Forget the ‘To-Do’ List, You Need a ‘Stop Doing’ List
time.com
time.com
I don't think this is fair. If you are poor and uneducated, you have to spend more time working just to provide basic needs. So you don't have as much time available as those who are better off.
Combine that with poor and there really isn't much time available outside sleep.
Society can make the work a lot less onerous, restoring that time-choice. (And various societies through time had quite sensible solutions, though of course war and violence destroys sensible living arrangements.) For instance, the common atomized family is incredibly inefficient duplication of work.
The good parents did.
Looking back on things, I don't think I've lost too much time by having a child. It's a little inconvenient sometimes having to shuttle him around. But from my observations, single/childless people tend to spend the same amount of time on extracurriculars that I spend with my child.
Also regarding extra curricular, people might spend the same time socialising etc but this counts as time to re-charge and get back to work. If you spend a couple hours getting your kids dinner and into bed you don't feel like heading back to the desk the same way you do after a game of tennis with friends.
The value of focus is highly underrated. You don't need to do everything, and often doing everything 'on your list' means you're not devoting the time you should be to more important things; things that may not be on your list, or may not even be listable, or might just be doing the things on your list better. Devote yourself to focusing on one thing, shed the things that don't matter, and you might find a quality of execution you never realized.
This is something I learned perhaps too late in my career so far. I feel I would have advanced more and faster and achieved better results if I had stopped doing things that weren't tightly focused—not only on what I needed, but on what my company needed and what our customers needed.
Context switches are expensive.
I totally agree about having a "stop doing" list, because that shit can eat up your whole life on stuff that you didn't actually enjoy. But leaving space for coincidence and serendipity is important too.
And doing useless things sometimes, so that when you DO need more time, you have something left to give up that's not important to you. If you're already maxed out with valuable uses of your time, there's no room to add something else.
(crossover: decluttering and the "get rid of something before you add something")
That makes no sense. At any given time you do the most valuable things available. When something else comes up, either it's more valuable than the least valuable thing you're currently doing - in which case great, you do it instead of that - or it's not, in which case why would you want to do it?
When I found myself unexpectedly in a relationship I needed more time, so I stopped doing taekwando and dropped out of my roleplaying campaign as soon as there was a story-appropriate point to do so. Losing those things hurt, but I knew I was replacing them with something better. If I'd instead been keeping n nights a week free in case something comes up, what would I have gained? I'd just have been less happy in the weeks before that.
If I had 10 years to live and got $20 million, I would immediately stop working and start playing video games to get as much in as possible before I die.
It basically says to spend your time doing something you're passionate about. If that's video games, then so be it.
Sort of like you see a person setting up a hammock to lie in comfort and enjoy the beach. You tell him to stop setting up the hammock and just start enjoying the beach.
Assuming that the monetary restrictions no longer apply is not useful for almost any hedonistic outcome.
My aunt gets about $900 a month from the government and lives in subsidized housing, so that she only has to pay about $200 a month in rent. So income-wise she's doing a lot better than me (I am a grad student).
Second, I gave this advice because it would be incredibly sad to think, "I want to play video games all day, but unfortunately, I have to have a job." That is no way to live. I was trying to encourage the person above me to think about what he really wants.
Third, please don't go around snarkily second-guessing people's comments. My comments deserve to be taken at face value. I am tired having having to defend myself from unwarranted personal attacks.
A now deleted comment posted a link to a rambling diatribe as "evidence" (which just further proves my point). And mentioning any of this is described as a "personal attack". It's an interesting mixing of John Galt and Horst Wessel.
To answer your question, I presume eliminating aid to incapacitated people creates homelessness not walmart jobs.
Now can I ask you: what drives extremists to so thoroughly propagandize themselves that they derail their own ability to think clearly and do such demonstrable harm to their societies?
More specifically, check out this graph: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/img/pm-gr-disabilityvswel...
This does not mean that these people are bad or that we should end disability aid. But it's true... people are becoming "disabled" as a means of surviving.
And were rising the fastest when welfare also rose the fastest (1990-94). This would run contrary to even correlation let alone a causal relationship.
While it is certainly an interesting theory, apparently the situation is even more complicated.
And mentioning any of this is described as a "personal
attack".
I presume eliminating aid to incapacitated people
creates homelessness not walmart jobs.
what drives extremists to so thoroughly propagandize
themselves that they derail their own ability to think
clearly and do such demonstrable harm to their
societies?
No, the language "to get on welfare" you have to be "classified as disabled" but "doctors hand that out like candy" is not about anyone's aunt, it is designed to provoke hatred toward vulnerable people to further a political agenda.
Is the anecdotal evidence that uses the word "about" twice and is written to provoke yet more hate true? Well there are hate mongering anecdotes about Jews, priests and gays too. They are of equal value and are repeated with the same intent. Was he offended when this was pointed out?
>>..what drives extremists to so thoroughly propagandize themselves..
>..that's not what is happening here..
On the contrary, it is the only thing happening here.
social_standing-=1; romantic_relationships-=1;
But if you have a good amount of money, it suddenly becomes an OK thing to do.
Isn't this basically, "you're enjoying yourself wrong" moralizing condescension? And frankly, if I had a hammock available on the beach I would use it and skip the sand in my crack.
Yes of course you can't survive playing video games, because you also have to eat. I don't think that was in question.
Now, maybe games aren't your thing, but this ultimately applies to anything, hedonistic or industrial or altruistic. Whatever is most important to you -- gaming or family or mountain climbing or mathematics or civil rights -- you can restructure you life to maximize the amount of time or impact you have on that one thing. It doesn't really matter if it pays the bills.
But probably that's the reason I'm much too often dreaming of dropping everything, leaving to Africa to build schools. Too bad I'm a software engineer.
I don't dream of playing video games, I already do it too much, but it's interesting to know that someone does.
Not to put you off your dream, but it does strike me that buildings is doable - really good teachers are much harder to source.
Building schools in Africa is a metaphor of my actual "volunteering" desire: if I had infinite or just enough capital I would prefer to invest it in infrastructure and technology: building renewable energy power plants, internet connectivity to rural areas, research labs, etc.
Education is very important but most third world countries could benefit much more from technological self-sufficiency and expertise.
http://www.samaritanspurse.org/donation-items/build-a-school...
http://www.freethechildren.com/get-involved/toolkits/brick-b...
I'm working on an Ed Tech startup in Ghana myself (well it is my home land though I don't reside there) and that's mostly what I spend my time out of work on.
> Too bad I'm a software engineer.
No way, our skills are crucial for a continent that is rapidly embracing technology. The next billion to come online will need software that works for their contexts, and I think we're empowered to do that - while those more skilled in building solve those problems as well
wow that sentence didn't end up where I expected it to!
you listed one of the cheapest forms of entertainment in the world. (And a primary reason so many millions of teens are into it.)
you could play all the games you want for ten years, with like four complete TV or computer updates and all the games that interest you, for a total of $18K per year including basic living expenses. Leaving you 99.1% of the $20 million untouched (even though it is not such a huge sum of money.)
Following your "passion" is dumb, find something that you think is okay that other people find unpleasant.
http://99u.com/videos/22339/cal-newport-follow-your-passion-...
http://tempr.org/54e03ee74f60d.html
1. If you find your work boring, and don't make enough money at it, then quit and find something that either makes you money or stokes your passion.
2. If you find your work boring, but you make plenty of money at it, then find side-passions.
3. If your work stokes your passion, but you mooch off other people to make ends meet, it's not a great way to live.
4. It's easy to be passionate about something. But will you be able to sustain the passion for years? Through the ups and downs, and the late-nights and the disappointments?
'Stop Doing' the stuff at the bottom of the list.
I'd just be doing it in a nicer place (and probably be wearing more expensive pants).
When I realized that it doesn't matter for things to be important, I was able to get over my hangups and get to the things that I really, actually wanted to do. When answering the question of "what would you do if you had limitless resources", you have to discard cultural pressures, because cultural pressures apply an artificial restriction to the "limitless resources" conceit of the thought experiment.
If you find yourself not liking your answers then, you have to sit down and figure out why. Keep climbing up the ladder of "why?". Why does it bother you? And why is that reason important? Why do those conditions that make it important exist?
It's possible that I would keep doing exactly what I am doing now, which I don't know whether to consider a blessing or curse. Am I living my dreams, or do I have no dreams?
I found it helpful. I learned a lot about what I want from it. It took me a while to finish and ended up being several pages long. It helped when I realized that the trick is to describe lifestyle, not possessions obtained or goals achieved. That's really the important thing.
I realized that most of the goals I had created were vague, barely thought-through assumptions that would supposedly make that lifestyle possible. But those two things aren't really connected.
So now, I do some freelancing for 20 hours a week and the rest of the week is mine. I've achieved 80% of my lifestyle goals and it was mostly about rearranging the things I already had in my life.
I spend the rest of the week working on projects that will hopefully get me the other 20%.
Stopping still has barely survived as logic and fact worth recording — as actionable emotional-intelligence.