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Comment by fwipsy | Hacker News Reader

I concluded years ago that I'm not time-constrained, I'm energy-constrained. I couldn't explain it in terms of neurochemistry, but it's clear empirically that for me at least, willpower or mental focus is a resource which can be depleted, and work takes most of it. To me, the best way to use those 52 hours is not achieving things but caring for myself/restoring willpower, which means some blend of socialization, exercise, and relaxation.

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This is in part why I have a job I'm overqualified for at a slow-ish moving corporate. To be fair, I fell into it and the job suits me better than being a software engineer. Being a software engineer isn't bad. But being a data analyst while having the same pay at a marketing department is infinitely easier. I'm the only technical person, so anything I make has more impact, despite the fact that it's easier. Also, one knows how long it takes so I can set my own schedule. Finally, because of this I'm hard to replace. It helps that the IT department is barely functioning, which is why I'm able to fill this gap anyway. It also helps that being multidisciplinary is my biggest source of strength. I'm an okay programmer, I'm an okay psychologist (academically speaking - I've neve worked in the field but published a paper and finished a bachelor in it), and a few other disciplines like that. Here most of that comes together.

I don't work the amount of hours I should, but no one bats too much of an eye since I have already saved them +250K within the first 3 months of working there (not due to my talent, the IT department really isn't functioning there). It was a bit of a lucky homerun to be fair, but I make enough impact for a normal Dutch salary.

So while I am overqualified, it's in part because there are some natural advantages I have in the role of a data analyst as it is a really generalist role. And in the Netherlands, it pays about as well as a many SWE salaries (unless you work for Databricks or Optiver - to name 2 very different but both high paying companies).

What would really make an impact would be to work towards making that IT dept. functional, efficient even. That's what a true leader would do, but you are clearly disincentivised from doing it since it would upend your cushy sitiation.

That’s a political job. I would need buy-in from many stakeholders and go against the company strategy of centralizing all business units to the global organization. I would effectively be fighting against the C-suite and the global organization.

You do it, if you want to make an impact. You’re only 9 months behind me and they are multinational.

I would also be up for doing it together. You would probably take a pay cut though since this organization doesn’t pay much. But hey, at least you will make an impact.

My email is in my profile.

This is the worst of my linked in feeds.

"If there were only more hours in the day we could work."

The problem really is:

  *  Human malware.

  *  Managers introducing complexity where it shouldn't be.

  *  People wasting your time on issues that could really have been emails.

The fact I need a full weekend to recover from people propagating these shitty ideas is bad enough. Don't promulgate this stuff to HN.

"Work expands to fill the available time"

This includes other people's time.

> * Human malware

That's a funny / interesting concept to think about. I'm sure I could think of plenty of corporate examples.

Though it reminds of of Kurt Vonnegut's story about the car aliens, bringing the combustion engine to earth, not realising how dangerous ideas could be to humans. I think it may have been part of Slaughter House 5, but I can't remember now.

Or a bit more sci-fi / far fetched, the virus from Snow Crash.

That's it, I have at least 4 hours / day free time but I don't feel any compulsion to fill it with anything important. This stress some people feel when they have downtime and aren't filling it with Something Productive is a fast track to burnout.

Have you stumbled on The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr[1][2]? It crystallises this idea well, divides energy into several different dimensions and tries to give you a framework to figure out which dimension is constraining you and how to expand your reservoir. Some of the practical advice is silly but I still find it very helpful. I go back to it often.

[1] https://hbr.org/2007/10/manage-your-energy-not-your-time [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68985.The_Power_of_Full_...

I often hear "The first hour is the rudder of the day."

In my case, it's "The first hour is the time during which my neurotransmitters are still mostly present."

I'd also expand energy to attention, or maybe even "mental space".

I notice that I'm able to think much more clearly when I don't fill my mind with random clutter. (i.e. when I make an effort to stay away from my phone for at least an hour.)

For me, it's just the other way around. First hours are a time where I'm barely a functional human being. Working against one's chronotype is horrible, but good luck trying to explain to capitalism you're the nocturnal type.

Biologically, my typical morning is like waking the laptop to find it's at 1% battery and plugging it in to try and recharge, while a bunch of deferred windows updates come in.

By evening, everything has finally stabilised.

Yeah I'm the same, I find I start being really productive in the afternoon / evening.

Unfortunately having kids is incompatible with this, so it's been flipped and I just struggle through the morning.

I have to be careful for the first hour or so of work - I get up at 6am and walk my dog for an hour and start work about 8:30 - by that point I am fairly heavily caffeinated (I am not a natural morning person) and I can be inclined to rant at people ;-)

I feel this a lot with music. I technically have a lot of time to do it, but usually I’m pretty mentally wiped out from work and it uses a lot of the same mental muscles as software engineering and managing other software engineers

This is why I’ve got albums worth of songs written and not recorded. Meanwhile AI prompters are pumping out full albums of music every few days and the general public thinks it is real. It’s a little depressing.

Another way to look at it is that we are attention constrained.

And there are a lot of systems out there that are designed specifically to steal that away from you.

That’s how I’ve come to feel about video games. I don’t have a word for it other than to say it feels like video games are life-taking while creative work or manual labor are life-giving but still tiring.

That is a good way to see it.

There is also the effect of "activation energy", we should decrease the effort it takes to start doing an activity we ought to be doing by manipulating our environment in its favor.

The opposite is also true, we can get rid of the activities by increasing the effort it takes to start doing it.

Thank you for this comment. For my job, I am driving in my car anywhere from 4-6 hours a day. You could say I am just sitting there, why don’t I have energy to do anything else with my free time? I’ve recently begun to realize that while driving all that time, my brain is making thousands of subconscious decisions. I don’t have any study to back this up, but I think the brain only has so much capacity for decision making each day.

Many days, I end up zonking out for a 20-30 minute nap in the afternoon. It’s a visceral need to sleep right then. And then I can function at a better capacity for most of the rest of the day.

When I stopped working it took me around one year to stop self-sabotage and overcomplicating things. After then I finally started resolving technical and software problems the simplest way, straight to the point, consulting technical literature. It's impossible to achieve this among people motivated mostly by money and hierarchy.

try waking up 3-4 hours before work and do something else you want to do but requires more energy. It's hard to keep the habit in today society, but it can be done.

Typically you can do your work good enough with less energy, if you've worked in the same place long enough.

sleep only 4 hours everyday is brutal on your body.

that's not what I wrote

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