Don't Waste a Single Moment

You must waste time. As Aftershock21 notes, it is the only way you can be creative rather than productive.

It's also important not to burn out. You are roughly infinitely more useful to your startup when you are well rested than when you are burnt out.

Wasting time helps a lot with that.

Wasting time also gives you a great opportunity to take a step back and gain some perspective on everything and see whether you're working in the right direction, otherwise how do you know you're being productive rather than just doing busywork?

If there's one thing founding a startup has taught me, it's to avoid busywork like the plague and that when you are busy busywork looks the same as being productive.

tl;dr: from the trenches being busy and being productive look the same. You need to waste time to be able to tell the difference.

On the topic of getting up early and finding that time between 6 and 9 when "nothing happens in the tech world": I happen to live one time zone over from most of my clients (I'm in Halifax and my clients are mostly in Toronto), which means that the emails/phone calls/meetings/etc. doesn't start until at least 10am my time. I never use an alarm clock, usually have a real breakfast, and walk to work.

If you already work remotely, it's worth considering a time zone shift. It's even better if you can live in a place with a lower cost of living than where you bill. If you have a lot of California business, try living in Denver. Chicago business? Try Montreal or Columbus Ohio. Customers in London? Try Berlin.

Obviously, this won't work for everyone - but in certain situations it can be a great way to get an extra hour in the best part of your day.

More time doing work does not translate to more creative output. Wasting time is the most effective way to come up with ideas. Its been proven and written many times over. But I guess when you are in a startup and taken funding from external sources, its hard to explain why you waste time!

The post also needs a TLDR;

I don't know why programmers consider themselves as a separate bunch of lot which considers that nothing in the world that applies to others, really applies to them.

There are a lot things that are similar to programming, and sometimes difficult too. Things like Surgery, Music, Some mind based games like chess all come under a similar category. Some times you have to play with intensity.

If there is something I have learned over the years. People who burn out, who are under burden of chasing tough deadlines constantly. People who are always sprinting towards their goals and have desperateness in completing what they have will inevitable end up doing more work. Sure they will be stressed, they will burnout, they will go through some pain.

But I would love to experience such a sweet pain often. The best sleep I've have is when I'm too tired. Athletes, boxers and other sportsmen experience happiness after going through a rigorous regime. They will be undergoing pain, but it still makes them happy. They are also getting stronger and better than everybody else. This is called 'Going the distance'. Ever heard of runners high? Every time I felt like I have been stressed or burn't out I feel happy, Because I have clocked more work than anybody else around me.

You don't need a ocean of creative ideas or a storm of opportunities to be successful, what you need 1 or 2 good ones,and then you need throw all you have to chase them and work on them make them happen.

Sure you need to rest well, but you need to do it properly and then start over again.

Its not going to be easy, Its going to be difficult. There are too many people working 9-5. And commonly done things, bring common results and make you look common. Getting some distinction will require you to 'Go the distance', it will painful, stressful, you will burn out on the way, it will test your will power to persist.

What else where you thinking?

I wasted a moment clicking on the link only to get a server error page...I guess there are a lot of people wasting moments checking out why they should not be wasting moments.

I thought this was quite insightful:

"I had another habit I wanted to break – checking my phone for texts, emails, Facebook, Twitter, and news as soon as I woke up. I wanted to stop doing this because it pulled me into the reactive world of other people’s needs, focuses, and demands on my sacred morning hours."

I have to keep battling to avoid falling into the consumer mindset. As soon as I start reading Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News etc, I can almost feel switching out of creator mode and into a consumer.

There's so much interesting accessible content out there nowadays, and it's all optimised to hold your interest. Usually, reading this will be more immediately gratifying than the work that goes into actually building something.

I definitely think there would be a productivity boost to saving all of that consumption till the end of the day.

"I’ve seen the incredible power of time passing and the importance of the small choices we make every day. Its crazy to realize the success or failure of a company is a collection of days and the things we decided to do or not do on those days. But that’s it. It really is like poker or chess – trying not to make mistakes"

Well for the sake of others here as well as yourself let me point out something that you need to take action on for a choice you have already made.

You've chosen to name your site and use "refer.ly" because you don't have "referly.com".

Now the name "referly.com" is owned by someone in Mountain View so maybe that's your partner and you simply haven't forwarded it to your site. But I've seen this happen so many times I have to point out that it's a huge mistake to not lock up the .com name and to go by a .ly name. Not that people haven't done it. Not that people who have done it haven't been successful. But unless there is a super compelling reason it's definitely something you want to avoid. It's just going to cost you money and/or problems down the road when you need to buy the name.

I understand that there is an entire group of entrepreneurs out there that think domains don't matter for this or that reason. But they do matter and it's not that difficult to keep that in mind before you get to attached to your branding.

Waking up early, having a set routine immediately on waking up (so you don't need to worry about making decisions while half-awake), etc. is one of the best hacks. Particularly if you have to manage other people or otherwise do non-maker work, it's quite likely you'll get more actual work done between waking up and 10am than for the rest of the day.

(5:46am is a particularly good time, especially to the sound of a pager)

The article has a lot of positive points and good that it works for the author. But must point out some important experiences that I had:

>I always believed I was one of those people who just needs 9 hours of sleep, but I am now easily rested on 6-7 per night and reclaiming 2-3 hours a day

Those rewards are only upto a point. There was a period, I reduced my sleep from 6-7 hours to about 4-5 hours. And I didn't feel anything. Or if I felt anything I would shake it off. I would go for my normal run of about 5 KMs, and do stretching/strength exercises after wards. The only problem was the next health checkup showed a higher BP and I had to go on meds. And please note all this while I did not feel anything out of the ordinary.

So learnt the hard way, that there are no simple gains, there are trade offs. I would not recommend any sudden change to life style, few exceptions apart like kicking a proven bad habit.

Being intentional about creating frequent - even if brief - sanctuaries from business is crucial. As much as I and many here love their jobs/startups/companies, you have to step back occasionally. It's not healthy to be 100% consumed be something all the time, even if you're madly in love with it. You need little breaks to reflect, recharge, and reconnect with other important parts of your life occasionally.

Love the early mornings. I need to muster up the discipline to make that happen, too.

Whether you are working or wasting time is decided by the pre frontal cortex, which is responsible for the decision making process in the brain. However the creativity is a whole-brain process, it takes many brain regions to come up with insights and inspirations. So it makes sense not to depend on your pre-frontal cortex to decide activities of the whole brain. It almost like uninformed non-technical manager deciding the technology stack for the programmers.

I've found this to be absolutely true as well. It's astounding what a boon it's been to get on an early schedule where I 1) wake up without an alarm, 2) watch the sun come up, and 3) deliberately avoid mail, news, twitter, etc. for the first several hours that I'm awake.

The most recent experiment has been a regularly scheduled nap in the afternoon, which I find allows me to get to bed later but still feel rested when I wake up.

Thanks Aftershock21 I agree, tldr version: if you have a crazy sense of urgency you might try reclaiming some hours by waking up earlier, and make room in your life for a couple of hours of low pressure introspective stuff every day in the early morning hours instead of just reacting to what the outside world asks of you

I wonder if this post is mis-named, curious what those who read it through think

I used to go through a period where I felt I had to squeeze every minute of the day, and not waste any time. After a month, I got mentally exhausted, burnt out, and hated working.

Question is, are you actually HAPPY when trying not to waste time? I would not be able to feel free and happy whilst trying to artificially fill up my schedule.

Anyone else on an iPad see the text momentarily pop in before disappearing?

That's a lot of "I"'s in an essay.