Comment by jdimov9 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdimov9 | Hacker News Reader

Here's what works for achieving extreme levels of hyper-creativity and hyper-productivity for me. Will it work for you? Yes. Will you do it? No, you will find endless excuses to call the below "impossible". Still, for anyone who dares, here it is:

1. Get as much sleep as you can. Consistently. Yes, it's counter-intuitive. Yes, you'll have fewer waking hours. But those few hours will be many times more productive and joyful.

2. Drink more water and eat fresh food. Eat less than you normally do.

3. Get plenty of fresh air and sunlight.

4. Get a good amount of physical activity throughout the day (exercise, walks, whatever works for you)

5. Get plenty of vacation time during the year. Do not do ANY work during your vacation time - focus on enjoying yourself. (Ideally, 1/3 of the year should be spent on vacation time)

6. Make a list of the 20 most important things you want to accomplish (near-term). Sort the list so that at the top you have the things that you feel most passionate about. Keep the top 2 items and scratch everything else (I don't mean de-prioritize - I mean scratch it / drop it / burn it / forget it / it ain't happening.)

7. Focus all of your time and attention on doing those things that are most exciting TO YOU personally. Whether those things have any utility to anyone other than you is irrelevant. You come first.

8. If there is anything else that still absolutely needs to be done - find a way to delegate it to someone who's good at that stuff.

9. You will be unstoppable.

Did you get that list from some TED, Accelerator Speech or a book? Because it ain't realistic for 90% of the 'population'... which means it's unrealistic and pretty much useless.

Wait what? Which steps are impossible for 90% of the population?

Not a lot of people can spend 1/3 of a year on vacation. I'm in Sweden and I consider my vacation time pretty generous (6 weeks per year), but still, I'm still nowhere near 1/3 of a year.

I assumed that holidays and weekends count as "vacation", in which case you are already there if you don't work on the weekends. If not, then yes it's definitely unrealistic for many.

Yes, but those 6 weeks are just your government sanctioned vacation. There's nothing stopping you from taking more time for yourself.

We get 5 weeks where I am, but I still make it a point to take at least 2 months off.

I think he meant time off (which is more realistic) Considering most people have 2 day off each week + the statutory holidays the 1/3 is actually achievable. (exemple for canada with 4 week off: 52*2=104 "week end" + 10 statutory holliday + 4 week (20 days) vacation= 134 days/365 = 37% more than 1/3)

switch jobs after 12 months and take 6 months off (or rather "on" as I would say)

The list is mostly mine (I didn't get it from anywhere), although I have, of course, been influenced by people who are more successful than me.

The most relevant influence is perhaps Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach. The bit where you pick the top 2 tasks and drop everything else I picked up from a Warren Buffet book a few years ago.

I fully agree with you - a lot of this is not practical for the vast majority of the population. I'm obviously no Warren Buffet, so I also don't have the luxury of doing this all the time. All I'm saying is that when I DO stick to this plan as much as possible, the results are amazing.

It takes a lot of courage to NOT do things that you think you MUST do but HATE doing. Once you blast through this fear, though, you will literally see miracles happen.

90% of the population aren't on HN.

This sounds very attractive. Can you share the context - what kind of work do you do, how do you get paid?

My circumstances are not TOO different from most other people on here (if anything, my lifestyle is probably more demanding than that of most). I certainly don't have any unusual wealth that allows me to dangle my feet most of the time, or anything like that.

I do software development and IT consulting and am gradually moving away from freelancing (where I do most of the work myself) towards just orchestrating things and streaming work through my company to other freelancers.

If you need even more context - I also have a family with 3 young children and the income that I generate is about 100% of our total family income.

7 of 9. Numbers 6 and 7 are really hard at the moment, as I'm constrained by the expectations of a manager, who is also a friend.

That said, I'll agree that it does work. And I'll even submit my idea of why most people will consider it "impossible". Understanding the difference between hours spent tapping on a keyboard and productivity takes experience.

I didn't have that experience 15, 10, even 2 years ago, so the idea of being able to "do" less and get more out of it was quite foreign.

It works, though. :)

Been lucky enough to be following pretty much exactly this list recently. I confirm that it can work, in the sense of making you very productive, but it is also just a very enjoyable and fulfilling way to live. Yes, you have to earn money, and yes this can be an issue, but I think that a lot of companies lose out a lot by making it impossible for people to take this kind of approach in a more standard employment situation.

I guess if you follow those nine rules for a year - your head will clear up that much - you will realize how pointless this carrot-in-front-of-donkey-style-career-rat-race is and get off!

Number 6 is probably the most useful advice on the list (for me at least). I have noticed that I can only ever really work on about 2 things at once, but I never seem to learn to stop trying to do more.

I'm curious if you would count your day job as an "accomplishment".

Try everything you can to get away from your day job and to some kind of working arrangement that gives you more free time.

With that said, while you are still at your day job, definitely count everything you do there as accomplishment. You can't hate your way out of a job (but you can sometimes love your way out of it).

> Ideally, 1/3 of the year should be spent on vacation time

Show me one office job, where you have 4 months vacation.

Can't do this with an office job (even if you did get 4 months vacation).

Are you including weekends as vacation time?

I personally don't differentiate between week-days and weekends. I often work on weekends (and probably just as often take weekdays completely off).

But generally, when I speak about vacation time in the context above, I mean it as in large continuous chunks of time during which you only unwind and regenerate (and ideally travel to some interesting place off the beaten track).

That does make sense, but I suspect most people do differentiate between weekends and vacation/holidays which explains why some comments are reacting to your suggestion when it's actually quite sensible.

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