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My Truck Desk

theparisreview.org

471 pointszdw113 comments

I'm very impressed by (and jealous of) anyone who can context switch fast enough to make use of 10 or 15 minutes here and there to do a completely different task (and actually have it be coherent).

Yes I also cannot do this. I comfort myself by believing the nature of their work allows them some sort of meditation on what they will do in those little gaps...but they may just have an enviable power that I do not have.

I got much better at this when my kids were born, because it was the only way I could get work done on some of my (computing) side projects. I went from having hours of uninterrupted "in the zone" time during evenings and weekends to having much less time overall, and what time I did have was broken into smaller chunks.

I got much more thoughtful about how I used my time and also got better at pre-planning what I had to do so as to make the best use of it. Mostly the key was to just try to tackle smaller tasks and accept that progress would be slow.

That's been exactly my experience as well. Sometimes doing a little research on a lunch break gives enough direction on how to spend available time later on my project.

Accepting that progress will be slow has been the most difficult adjustment, and applies to more than just side-projects. Choosing books or games also becomes a more strategic decision when what used to be a weekend sprint, turns into a several week marathon.

I had a friend in college who was the ultimate expression of this. If he was in a line, waiting for someone, outside a professor's office hours, etc., he was working on SOMETHING, usually getting ahead of some reading for class. I asked him later, and he gave quite a compelling account of how if you truly added it all up, it had a pretty huge effect in how long it took him to get through his work. He was incredibly bright, went onto a PhD at MIT, and was also very sociable, which I suspect was helped by this strategy of aggressively seizing on these little breaks of time.

I need a good chunk of time to settle into "productive" work, even if it is just reading. I suspect that what is needed is a little bit more discipline at first and slowly it gets easier, but I just never had the ethic to stick to it, and because of this friend I don't even have the ability to claim any doubt as to how impactful it would be.

Genetics also plays a significant role here. For example, one of the major symptoms of ADHD is inability to quickly shift into productive mindset.

What is a "productive mindset"? Why do we so easily dismiss some things as due to genetics, while for others it's strictly taboo?

The causes and mechanisms of ADHD are reasonably well understood. Perhaps whatever other traits you have in mind are not.

If you understand the causes of ADHD you should definitely reach out to the Mayo clinic, as recently as earlier this year they admitted that they don't understand the causes of ADHD! https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adhd/symptoms...

Isn’t it the opposite? A common “superpower” observation for people with ADHD is they excel at rapid context switching and have an advantage with multitasking, like in crisis response, problem solving, or keeping track of multiple predators.

I’d love to see a source, because it’s a first time I hear about it and it’s definitely not a case for me, an ADHD person.

I'll submit this one which is a broad review covering strengths and challenges: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/27546330241287655

The key aspects here are "crisis and predators".

Context switching is a common and accessible state, but it's severely taxing and relies on stress. To the point that ADHDers might purposely 'proctastinate' to make use of this stress.

But, not only is it not good for the system to constantly rely on stress, it also means that everyday /mundane / low stakes things simply can't utilize this "superpower" effectively.

At least, how I interpret and navigate my own bouts with ADHD

I doubt they were doing deep work in 3 minute chunks in line at the parking ticket office. One thing I realized for me is that simply priming the pump for later had non-zero benefits. Eg, doing a Google search for something, and just reading the result snippets counts for something in those 3 minutes. Reading the Wikipedia page on something isn't full actual proper research, but reading it five times (because you keep getting interrupted in the post office), but still managing to read it, counts as progress for later. Your brain simply just needs time to stew on things, hence the solution striking during a morning shower.

And much of a project, like life, isn’t deep work. It’s the thousand little things, things which are indeed doable in the interstices

I think we don't give the subconscious enough credit for "getting things done" so to speak.

Since youth I've had (what was always termed a bad habit) the habit of jumping into a task and then never touching it for a week.

For sure there was constant worrying and ruminating on the thing I need to do, but I also have my mind ample amounts of time to 'sleep on it'. So when it came time to sit down and finish the thing, so much of the thinking and ideating had been done and I simply had to convert that into mechanical output.

This is how I fight procrastination on certain tasks.

For some reason, a forced time constraint based on external pressure motivates me enough to finish a task.

I'm great at this if the other task is routine. For example, if I'm cooking a dish I've made dozens of times, I can context-switch between that and difficult work. If I'm making a recipe I don't know by heart, context-switching to another task ruins my ability to think about either.

I do this. The danger is that switching out is as easy as switching in. What one needs, in addition to the ability to refocus, is some actual discipline.

I wrote both "Game Programming Patterns" and "Crafting Interpreters" largely in chunks around half an hour between work, parenting, and other life duties. Likewise lots and lots of hobby programming projects.

Context switching is a skill that gets easier the more you practice it, just like any other. There are techniques like leaving good notes to yourself to pick back up where you left off more easily, but a lot of it just mental training. You sort of learn to hold some of the context in your head all the time but keep it idle when you aren't using it.

When I'm hacking on a hobby programming project, I can often fix a bug or tweak a small feature in fifteen minutes, make a commit, and get a little serotonin hit, all while I'm waiting for the wife and kids to get ready to leave the house.

It doesn't always work for all kinds of tasks. Sometimes for more challenging stuff I really do need a larger chunk of time to load it all in my head. But you'd be surprised how easy it is to eat an elephant one tiny bite at a time if you really try.

..and the Wren compiler :)

> Context switching is a skill that gets easier the more you practice it, just like any other.

Totally agree with this!!

I learned this when I started off as a junior dev. We had some shitty machines and the project compiled for like almost 10mins. Most of the people just read the news and stuff and for some reason I started reading Clean code from Bob Martin (probabbly someone sent me a pdf of it or something). I remember reading it all in a few weeks using those breaks. Then I just kept the habit for almost a year (until we got some better workstations).

If you have an activity where you get to _think_ for hours about what you're gonna do, you can really do a lot in 15 minutes.

Exactly. I also assume that the author was “writing” his stories in the head, while doing construction. He then just had to quickly put it onto “paper” in his breaks.

I feel the same! One bit of advice has helped me take better advantage of those small chunks of time- "Park facing downhill." I don't remember where I first heard it, but the idea is to stop somewhere naturally conducive to resuming work. Start making the list, and stop at a point where it's really easy to write down the next few items. Or leave the really easy bit of code for next time.

I'm not good at it, because I prefer to cross things off when I finish them, but when I can pull it off it saves some of that time getting oriented to what I'm working on.

Lovely story. I work out of the back seat(s) (Crew Model) of my Ford Transit pretty regularly and can relate.

I'm astonished at how productive I can be while waiting around outside a job site for late deliveries/people or even my kids music lessons for an hour or two, or when sometimes I can sit at my desk and get nothing done in the same time. Maybe it's the constraints of the time/space? I (only half) jokingly wonder if some times I'd be more productive sitting in the van in my own driveway rather than in my home office.

My "truck desk" is the rear parcel shelf/cargo blind out of a Hyundai Accent and the moulded counters fit my laptop and mouse pad perfectly. It also tucks nicely into the void behind the back seats when not in use.

I recently acquired a Vision Pro and am still coming to terms with how incredible it can be sitting in the back of my van parked literally anywhere in the country and having a full ultra-wide desktop experience that packs away into something the size of a lunchbox.

This is the cyberpunk future I dreamed of as a kid.

I’m the same way with working on a plane. 2 hours of plane work is worth 4 hours of desk work. Something about the ambient noise, incentive to stay in the seat, and strict time boxing. Shitty internet (if it works at all) means there’s a high cost to trying to outsource my thinking to the internet, and there’s no immediate reward for pursuing a distraction.

I have this experience in airports- I'm always amazed how much I can get done in 45 minutes of waiting at the gate when there's little to distract me.

In coach?

Working on the road has become so prevalent for many field folks that Ford's F-150 has a "Center Console Work Surface" (at least as an option):

* https://www.ford.ca/support/how-tos/more-vehicle-topics/f-se...

* https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-the-for...

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GyZgeM7JM0

Annoying if you're a lefty. :(

Import one from Australia or the UK? Someplace where they drive on the left?

Or just learn not to be a lefty! So easy.

Reminds me of the ad I saw for the Ford transit van - whose steering wheel can be converted into a 'desk'/laptop table:

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a45497067/ford-transit-ste...

I've rented pickup trucks before and I've always been so fascinated with the hanging folder rails in the center console. I have no need to work out of a truck but the fact that you could turn it into a mobile office is very cool.

It is very common. The foreman on a larger project drives a truck and uses it as an office. They need a truck for some activities so it can't be a car (often because the tools are in the back), but they are spend a significant amount of time in the truck doing paperwork. Large jobs will have mobile offices brought in for the job. Even if you are a small company (think pouring a sidewalk), you still need a place to fill out the paperwork so you can bill the customer.

I can see that 10 or more years ago but these days I'd think that would all be done on a laptop or tablet.

Lots of small businesses out there that still do everything with paper.

You still are working with it for long enough to want to sit.

It looks like a great steering wheel that won’t fly out the window while driving.

that is a good idea!

For better or worse, "steering wheel lap desk" is what you've looking for, no Ford Transit van required.

I know a good few who live versions of this particular life, feral creatives living inside the guts of our industrial complexes, working high steel, marine,etc. The drive for this goes way back, all the way to human origins, perhaps further to progenetor species, something to do with describing our world and rearanging the bits and pieces into a pleasant form, even in the harshest environments, something right, placed, just so the other impulse to then smash everything and have palaces and vast halls on the ruins is less explicable, inspite of the huge efforts at rationalisation, but also self evident

> I hadn’t interacted with any of the office staff, but they’d seen me.

This story would have taken a very different turn if early on he had realized that befriending the office staff would have scored him a permanent place in one of those empty unused cubicles. No need to be best friends, but just being friendly and forthcoming now and then would have avoided their attitude of "who's that weirdo let's involve the site manager to get rid of him". It fits with his lonely wolf persona though which makes it easier for him to be a hero in his story and which he seems to cultivate in purpose.

" if early on he had realized that befriending the office staff would have scored him a permanent place"

I feel like you don't have any first hand experience with the kind of classist horseshit that is endemic to these kinds of work environments.

I do, thus my comment.

The key is to use this to your advantage.

It depends on the environment - many years ago I used to have temp job in the summer working on a large industrial plant that had a nice office building where the managers and admin staff were based. There were no signs saying "temp staff keep out" - and you did occasionally have to go in there but it was pretty clear to me that you couldn't go and hang out in there - particularly as the temps got all the muckiest, smelliest jobs in all weathers.

In my experience, it isn't necessarily classist horseshit that divides office and shop (or field) workers.

> They’d followed my oily bootprints down the hallway and begun to leer. Who is this diesel-stinking contractor?

That's probably the real reason. Being a welder is messy, stinky work and office workers don't want that in their space.

Being the weirdo frees you from a great many time consuming pleasantries. Making friends might secure a permanent place but it also means a few minutes from every break will be lost to small talk and sometimes the entire break; you see a self serving lone wolf casting himself as the hero, I see someone just trying to find a way to do what is important to him. I am fairly certain that much of the eccentric artist image is just frustration over small talk.

a great many time consuming pleasantries

Oh the horror!

> a great many time consuming pleasantries

> Oh the horror!

Indeed, that is precisely the case for some folks - with social anxiety. Or autism. Or a number of other mental states.

Maybe they're tired to their bones and barely have energy to even have one meal a day? Maybe they lost a loved one and never quite recovered since then?

It costs nothing to be polite and assume best intentions from the other side.

In this particular case, there's someone whose most precious moments are their breaks during the day, and rather than saying "good on them for finding a way to do the thing they are most passionate about" the response is "gee they should have used that extremely limited free time to.... have the most shallow of conversations"?

Pleasantries are fine, but that was never going to be a long term solution for him. He needed a space that was always available to him, where he is always welcome. For better or worse, that's not the site office. (Even if it worked on that job, you don't stay in one place as a contractor)

Indeed - and break times don't seem to be very long. "fifteen minutes for coffee and then half an hour for lunch" - no time to waste on pleasantries when that is all the break you get!

This guy is amazing - the dedication to his craft is inspiring!

Super inspiring. A lot to read between the lines. Probably fairly introverted - prefers to be by himself than joking with coworkers. But not so much so that he can’t. He’s just really driven to be creative. And found a way, even though life took him down a very different path. “Let your wallet be your guide” is a good reminder that realistically there’s probably no chance he could make a living as a writer - very few can. But he made it happen anyway. Bravo!

People doing exclusively what's important to them is fine until they need a network/community.

Isn't the point of this essay that he doesn't? I'm so confused by these responses

It's a great piece of writing. We don't have enough contractors with truck desks writing or programming or making art.

https://xkcd.com/1332/

>> a great many time consuming pleasantries.

It makes me sad that pleasantries are viewed by some as a time-consuming chore. You can recognize that person who really cares about how you are doing or what you did on the weekend, and it makes you warm inside. You don't need to shoot the shit for 30 minutes, but human interaction is what builds community, and most of us like that; all of us need it.

For some people, “pleasantries” are mentally taxing, and while you can force yourself to feign interest in someone’s random weekend activity, you can’t force yourself to actually find it interesting if in reality you find it dull. The “chore” isn’t that it consumes time, it’s that not everyone finds it a pleasant thing to do with any random person.

It’s a mixture for sure. My time is divided between a WfH desk and a (shared with one coworker) private office at a Co-working space. I love my coworker dearly. I also have made a handful of friends in the space that, like you say, they truly care about how I’m found and that feeling is reciprocal and definitely makes me warm and fuzzy.

And sometimes I just really need to be able to walk over to the coffee maker and refill my cup while processing a complex problem in my head. Unfortunately due to my brain wiring, having even that 5 minute conversation makes a ton of that problem solving context evaporate and it’s exceptionally frustrating when that happens.

I’m fortunate that I can plan where I’m going to be working based on the probability of working on hard problems on a given day. The pleasantries are deeply pleasing for me, except when they’re not.

Community is built through third places, neighbourship, inter-family ties, and other deep and lasting connections between people. That a workplace is a place for community is an unfortunate belief that arose in the USA in recent Bowling Alone decades just because Americans largely don’t perceive any other time and place for community.

It’s true that work place socialization is not sufficient, but back when all those forms of community were in abundance people still engaged in workplace pleasantries.

Yes, but they didn’t need workplace pleasantries in order to feel community like the OP suggested.

But when you are trying to finish writing projects in 10 minute chunks that really adds up.

Someone who can write for the Paris Review and play politics would end up the site managers boss before he could stop it.

I had a friend who worked at a plant and was an author on the side. I don’t think there’s any evidence that good novelists (let alone merely promising ones) are likely to have personalities that make them likely to be bosses.

How does this union thing work - getting laid off then being brought back on again when work picks up? How do you get to be on the union list?

(I'm in the UK, and I tend to associate that kind of approach to casual employment with dock work in sea ports. That ended with containerisation in the 1980s)

Go to the union hall, sign up, pass a test, wait a lifetime (because there's a line of people ahead of you), get called in finally, start as an apprentice, work, do well, get put on the list as a trained apprentice, eventually get called into trained apprentice jobs, train up through the years, become a journeyman and later a master, all while cycling between working and waiting for work. If you're amicable, you can move up the list and get called more frequently because the person in control of the list can just do that, or alternately, someone at a job site can call for you specifically which will get you work faster than simply waiting around for work from the list.

There are still union trades in the US, but they're a dying breed.

Thanks for replying. So vocational training is standardised by unions in the US. That's amazing.

No, as demonstrated from the retreating from the office. Someone with exceptional written communication, who dose self-starter side projects, commandeeres a truck, _and_ talks a skip-level manager into giving him special consideration is sounding a lot more like a boss.

Former “scummy contractor” here. So, a “contractor” being in the office is considered a mortal sin.

I don’t know why this is, but it’s always been this way. Workers don’t go into the building.

The office staff don’t want you there and if you stay too long, your fellow workers will rib you for hours about going to “the dark side”.

In my few years at the job, I had only been in the office area for 5 minutes to fill out some sort of paperwork. Most of that from when I was hired.

Seeing as he was in there on multiple occasions, he probably did establish rapport with the office staff, but left that out because it messed with the flow of the story.

I worked at a warehouse tech startup that had offices attached to our warehouse. The conference rooms looked out over the warehouse floor through big glass walls.

The warehouse workers were explicitly banned from entering the office space. I assume because the company didn’t want them enjoying the free snacks and catered lunches.

Roald Dahl approved.

https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/literarytourist/?p=351

Seems much better than a lap desk, as it probably gets air flow.

I use this:

https://imgur.com/a/X8tBXUg

https://www.amazon.com/JUSTTOP-Steering-Multifunctional-Port...

Just added to my cart. Thanks. Working from the car sucks, but it happens now and then. This should make it a lot easier.

Great!

Lovely essay, tone reminds me this book which has a similar vibe.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/truck-on-rebuilding-a-worn-out...

I think there may be an issue with your link, it's just taking me to the thrift books home page.

I also really enjoyed the writing style.

I suspect it is this book.

https://www.booktopia.com.au/truck-john-jerome/book/97808745...

From the title I had imagined that someone had turned the cab of a truck into a dedicated computer workspace. Hmm...

yeah, I feel like the missing desk could be resolved with a trip to Home Depot and a jig saw.

Lovely. I kind of wanted to hear this guy reading this out aloud

> "(...) I’ve written stories and parts of my novels during breaks—fifteen minutes for coffee and then half an hour for lunch. (...) Most artists I know are like this. Finding time to make art while working another job, or taking care of loved ones."

Has anyone had success finding a way do this, but for drawing? I've been trying to make time for a small comic project and, while I do have plenty of fifteen-minutes breaks I could use, those breaks are usually in places where drawing is impractical (such as buses).

What are the aspects of working on a bus that make it impractical? When I find myself in your position usually I end up realizing I'm self-conscious about people seeing what I'm doing more than I'm concerned about any practical downside or benefit.

In my case it's mostly the shaking - trains are mostly fine, but buses are just too unstable. They also tend to be more crowded, meaning I need to tuck my elbows in and adopt an even-less-stable position which compounds the problem.

All I can suggest is to make it as easy and cheap as you can manage. Carry a sketchbook and just get in the habit of making quick drawings. If you're into painting, watercolor is pretty portable; oil is less so, but try a search for "pochade box" to get a few ideas.

I'm having the same question about sewing. I feel like the lead time to first stitch is quite high, but I think I could make quite significant progress on my projects if I could use the all small 15-minute breaks to make some progress.

The question is how far can you break things down. Also what your job is (if you need to wash your hands before starting that matters)

If you are sewing a ballroom dress (that is any very large project) you probably need longer stretches to get it together. However you could take an individual piece and put in a few embroidery stitches.

Still it does feel like you get 2 minutes of work for your 15 minute break

This won't work for the sewing itself, but while Siri itself is still a hot mess, it can launch shortcuts into other apps. Aka can ask "Siri captains log" and I've configured my phone to launch voice recording so I can journal via voice. That isn't the same as actually sewing, but organizing my thoughts has value, especially if it's during time I otherwise would have burned.

Awesome story. Sometimes over enough time a little is enough.

Phase 2: replace makeup mirror with 27" lcd

Have you seen the portable USB-C monitors they have theses days? That's a great idea! (Obvs don't use while driving.)

This is also perfect environment for Vision Pro to get unlimited screen real estate.

What struck me most was “You’ve gotta make your own conditions”

Victor Papanek approves.

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