How to Stop Time | Hacker News Reader

How to Stop Time

nytimes.com

84 pointse15ctr0n20 comments

As I've matured and grown in my technology career, I've found procrastination pays enormous dividends with only small drawbacks.

Procrastination pushes you to wait to do a task until you find the optimal amount of time you know you need left, while doing it in the most relevant environment.

For example, If I code or design something to early it is more likely that research, marketing or product direction could have changed, causing a percentage or all of my work to become moot.

However, If I wait to do my work until I know I have just enough time left, I find my work is the most relevant and least likely to require changes of substance due to shifts of other parties.

I whole heartedly advocate for procrastination due to this. Its a beneficial decision making response that we should stop fighting.

This is a great point.

I think what real trick or hack to take away here is psychological instead of code: don't feel bad about it.

Yes, that's exactly what I took away from the article. I do think severe laziness day-to-day is definitely detrimental. But being idle, resting and reflecting is important to "reset" yourself and preventing burnout.

Our society seems to condone any type of idleness, especially in the technology industry. This view needs to be changed at an institutional level. In every talk I've heard, people say one of the most important things working and running a startup is to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Instead of just acknowledging this concept, we need to actually implement it.

condone means to allow; I think you meant condemn

Lol, yeah *condemn. Although condone is to allow reluctantly. And no one's going to disallow me of my laziness when I want it.

Though this is a good point, you are not really procrastinating at that point. Procrastination almost always implies being late to your due dates. You are just very good at calculating time you need to do something. I think you can consider yourself a procrastinator when you are habitually being late and making others be late because of your behavior (laziness or whatever it might be).

thats a good point in the short term sense.

but what about the long term procrastinators? how does your theory fit into the aspect of long term goals? Say I want to switch careers and become an actor or something. Obviously I'd want to begin as early as possible and not wait until "there's optimal time you know you need left" because you obviously don't know the optimal time to begin a long term goal.

Just a thought.

What you are describing is optimal task scheduling. Procrastination is what you do with the time that you're not spending on your task.

I need fewer developers with that attitude, I want people who can get stuff done, but by their nature, put it off. There will always be those that procrastinate in a team and there will, thankfully, always be those that just get it down. The reason why your technique seems to work for you is more likely because are picking up your slack.

I wholeheartedly advocate you getting off my team :)

You have no idea of the context from which he is making that statement.

You have no idea of his technical competence or his efficacy with regard to completing tasks and shipping products.

You have very little legitimate basis from which to extrapolate that he/she would _ever_ want to be a member _your_ team in the first place.

Judging by the implicated narrative you seem to be espousing, I'm sure _I_ wouldn't want to be a part of your team.

Even disregarding the fact that you mistakenly omitted the word "others" your haughty comment could not have been better phrased to portray a small-minded project manager with little understanding or empathy for those that _apparently_ work under you.

The assumption that any programmer commenting here is equivalent to a 'member of your team' is little and less based in reality, and much and more based in your own flawed interpretation of it.

I've worked with developers who "just got it done", I would often spend months afterwards fixing up their messy code.

This is not procrastination, this is late-binding ;)

I agree that there are a great many number for whom "time crunch" and the pressure of an imminent deadline help to produce a superior outcome. For those that know themselves well enough, I agree absolutely simply set your own start time, and don't built yourself up over "procrastination." You're simply scheduling your own work.

However, there is also another subset of people that put off starting projects and work until the last minute, and don't function well under pressure. Many produce inferior work; some break down.

Ultimately, the key is self-awareness and self-acceptance. Identify what kind of person you are, in terms of work habits and conditions, and be completely honest with yourself. Then don't feel guilty or silly or whatever other negative attitude people want to attach for structuring your own production schedule according to your strengths and superior functioning.

This happened to me recently. I was thinking of spending a lot of time perfecting a feature when my boss told me not to waste too much time designing it as they'd change their minds in a few weeks anyway and then all my effort would go to waste.

He was sort of right but the end result is that the codebase is now a mess.

The quality of discussion about procrastination is shockingly low. Try telling people you're reading a book on procrastination, and some joker will say, "Ha! Ironic, right? Get it?" And everyone will chuckle good-naturedly at the thought of someone procrastinating by reading a book on procrastination.

No one stops to examine why we should assume someone reading a book is shirking their duties. Even watching a YouTube video is not inherently an act of procrastination. If anything, our culture has an epidemic of people not being able to relax without being filled with guilt and shame over their momentary lack of productivity.

Also a good read on the subject http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

I'm bummed he had no advice for type-a procrastinators like myself

Simply not doing what one is specifically "tasked to do" does not necessarily represent procrastination. It may be not be a direct route to one's specific end; however, it's important to recognize that sometimes on the journey from side to side, one learns, finds, or imagines a new way to move forward. The internet simply provides new ways (which society moves to chastise and to ascribe blame) to wander off the beaten path. I find that when my internet clicking and surfing become as wayward as a three year old following a butterfly in flight, usually I come away having learned something unexpected or something I didn't know I wanted to know, in both cases, of value. Do I think people spend/waste a lot of time watching random fart contests and people acting the fool? Well sure. But, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. The benefit of online "procrastination" in many cases is significant.

Age and the accompanying experience have started to bring me introspection and retrospection, and from these I've realized opportunities I've missed out on because I didn't do something earlier that I could/should have.

A recent infographic in The Economist revealed that in the 140 million hours humanity spent watching “Gangnam Style” on YouTube two billion times, we could have built at least four more (desperately needed) pyramids at Giza.

Perhaps the pyramids got built because the Egyptians were putting off something more important.

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