molochai

JAN[1] says "time management" is a disability (limitation, in their words) that requires accommodation.

[1] https://askjan.org/limitations/Managing-Time.cfm?csSearch=10...

At the risk of being roasted for recommending pop-culture things, the podcast Philosophize This is pretty good for a high-level overview. I'm sure there are issues and simplifications, and it's certainly not actual source material. The nice part is it's sort of a start-to-finish, he goes from the start of philosophy to modern day stuff, which helps a ton in building foundational understanding without reading everything ever written.

Completely out of tech: my sister has a dog training business. I will go train dogs with her and help her run her business. It may not be totally safe from a big economic downturn. People tend to spend less on their pups in hard times. But we've also owned dogs pretty much forever so it'll never completely disappear. And I am certain it will never go the way of automation.

But more likely, still within tech: pivot to IT or security or some other Thing within tech. All of it's still fascinating to me and I could get down with anything, just happened to fall into code.

Same, thank you.

I have a friend and coworker who is currently struggling with this thing and similar "not making anything" issues from having worked a "maintenance/support" job consisting of little day-to-day make-creation. He took a leave for two months. I really don't think he's coming back.

It is a loss for people he works with and the things he touches. Not to mention a loss for me, because he was the one person I found at my current job with the "make stuff, be useful" attitude. Already people who see that writing on the wall are dropping out.

Sooner or later, me too, if that is in fact the way it goes. The only thing that really keeps me going is that I don't have anything else to turn to, and I do have some cloudy optimism about getting a lot of money and satisfaction in a couple years to help clean up or rework the garbage-deluge.

Your other comment about extroversion makes me think of Gifts Differing (not the best book in the universe, but some good bits especially around intro/extroversion). I just want to hit flow state and smash my head into a problem that costs me sleep and come out on top bloodied but happy and feeling like I've done something. And this is/was a really great career for that.

> This faculty of concentration is likely to characterize the introverts' careers. Whereas extraverts tend to broaden the sphere of their work, to present their products early (and often) to the world, to make themselves known to a wide circle, and to multiply relationships and activities, the introvert takes the opposite approach. Going more deeply into their work, introverts are reluctant to call it finished and publish it, and when they do, they tend to give only their conclusions, without the details of what they did. This impersonal brevity of communication narrows their audience and fame, but saves them from overwhelming external demands and allows them to return to another uninterrupted stretch of work. As Jung is reported to have said, the introverts' activity thereby gains in depth and their labor has lasting value.

I really enjoyed The Burnout Society, read it about two months ago and plan to read some more.

The "positive power" idea that you can do anything always struck me as funny but I didn't have good words to explain it until I ran into his work. Less disciplinarian punishment, more implicit and internally-driven self-punishment for failing to live up to the "can."

There is a pretty good relevant episode of the podcast Philosophize This (#179).

Went to a Starbucks the other week, had a gift card to blow... looked pretty dim and potentially like they were closing shop but I could still see people. No hours posted on the door, "scan this QR code to get the hours." I opted to tug on the door handle to figure out that they were, in fact, closed.

I get why that is useful for them (looks cool, no having to reprint the physical hours stickers, less ugly than a paper version I guess) but the assumption that it is easier for me to pull out my phone and scan the code versus just... trying the door... whew.

Reminds me of working in restaurants ages ago. Credit card swiper down? Cool, pull out the "knuckle buster" for your "analog Plan B" -- all's well, though the manager's probably pissed at staying late to manually enter the transactions. We probably could not even do that anymore because many cards have gone to non-imprintable numbers.

A small but silly one: breaking middle and right click functionality for links.

An auction site I use loads in the list of auctions after the rest of the page loads in, and also doesn't let you open links with middle click or right click>new tab, because the anchor elements don't have href attributes. So that site is a double-dose of having to open auctions in the same tab, then going back to the list page and losing my place in the list of auctions due to the late load-in and failure to save my scroll location.

Disrepair is too right. 5k issues and 1.7k open PRs on the Gutenberg GitHub repository.

I wish this all had happened before Full Site Editing was put into .org.

Not who you asked but:

- Quiet - Susan Cain (introversion in general)

- Cues and Captivate - Vanessa Van Edwards (business-focused social skills)

- The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense at Work - Suzette Haden Elgin (I actually didn't enjoy this one too much, didn't finish it, but I think that was a personal mismatch)

- How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dave Carnegie (a lot of the techniques are very, very dated and transparent when used today... but it's pretty foundational and worth a glance anyway)

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, the Ram/Shyam story -- it sounds like one of those people is good at getting their job done and works well to solve hard problems independently... and the other person over-relies on other people via collaboration, and compensates by making excessive "high visibility" noise. One of those people is solving critical bugs, the other one is... doing demos for other teams. It's sort of telling Shyam prefers work broken down into small, digestible, predictable chunks.

It's a shame management (in my experience) seems to consistently value Shyam's style. Too much of either working style leads to problems. Excess in the first leads to overlap, duplicated work, and incogruent pieces that don't fit together. Excess in the second leads to a lot of people talking quite a bit about work while nothing tangible or truly difficult gets done.

I have personal experience with a manager who acted similarly intrusively, seeming to want to blur lines between professional and personal. They later critiqued my (supposed) emotional state and motivations in a professional review. "Force" may not be accurate as in strapping me into the group until I talk, "abuse" may not be accurate as in an active misuse of power -- but there are negative consequences for non-participation.

I'm not the least bit opposed to connecting with peers. I've extracted two cherished friends of 10+ years from prior jobs. I just require it to occur organically and with peers, separate from groups led by the person signing my paychecks and writing my annual reviews.

Power asymmetry and also group pressure. There is still plenty of tacit pressure to share despite the "optional" caveat. Someone who says directly "I don't like this, no thank you" even in very deferential words will garner some degree of negativity, either from the manager or the group. Same for someone who shares too much and winds up sobbing, or someone who shares a vulnerability inconsequential in comparison to what others share.

Not a study, but this article was enjoyable. Some of the experiences there say it made their writing overly perseverative on detail, too expansive, too many edits and re-writes. Sort of faster in the short term but slower over the long term?

https://pioneerworks.org/broadcast/club-med-adderall

The platitude "assume positive intent" helps a little bit. Especially at work, there's not a big downside to assuming your coworkers generally have positive intent. For me that saying has been helpful -- although very difficult to keep in my head when stressed.