibromyalgia and therefore they are at fault for getting sick. That someone's child abuse was something they need to take responsibility about.
Here's what I've been prone to tell people instead: you know how to always get what you want—always? It's by wanting what you're going to get.
Some people misunderstand this. It's not about settling or doing nothing. It's rather the opposite. It's to get people to go through the process of interrogating themselves about their wants in a way that engages the logical part of their brain—which is ultimately most likely to be the thing that leads to working out a path to whatever that want is, so long as it's reasonable to think that they can actually get it. In the extreme case you present: "Is it unreasonable for me to want to the abuse to stop?" The answer, of course, is an emphatic no. There's no need to stop wanting that.
In figuring out whether it is reasonable or unreasonable, the question becomes: what is required in order to actually get it?
1. Example <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25468799>
Sorry you feel this way. I genuinely tried to share advice that helped me. The negativity here is astounding. Time to leave.
> Sorry you feel this way.
Time for a new edict: set aside the impulse to hand out apology-shaped non-apologies.
> The negativity here is astounding.
Have you considered your decisions and how it's a result of them?
> Edit - I went back and checked, it was $140k.
Wow, this person confabulated $100k of merit to themselves. If that's not self-love, I don't know what is.
If you don’t know what makes you happy that’s step one.
>What if I wanted to be healthy, but have $<any number of chronic, debilitating conditions with no clear identified cause, mechanism, and or cure>?
Then the person in the hypothetical would need to decide to define healthy realistically for their condition. While it may be something you want, wanting something impossible is a non-starter.
>one of the hosts had an extremely distressing time trying to attribute why her abnormal mammogram result wasn't being followed up on by her doctor, despite daily calls for two weeks
Great example, in this case the host can decide to call another doctor's office to get a second opinion. Or following up in person. Or escalating to that doctor's leadership/board.
I've found it incredibly important to remember the reasons that I choose to do what I do, and own that choice.
It helped me overcome serious depression and a victim mindset.
Eg, I'm not forced to work and support my family. I want to and choose to do so for a wide variety of reasons.
Technically they could quit it all and walk off and become homeless, but is that realistic? This idea of endless choice, especially that without any potentially dangerous consequences, it's reserved for a small number of people.
What chores take up 1-2 hours each and every day, considering lunch and dinner are taken care of at work?
Edit: didn't sound to me like you have kids from your comment, if you do then it makes sense.
Which country do you live in in which this is the case? Everywhere I've lived there have been jobs that are 9-5 and jobs that are less rigid, ranging all the way to self employment.
So like how I'm forced to commute two hours a day to work.
(if I get an in person job in a different town from the one I live in).
This is just daft.
Taking too broad a view of what "forced" means just nullifies the term. Of course nobody could then ever be "forced" to do anything when suicide is an option.
The narrative that people are forced to work a specific job is false and should not be reinforced.
Do you not know many people or are you 21? Those are two situations where your take wouldn't be confusing. It's not a narrative that people can't pick different jobs, it's a narrative that people can just get up and go work somewhere else. This can be true in any industry, unless you have a very scarce and in-demand set of skills and qualifications. Even then, your regional circumstances and any number of other things have a bearing on whether you can leverage that.
Sure, if you are single, young, and an extremely proficient software engineer with the paperwork to prove it and no dependents, and everything else in your life is totally arbitrary and can be rebuilt anywhere you are, then ya it's totes easy to just get a new that perfectly fits your lifestyle.
I have worked for years and made great efforts to get to a point in life where I have a say in what time I do my work. Most jobs I have had I did not have a choice. In the United States.
Obviously if you have kids or are a carer that probably does not apply.
This is the second most top comment.
Also really illustrates the whole “grass is always greener …” thing.
All else being equal, I think the vast majority of people would prefer self-direction and autonomy to rigorous top-down order. People's choice and actions throughout the ages seem to reinforce this. I wouldn't mistake someone's personal choice to temporarily self-impose some structure as an example of "grass is always greener".
When I was younger, I switched to a 4x10s schedule for this exact reason. The limited time left after commute (long at the time) and other obligations at the end of the day felt wasted.
Somewhat surprisingly, I felt better when I decided that my 4 work days per week would be solid work/chores/obligations from morning to night. It no longer felt like I was missing out on anything because I wasn't trying to squeeze some hobby or social activity into a tired 2-3 hour slot at the end of the day. My free time and my work time were as separate as they could possibly get.
Even intra-day flexibility doesn't really solve the problem of having too much to do. My solution was to squish all of the to-dos together and leave my off days 100% flexible.
Even now, I try to finish errands and chores on weekdays for this same reason: Keeping weekends open is extremely valuable.
How is this possible? Are you counting exercise as a chore? I probably do 2 hours of chores in a week and that includes a lot of things related to cooking which you don’t do
The things I used to be able to do once a week are a daily "quick go" now.
Somebody is always hungry. There's a trail of food and mess they leave behind. There's frequent spills. There's constant laundry and accidents.
That said, I caution against too much routine. I used to get really into it but remember many days where I felt like the day was ruined because I couldn’t get a workout in, or someone scheduled an 8am meeting, or any other myriad of things I grew dependent on. Too much structure is basically a fragile crutch, in my experience.
My personal morning “routine” is a quick cup of coffee and a half mile walk, and then straight to work. I time block the day first thing based on whatever my weekly goals for the week were, and try to keep about two hours of buffer time to allow some shifting throughout the day.
I’ve done this about a year now and it’s helped me keep the benefits of structure, without the guilt of when something “optimal” doesn’t happen.
With a simple structure it really does feel like it brings order to chaos, if I have a really bad week and maybe don’t even get my runs in, it’s relatively easy to get my runs in the next week. Six different morning activities all at once? That’s just asking for failure.
Maybe start scheduling more of your commitments and obligations in your calendar?
Or alternatively,
Start by keeping a time diary of how you spend your days and how long tasks take you, then use that to inform your time blocks
So it might look like:
10: meeting
1030: bug fixing
11: bug fixing
1130: bug fixing
12: run
1230: run
1: lunch
130: feature work
2: feature work
230: meeting
3: feature work
330: feature work
4: plan next week
The above was my entry from last Friday, where I had a late start to the day.
At the start of my day I had kept the 12-2:30 block fairly empty (I knew some form of working out + lunch would show up, and I had wanted to do some feature work that day, but I didn’t know if any other meetings would pop up. They didn’t, so it worked great!)
I basically fill in meetings first, then work around them to put in the work I want to focus on for the day. The main caveat is I don’t focus on anything else for this blocks, and unless I’m in incredible flow and the task is definitely important, I always make sure I stop at the end of the block time (the whole “we will fill up whatever time we allot ourselves” theory).
I too decided to take the chaos out of my life, but it was much simpler than I had always thought.
1. Stop watching Youtube and browsing Reddit in your free time 2. Stop playing games in your free time 3. Stop using your phone for wasting time 4. Stop watching TV when you eat 5. Stop listening to podcasts while you sleep 6. Stop eating snacks with TV
What ends up happening as a result - You start to sleep earlier and better - Reading books becomes interesting again - You wake up earlier and feel more fresh - Realize you have a lot of free time - Going outside for a walk is more interesting (less boring) - Work tasks that were boring, now hold your attention more - Finishing work tasks, and house chores, feel more rewarding now
A much shorter summary of this 'diet' is called the 'Dopamine Detox'.
What I'm trying to say is, a lot of this chaos and burnout, is just related to our addiction of time-wasting and addictive habits like browsing youtube and reddit more and more.
Thank you.
I’ve recently got into the habit of watching TV while eating and snacking and after reading Rules 4 and 6, have come to the conclusion that it’s a bad habit; eating should be intentional and purposeful, not a thoughtless activity while being mentally engaged by some other activity. I don’t know if I could go cold turkey with external stimulation so from now on, if I’m eating alone, I’ll just listen to music (instead of reading or watching TV).
And in that spirit I'll say to the author of this post: It's okay to nap in the middle of the day, or not eat breakfast, or work first thing in the morning and not do a Morning Page or Meditation or whatever aspirational-you has decided is worthwhile. We are all doing our best in the circumstances we have.
In my life I've found that better is really a game of averages. Some days are going to be great. Some weeks have a severe downward trend with no real reason that I can tell. Well. Maybe it's due to bad sleep quality or lack of exercise. All I can do is try to be the person that makes the good decisions and accept the person that I am, and that keeps me pretty happy.
In the ADHD community, it’s called body doubling ( https://doubleapp.xyz/blog/how-to-body-double ), but it can absolutely extend to those outside of the ADHD sphere as well.
If someone has any suggestions on how to organize my life like a one big summer school, I'm listening. I guess joining a monastery would do it, but I don't really care for the other aspects of monastic life.
> how to organize my life like a one big summer school
It sounds like you don’t want to take on being an adult.
Responsibility gives you independence and power, you might want a therapist to help persuade and shortly guide you that.
I already have a therapist, but so far he hasn't been able to turn me into a proper adult. Oh, and by the way, I'm close to 40 now so I don't think anymore that this is just a passing phase.
I used to think like this, it's easy to dismiss, "I want power" sounds like something a maniac would say. I don't believe you truly don't want independence, maybe less, but that still sounds like a real issue.
> I think that in the past loads of people lived like this;
> servants lived almost like children
That's absolutely not true, I'm no history buff, but servants had all sorts of pressure and responsibility put on them. Their tasks may have been menial in skill, but they were damn well complicated. Imagine bringing the wrong drink or spilling a glass of wine in front of the king, off with your head. They seem like children to us because life is so much more complex, we didn't die at 30.
> already have a therapist, but so far he hasn't been able to turn me into a man
Maybe I've mistaken your casual wording, but it's not their job to turn you into anything, they're supposed to at the very least analyze. Depending on their practice, they might give concrete guidance.
If you want to be some wealthy old mans pet, that's fine by me, but I don't believe you don't want independence, no one doesn't. I think you're just overwhelmed by the mundane obstacles we all need to pass to earn it.
For example:
>I just want to focus on having fun and spending time with good people without managing every single minor aspect of my life and having responsibility over stuff I don't care about
That's the bare minimum of reality, we've all got those things, even Kim Kardashian.
Maybe your job is too complicated and demanding? There's a place you can reduce your responsibility, but it doesn't have to be so black and white.
Food had two broad strategies: (1) Repeated Deliveries of staples with one afternoon a week dedicated to cooking, portioning and freezing. Meals are labeled and microwaved as needed. (2) Ad-hoc Food Delivery, think Uber Eats or Doordash for most meals. I found 2 to be excessively expensive. 1 requires dish-washing but I can mitigate it with using disposables whenever possible.
1 also requires setting up repeated automated deliveries. I haven't quite figured out how to do this yet, but I'm sure there's an Instacart-type service for it.
Laundry: there are door-to-door laundry services, and/or using an in-house cleaning service mentioned below
Cleaning: there are maid services. If well-planned you could have them arrive to wash the dishes created in the above step, as well as retrieve/put-away laundry. A robot-vaccuum helps between cleanings.
As for activities with people with similar schedules, that's the difficult part. Adults are chaotic.
There's signing up for the military, which would also neatly handle your other items.
So far I've found that a co-worker-based activity group is reliable. You all get off about the same time, the people are relatively stable from week-to-week, and you all have similar work lives.
Second best was a regularly scheduled meetup group.
Remote work has pressed the need for me to improve here since I think I benefited by being in the same room as coworkers and being alone in my home the whole workday has pressed my ability to stay focused.
I struggled with ADHD , but because of past health issues, medication is off the table. Even though Vyvanse was a miracle for focus it caused some serious other problems. And the more I read about psychiatry and psychology the more I’ve gotten excited by lifestyle changes.
One thing I feel strongly about is that productivity tools need to be descriptive, not prescriptive . I’m not a robot, I need to work on what my gut is telling me to work on rather than what some reminder is telling me to work on. But I also need to do work and not scroll Reddit for hours so a tool helps with accountability for that.
I can’t over emphasize how enamored I am with Andrew Huberman Youtube video on the topic. He’s a Stanford neuroscientist with all sorts of suggestions on managing our dopamine levels with techniques like cold water therapy and intermittent fasting.
Social media, including hacker news and excessive email checking, can destroy your motivation if you don’t keep it in check. If you’re struggling with focus you simply have to monitor and moderate these things.
Please email me, username at gmail if this topic is of interest to you.
I'm grateful you are working on the app, however, as that sounds very helpful.
There are many counterarguments regarding work or maybe wanting to buy expensive things and whatnot but the choice is there and any highly paid person can figure out the planning part with maybe less than a week of research.
not counting appreciation
400k in SF is about 260k after taxes. Figuring saving 50% would give 130k/year in savings and an expense rate of 130k/year. At 8.0% returns, it would take 14 years to have enough to withdraw 4%/year match 130k.
Maybe..if you are single and we have extremely different views of "paradise"
- Shop around for healthy food at bargain prices
- Learn how to cook well and make the most of all that food
- Learn and have the time to fix 90% of maintenance issues
- Have the time and energy for sports and exercise
- Can dedicate more time to your family, kids need fewer toys because they have their father or mother back
- Travel for VERY cheap and you now have the time to actually do it at any time
- No longer a need to buy status or social class signaling goods because you no longer need to deal with professional expectations and setting a good impression in the minds of people you don't actually like
- Learn personal finance and your local legal system to maximize every drop
- No longer a need to buy things that make you cope with stress or long hours or even regular hours doing stuff you don't want to do
- As a corollary to the above, fewer risks of health issues, obesity, posture problems, alcoholism or self-medication, sleep disorders, psychological disorders, etc.
- Engage in creative pursuits
- Might no longer need a car in the traditional sense
To me that sounds like a better life than that of 99% of people who have ever lived. Now remember that we are talking about jobs and salaries for which a 4% rule at 70k or more is extremely doable. Which means you can not only have the life I just described but can also pay for your kid's education and the occasional health scare.
As I've progressed in my career I've been able to afford cars. I don't have to get up so early because I can work remotely. My son is almost an adult and mostly looks after himself.
I think it is a momentum thing and you don't realise when you are on that train. Younger me could wake at 4am to travel and start work at 8am so he could leave early, collect his son and then go to the gym.
Older me is lazy. My body aches, I don't have the drive I used to have. I'm comfortable. But I'm not really comfortable; I'm drained; I'm aching and I'm struggling to enjoy things.
Noone talks about the affect of the grind you have to do early on in life.
Counterintuitively, there's requirements to have more slack time. It's has to be dedicated and active. I need time to waste. I just need that time to be intentional, timed and shamefree. One trick, I use is to set a timer, get myself a glass of water, and then turn down the bed like a hotel before a Movie.
Without some kind of structure, it is easy to let a whole week or two go by without accomplishing much of anything. So I make sure that I get up at 7am every morning and do something productive on it each day. Some days I will only spend a couple hours on it, others I will work 10+ hours on it.
Since startup founders often have to wear many hats, it can be a challenge to decide what to work on each day. To prevent boredom and to spread tasks around so that progress is made in several different areas; I roll a single die every day to decide which of six areas to work on that day. 1 = Work on a new feature. 2 = Test an existing feature or run benchmarks. 3 = Fix bugs or optimize some code. 4 = Write documentation, blogs, or newsletters. 5 = Work on marketing and sales. 6 = Reach out to existing customers for feedback or help them figure out how to use it better.
It doesn’t help that advancing as a technical worker often removes that structure, or forces you to create it. I am given freedom as a perk of seniority, but for me it’s been a burden.
I’ve noticed that having a routine is also about the best way to accelerate the perception of the passage of time.
The more routine my life is, the quicker the years go by, and I look back and say “what did I do during all that time?”
My most memorable years are the ones with a lot of variety, change, and novelty.
I enjoy doing nothing, going to sleep and waking up when I feel like it. It's the only time I feel happy. It's too bad people like me don't usually get rich. I'm 100% certain that money would buy me happiness. I don't even need it to buy stuff. I don't care about material things. I don't care about status. I just need enough money to do nothing whilst not having to live in a forest.
Burn out is not easy to climb out of, so I would rather be less than ideally productive than be disciplined to an extent that ignores my humanity and that damages me severely.
That's because you didn't have a subjugated population of helots taking care of everything that isn't your core competency ;)
Structure is good and habit is key, but don't imprison yourself in it, in my opinion.
For the latter, you’ll be doing less but the time spent commuting to the gym, doing your workout and showering is probably still going to add up to somewhere in the 5 - 10 hour range if you’re doing it 5/6 days a week.
You can pretty much find an app for every mainstream sport imaginable where you can get a full year of personalised programming for under £200. If you then combine this with a training course of some kind to learn a new skill and a creative project/side hustle, you end up with a self-structured life by default that is pretty satisfying.
If anyone wants app recommendations for specific sports leave a comment and I’ll write a list of the best ones I’ve found.
I found that, when I was feeling overwhelmed, it was because I was not making choices.
Or, in other words, I was not saying "No" to enough things, so that I had too much on my plate.
I found that choices were hard to make but, once I started simplifying my life by removing elements from it, I started to get a lot more focus.
That focus allowed me to find the motivation and direction that I had needed all my life, but which I never thought I was missing.
Feeling unsatisfied with one's life can really be a great blessing ;-)
1. Simple organization
2. Laid back mindset
Organization to get clarity, not to be prescriptive. To easily see things like what’s going on, when deadlines are, and what’s involved, and what you want in the first place. Organization not to set a schedule, routine, time management, or anything like that. It’s about making things simpler.
Laid back mindset so I can take it easy and get things done at the same time. Like working smart, not hard. Instead of trying to be fast, productive, efficient, take your time, be more thoughtful. It helps to naturally avoid procrastination, because the thought of doing something you don’t feel like isn’t so repulsive. You can just take your time, relax, and get it done. If you avoid feeling pressured, it makes it easier to concentrate, and do a better job.
My goal is to wake up, and not care about what day it is. I really don't want to be stressed at night. I don’t want to dread Monday or look forward to the weekend. I don’t want to be so worked up that my brain looks for distractions. I don’t want to have to hype myself up to something.
Being organized helps me see what I might wanna do when I wake up, and be at peace when I want to get some rest. Being laid back helps me to actually start doing something and even have a chance to enjoy it. It helps me to take a break when I need it, and to pick it up again later. It makes it easier to be patient when something is challenging.
Routines are important. Even if artificial.
That or you‘ll simply disintegrate into the void.
Pick life though and just do it (Atomic habits is probably a good start, check durmonski.com for an efficient write up).
To me, this means, look at the next day’s calendar (commitments, obligations, logistics) the night before. If you don’t have any… make some arbitrary ones up.
All structure is self-imposed anyway (as evidence by those that are late for everything).
As for night, I catch up on social media, then place the phone in another room so I'm not tempted to doom-scroll. I have a dedicated non-internet iPod for listening to podcasts with the VLC app which typically sends me to sleep. If I have problems sleeping, I take notes, since my brain is buzzing with valuable ideas which I execute on the next day.
I'm happier now, my spirals are smaller, I forgive myself easier. I also think I am more productive.
Not saying one shouldn't seek structure and try to make it for themselves. If that's your path, go for it. But for me, I think that ideal was harmful and hindered a lot.
Now, I get out of bed when I'm rested and only set alarms occasionally when I have an appointment.
It might not be a time-based structure, but it's one that I can follow indefinitely.
One thing that has really helped me over the last month or so is booking regular sessions on https://www.focusmate.com. Even if I just book a 20 minute session every morning, this helps me stay consistent with clearing out my email inbox and answering support tickets quickly. (Although I'm actually in a session right now and I got distracted with writing up this comment. I will go back to doing my emails after this! I should probably share my screen with my session partner so that I don't get so easily distracted.)
I also used to get very overwhelmed when I would see a lot of cards in my Trello todo lists. The problem is that I would dump all of my thoughts and ideas into a single Trello board, so it would turn into a bizarre mix of miscellaneous projects and ideas for things to do, like "buy some new socks", "pay an invoice", "go to an Ethiopian restaurant", "take some drum lessons", etc.
I solved this by creating a new Trello board that is strictly for important tasks. So now I have an "Ideas" board which is my old dumping ground of random things, and a "Tasks" board that only contains important things that I actually need to do. I also came up with a priority system where I would prefix each title with a number from 0 to 9, and I set up some Butler automations that would automatically sort the list alphabetically in ascending order. So then I would start each day by looking at my tasks board and doing the highest priority tasks first. During a lunch break, or after I finish my important work, then I allow myself to take a look at my "Ideas" board and maybe pick a fun project to work on, or do some personal errands. It's pretty hard to maintain a work/life balance when you work and live in the same place, because everything really starts to blur together. One minute I'll be working on a bug fix for a customer, and the next minute I'm playing around with some home automation project.
* what should I be doing with my time?
* what is important to think about?
As a software dev with a flexible schedule, my life feels arbitrary. I pick up hobbies because I need stuff to do, I try to eat better to take care of myself, I save money and live frugally for a rainy day. But there's no common thread to all these. It's just stuff I picked.
What else could it be?
But you need to enforce your own bedtime and waking time to make it effective.
"He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living things."
However, some of us simply have too many things we want to get done in the span of a human lifetime, in which case the answer is to do less, not more.
[1] https://fcw.com/defense/2022/05/space-force-bring-data-scien...
[2] https://www.spaceforce.com/military-careers/cyberspace-opera...