Comment by vrnvu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vrnvu | Hacker News Reader

Disagree with most points. This seems like another "hyper-productivity" driven blog post that is so common nowadays. If you don't grind 10h and have a clear career path, you are a failure. Couldn't disagree more.

- Have good sleep habits. Sleeping 4-6 hours per day because of "productivity" is not cool.

- Don't be obsessed with "productivity" and "efficiency". It's okay to take days off and relax.

- Which leads to... Prioritize your mental and body health.

- Career path? Big aspirations? Nothing in life is promised except death; don't forget to enjoy every day. Build habits that you truly enjoy doing every day.

- Take care of your family and friends. Don't see people as a "network" to use for your own benefit. Love and be loved as a genuine human.

- Absolutely do write blogs and do some public speaking because you enjoy it, but not to clickbait people into buying your motivational courses.

In summary, find balance and true happiness for yourself. This post was sad to read.

For sleep, I really enjoyed Matthew Walker's book "Why We Sleep".

It really helps cement the need for sleep, even if you _think_ you don't need it. Not getting enough is going to kill you in the long run, both mentally and physically. And no, you're not "built different" if you think you don't need 7 hours of sleep.

the fact that humans need a book to tell them sleep is good shows how broken this society is.... or how stupid the average person is

While I agree that getting good sleep is necessary, I think the book does tend to over exaggerate the negatives. Alexey Guzey's article on this[1] is excellent and I recommend everyone to give it a read.

[1] https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

Also worth checking out his retrospective a couple of years later: https://guzey.com/2022-lessons/#get-minimum-possible-sustain...

I'm not sure whether he's gone back on any of the specific criticisms he made, but his overall attitude towards sleep certainly seems different to before.

* Work four-day weeks. It's a much better work/life balance.

Interesting would polyphasic sleep (sleeping little, but in a polyphasic pattern) fix that? Probably not, since it tends to eliminate slow-wave sleep where body regeneration happens, in favor of REM sleep (brain consolidation), but that's an idea worth checking out, scientifically.

From the article

* Enforce strict boundaries between work and personal life.

* Learn to decline tasks that could put these boundaries at risk.

> If you don't grind 10h and have a clear career path, you are a failure.

The post doesn't say this.

And it's a post about someone's career, it makes sense that they talk about their career, not about their friends, and the inevitability of death.

There's having perspective and then there's completely missing the point. People should be able to discuss an aspect of their life without giving an overall life philosophy.

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