Yeah, for some people, the advice in this article will lead to disaster. For example, I would rather be reading than doing, all the time. Reading is pure candy for me, instant gratification. To become (reasonably) successful, I had to stop reading.
"The proneness of human Nature to a life of ease, of freedom from care and labour appear strongly in the heretofore little success that has attended every attempt to civilize our American Indians. . . . They visit us frequently and see the advantages that Arts, Science and compact Society procure us; they are not deficient in natural understanding and yet they have never strewn any inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our Arts.
"When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and makes one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return. And that this is not natural [only to Indians], but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho' ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet within a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of Life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them."
http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/
Some kids that go there spend periods of years doing no work, going to no classes, and aren't punished. The idea is that when the kid is ready to learn, he will learn without provocation.
Oh, and in case you think this is merely a phase, he's been doing this for over a year now.
When at work, I use a timer to time the time spent in actual productive programming. I find that if I start to go over 20 hours of productive work a week, I start to become miserable and my body reacts by bringing on colds or allergies.
Perhaps your friend chooses to work at a grocery store because he can't find a job in his field where he would have the opportunity to only work 15 hours.
A 25 real-hours-of-work week ends up being a pretty productive and intense one for me. I feel lazy with such a low number, but I bet most office workers do far less.
Only one thing makes me deliver: deadline
Without deadlines, nothing gets done in my world, as I always get these ideas of how to do something better using the new shiny thing X and there is no end to it.
Deadline enforces discipline and requires me to do a good job of planning to allocate the precious time. Makes me say no to pleasant distractions that I would otherwise agree to...
Once I have something delivered (or during my consulting work), then I allow myself to go on a "sabbatical": read the books and lurk on HN and LTU. However, the sabbatical must have a scheduled end-date too, otherwise nothing will ever get done.
Deadlines must be concrete. Here are mine: my current sabbatical ends in 2 weeks (coincides with the end of my consulting engagement and loss of golden handcuffs http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=763743). Real work starts on October 4 with a clear deliverable by October 23...
I'm an illustrator, though, not a programmer. But it's nice to be able to tell new clients that I haven't missed a deadline in 15 years. No illness or injury or real-life event can change that.
I used to feel guilty for sometimes waiting till the last minute to finish a job, until I watched a documentary about Frank Frazetta. He would get a new painting project and wait till the night before the deadline before even starting on it.
He'd stay up all night and get it done on time, then go back to what he was doing--which was usually baseball or (as he got older) golf. :)