
The Busy Person’s Lies - dwynings
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/sunday/the-busy-persons-lies.html?_r=1
======
Jtsummers
I did an analysis on my own time once, ignoring the breakdown of my work day
and just focusing on overall time available:

    
    
      1130-0000 - prepare for bed, relax
      0000-0600 - sleep (roughly)
      0600-0700 - stuff (shower, shave, personal email)
      0700-1630 - work + lunch + commutes
    

So I had 7 hours each day I was "leaving on the table". Most of it was spent
on TV or video games, possibly socializing. I felt exhausted from work so I
didn't want to do anything. But realizing I was "wasting"[0] 35 hours a week
of my time. Reprioritized, started going to the gym, setting aside the block
between work and gym for language study or reading. By the time the gym is
done, while I may be tired, I'm in a totally different mental frame from work
and can actually get work done on my side projects or more reading or more
socializing (that shower after leaves me feeling refreshed, even when I feel
like I've been hit by a freight train after BJJ takedown practices).

[0] In the sense that I had things I wanted to do but they never got completed
due to poor prioritization.

~~~
lacampbell
_0000-0600 - sleep (roughly)_

I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on
6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.

~~~
enraged_camel
You should start measuring the quality of your sleep using apps like Sleep
Cycle. I used to be exactly the same way. Then I realized that the reason I
was sleeping for 9-10 hours was because my sleep was "shallow" and kept
getting interrupted. It all changed drastically after I optimized my sleeping
environment: totally dark, 68 degrees year around, appropriate mattress type
for my sleeping position, etc.

Now I can get by comfortably with 6-7 hours of sleep.

Apps can also wake you up at the right time, as opposed to during deep sleep.
That makes it easier to wake up as well.

~~~
rosstex
Would you recommend Sleep Cycle the most? Do they require the phone physically
on your bed or nearby?

~~~
pbh101
After an update about a year ago, it only requires being nearby (nightstand
works for me) and uses sound to do the sensing.

~~~
rosstex
Cool, I'll give it a try tonight!

------
tboyd47
The story seems to be that most people are under the delusion of being busier
than they actually are, and if they just paid closer attention they would
realize this.

To me the far more interesting question is, why do we _feel_ so busy? I've
made the observation to my family on numerous occasions that the most
stressful and exhausting work days for me are the least productive, those days
when I'm just sitting at the computer staring at the screen for 8 hours. After
a day like that, at 5 o'clock I'm literally brain dead; nothing left. When I
have some productive goal I'm working towards, my work has the opposite
effect; I close my computer feeling energized & ready for whatever's next.

~~~
greenshackle2
The same is true for me. Not having work at work leaves me more worn out.

Or, possibly worse than having no work, having small amounts of annoying work,
but nothing else. The worse is when all I have to do all day is this one
annoying bug I havn't been able to figure out. It should take 2 hours to solve
but it ends up taking three days.

I'm most energized when I start a new project and I have lots of stuff to
build.

~~~
tboyd47
Sounds like you're a programmer too. I wonder if any other professions have
this problem.

Believe it or not, I have the opposite perspective. I'd rather spend a whole
week debugging something in a gnarly legacy system than architect/build one
from scratch. I like being able to say, "it wasn't working before; now it
works," and then get on with my life, rather than live with the consequences
of a hundred wrong turns. Different strokes, I guess!

~~~
comboy
If you have a clear bug and you nail it that's a great feeling. But what's
annoying for me is when you have a simple task of doing X, but you then
realize that you need to replace Y for this, but A replacement doesn't work
with B part and so on.. and when it's all done, few days later, all you've
done is you just finished that simple 1 hour task.

~~~
lobotryas
That's what's killing me currently. Get a task, fairly straight forward,
legacy system makes debugging a nightmare, end up spending a day or two on a
task the output of which is < 10 LOC.

------
JPKab
The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking
about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is
the typical New York Times writer these days.

Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals.
We should all remember that.

~~~
apsec112
I think it depends a lot on the specifics. Of course, there are certainly lots
of Americans who are both poorer than the author and work harder. But in the
US, the very poorest people tend to be those who don't work at all, or only
work part-time. People who live their whole life in a small town with one or
two big employers, which move away when the economy crashes; people whose
skills go out-of-date, and can't afford a retraining program; people who may
be hard workers, but just really suck at interviewing, and always get
rejected; people who want to work more, but their employer only gives them a
few odd hours a day, and no one else wants to hire them when their schedule is
unreliable; people who get job offers in other cities, but can't afford to
move. This underclass doesn't work that many hours, and some would call them
"lazy", but I think it's usually more like despair. It's terribly depressing
to be broke, to not know if you can do anything other people see as valuable,
and to have nothing better to do than watch TV or play video games.

~~~
faceyspacey
That view that it it's "terribly depressing to be broke" and all the despair
the poor in America feel because they can create no value could only be
thought up by us smug hacker news software creators. I know first hand that
much of the poor are content to live off the government, never had any
aspirations and ultimately don't need much to survive and be content enough.
They don't know what they don't know and therefore they don't suffer from the
despair of not being the next Steve jobs. That was never on their list. They
are truly ignorant enough to be content with video games. I'm not talking
everyone but this probably is the majority. Things work and all you need is to
be able to hold a minimum wage job for a few years at a time and when you get
fired you can take a few years off while another friend or family member is on
deck, meanwhile you're contributing food stamps the whole time, 6 months of an
unemployment check, money from a few scams here and there, electricity bill
deductions and many other such benefits you can get if you are below the
poverty line. These are all meaningful contributions you can contribute well
past the 6 months of paid unemployment. You have to understand you also have
old people in the household collecting social security at $1k per month. There
are not only other people not working, but other non-workers coming up with
money and resources. It becomes just as normal for a working-age male to not
be working as grandma. After all we aren't talking 1 person or couple cramped
into an over priced San Francisco apartment. In short, the family doesn't need
as much money and everyone bands together, and can go for a very long time
bringing in very little money. And though totally in the hands of the "public"
health care system whose bills they will never pay if they get into an
accident, they are more than content with tv and stolen movies/shows via apps
like "ShowBox" until that happens, and even after. They have near zero ounce
of fight in them for anything more, certainly not to be the prolific CEO or
CTO of a tech company. That's far out of their field of vision. I am one that
believes to not aspire to something is not healthy. So for now ignoring the
other psychological issues surrounding the more privileged all feeling
disproportionate pressure to be somebody, I'll just say the opposite extreme
we are discussing now is worse and it's out of ignorance. An ignorance most
here can't understand or have forgotten. A true "ignorance is bliss" syndrome.
To us it may look like that as a result they are content to live in squalor.
The truth is the squalor of those living standards have risen. It all just
feels normal to them. What I call "poverty trap sweet spots" certainly do
exist in America.

~~~
krisroadruck
... I barely know how to respond to this. If you think the _most_ poor people
are content being poor it's hard for me to craft a rebuttal given how out of
touch you are with reality. I grew up poor myself. Like lived on the streets
for 2 years, spent time in the state grouphome system, had shoes held together
by safety-pins level of poor and I now make six figures. On my way from there
to here I spent a lot of time with other poor people and the vast majority of
them were extremely unhappy in their situations. A lot of them were working
hard to get out of that situation, others had given up because they realized
they didn't really have the aptitude or mental temperament or the resources to
bootstrap to anything better. I met only a very-very small handful of people I
would have described as "content" or "eager to game the system forever". Your
disdain for the poor is frankly disgusting and sounds like it comes from a
place of having never had to scrap and scrape for your next meal or make hard
choices about which bills to pay this month because you can't afford to pay
all of them. I can promise you it never feels normal to be just a few dollars,
or one mistake away from homelessness.

~~~
apsec112
It's good to hear about your experiences, but please don't make personal
attacks on HN. Usually, commenters here are quasi-anonymous; even when they're
wrong, it's bad to make assumptions about who they are as people, since in
most cases you just don't know.

~~~
SuperPaintMan
It's deserved, he painted a broad segment of working class folk as welfare
queens. Why bother with that computer shit when there is a next to zero chance
of it ever being useful? God help you if you want to progress into a field
where the knowledge is locked away in the ivory tower or behind expensive
texts/journal memberships.

Quite frankly it's disgusting and repulsive. Community rules be damned.

------
koliber
I've heard a great saying once: "Happiness is the difference between
expectation and reality." The more time I think about it, the more I agree.

I am starting to see that it applies to time as well. I used to feel like I
have no free time. However, after thinking about it, it feels like that
because I have big ambitions. I just want to do a lot.

I want to do my job well, work on my side project, spend quality time with my
wife and kids, keep the house in good shape, get myself into better shape,
help those around me, cook and eat healthy, grow my tomatoes, develop my mind,
entertain myself, read books, keep up with the news, socialize with friends,
call mom and dad, travel the world, and also have time to be by myself and
cultivate calmness through solitude.

That is a lot. I've realized that I was demanding too much from myself. I made
a conscious decision to lower my expectations of myself. I will still do all
of the things above, and likely many more. I just won't try to do them this
week, this month, or perhaps this year.

~~~
huherto
>I've heard a great saying once: "Happiness is the difference between
expectation and reality." The more time I think about it, the more I agree.

In a similar note. I believe that it is has been shown that happiness is
believing that the future will be better.

So it more important to have positive expectation of the future than your
present reality. Because you adapt to your present reality whatever it is but
you always need to know that things will be better.

------
rudolf0
Part of it is that constantly being busy can create a lot of physical and
mental fatigue and stress, making it difficult to do things you might
otherwise even if there is some free time. "I never have time" can technically
be a lie, "I can't do all this and stay sane" usually isn't.

I've found even the thought of worrying about work I need to do in the near
future can prevent me from participating in hobbies, despite having ample time
for those hobbies.

~~~
cortesoft
As a fairly new parent, I have had a similar realization. I have some free
time, but because of the lack of sleep and exhausting nature of the work I am
doing, I can't do the productive things I want to do in my free time. I am
simply too tired to give the mental or physical energy required.

------
dijit
The article seems to assume that context switching takes no time. If that were
true I have a _lot_ of free time.. it's just never contiguous.

~~~
ryandrake
Funny thing I noticed: when you start a family and have kids, you are forced
to get better and better at the _skill_ of context switching quickly. You
learn how to be productive with twelve 15-minute slots divided by
interruptions instead of a contiguous 3 hours. Being able to do this is a
skill like any other. I no longer buy the whole "in/out of the zone" thing as
if it is some fundamental law of nature.

~~~
thefalcon
I just constantly find myself out of the zone with a family/kids around.

~~~
zeveb
Hence the utility of having some people in a family specialise in staying in
the zone, and others specialise in handling child-based interrupts, not
entirely different from having one CPU devoted to main processing tasks and
other processing units handling ancillary tasks.

During the nuclear-family era, the idea was that dad would specialise in in-
zone work and mom would specialise in interrupt servicing, but both before and
after I think it was rather more fluid.

~~~
cmdrfred
Prior to that children were vastly more independent as well.

~~~
Jtsummers
Contemporary (starting in the 50s at least) suburban living styles makes
letting your kids be that independent very difficult. Not just the hyperbolic
fear that some have about child safety, but just what they can do locally
without needing a parent or older sibling to drive them.

Setting aside rural/country living where your neighbors were miles away, urban
(large or small city) living was more centered around local shops, parks, and
other environments. Now they live in a sea of houses, and have to travel way
outside it to get to other activities or free space like woods and parks for
play.

~~~
cmdrfred
Are you attempting to imply that cities did not exist 50 years ago? I'll think
you'll find that not only did they exist children were far more autonomous in
them. The fact is helicopter parents have won the day.

~~~
Jtsummers
The explosion in suburban-style living happened (in the US) largely post-WWII,
[EDIT: starting] in or around the 1950s. That's the shift I'm referring to.
Living in suburbs makes it easy for kids to wander the streets (parents feel
it's safe), but the design (or lack thereof) of many of them make it difficult
for kids to be "independent". It's hard to be a 12-year old who wanders to the
local candy store to spend your allowance when the nearest shop like that is
10 miles away because of suburban sprawl. Some areas did a better job than
others of trying to make their suburbs more like towns with local shops,
theaters, and such. But many did not.

Cities certainly have existed for ages, and they did allow for children to be
quite autonomous. It's the post city move to the _suburbs_ (setting aside the
helicopter parent cultural shift we've had) that created a large impact on the
availability of options for kids to act as independent people.

Additionally, for teens, suburbs make having their own jobs very challenging
(though it can reward the entrepreneurial few who start their own service
businesses like lawn mowing or raking). Again, short a car, suburbs make life
difficult for them, they require the assistance of their parents or others to
transport them around, which reduces their autonomy.

------
ChuckMcM
I've never gone full log analysis on this question but several times in my
career I've wondered "Am I really getting less done than I used to or am I
mis-remembering the past?"

Doing a surface analysis of that highlighted lots of places where I was doing
something I wanted to do and later counting it as "wasted" time. So for
example if I spent an hour watching a television show and later felt I had
wasted an hour watching TV, I could go back and re-score that to "I wanted to
watch television and I did, why are my priorities for that time different now
than they were then?"

And for me, there were two things that were key to me getting better with my
time. One was to be explicit about my priorities, and the other is the bin
packing problem.

If you spend three hours on things, separated by 15 minutes between hours, you
end up "losing" 45 minutes because 15 minutes is too short to spin up a new
task but long enough to be meaningful.

If I wanted to address the bin-packing problem then it meant being a lot more
thoughtful about planning my use of time. And doing three one hour things back
to back (with a plan to switch tasks at the earlier of "I'm done" or "it's
been an hour" that coalesces the three 15 minute chunks into one 45 minute
chunk which is enough time to watch an hour long TV show if you can skip all
the commercials.

------
wolfspider
I keep track of my own time quite well and don't really agree with the article
at all in fact I started coming up with my own outlandish solutions. One of
them is that I segment my sleep like people used to do before the Industrial
Revolution. When I get off work I sleep for 2-3 hours and then go to bed much
later for 3-5 hours. I've found that I used to waste more time preparing to
try and sleep for 8 hour blocks than doing anything else. Now I just go to
sleep when I'm actually tired along with the creativity boost you get between
1-3am when you segment your sleep. I'm not distracted during those hours
because no one is still awake to distract me and the time becomes more useful.

~~~
drdrey
What system do you use to keep track of your time?

------
cpwalker
From the article: "I think that time tracking deserves a try. A life is lived
in hours. What we do with our lives will be a function of how we spend those
hours, and we get only so many."

It's high-status to be busy. Time tracking, while useful for some, is more
likely to be a way for people to play the status game.

~~~
fossuser
I agree on the status point - talking about how 'busy' you are is basically
bragging about your status.

I suspect the working poor or people who actually have less control over their
time are more likely to say they're exhausted/tired/overwhelmed than 'busy'.

Busy to me is someone just advertising they're important.

------
eternal_intern
In my experience, It's never time which is the problem, it's mental attention.
Having 4 hours of free time at the end of a tiring day is meaningless if you
don't have the mental energy to actually use it.

------
twoquestions
There's quite a few money-budgeting apps out there (Mint, YNAB, etc...) to
help you figure out where your money is going, but I haven't seen much for
time-budgeting apps.

I know I wasn't great with money until I counted every cent for a while, I
wonder if the same effect could be replicated for people who don't spend their
time as effectively as they'd like.

~~~
Jtsummers
YNMT (You need more time)?

Offer a similar "budgeting" experience as YNAB, but constrained (you literally
have 24 hours a day, no more, no less). Create categories and subcategories.
Work - Programming, Meetings, blech; Meals - Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner,
Preparation, Shopping; Kids - Transport, playing with, working with; Home -
Bathroom, Kitchen, Floors, Mowing; Financial - Bills, Budgeting.

Open the app and log your time, specifying the appropriate category.
Reallocate time. You wanted to spend 24 hours at the lake this month (rented a
cabin, camping), but you needed to clean the gutters and forgot about it so
you go to the lake later on Saturday, not first thing in the morning.

Would be able to generate reports at different levels of granularity, like a
budgeting/accounting app can. Generate a daily, colored, chart so you can see
where in each day you spend time (or don't for unaccounted for time) and
identify trends and problems (I go to bed between 8pm and 11pm, maybe I should
make that more regular).

------
binalpatel
I've fallen into the busy trap pretty often lately.

Busy to me - paradoxically - is correlated with not getting shit done. It's
one thing to have a lot to do, and get 90% of the tasks done, and another to
have a lot to do, and get 10% of the tasks done, with the other 90% rolling
over onto the next day.

It's the roll-over that's really the stressor for me, when I feel most "busy",
and that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy for the next day, when you have
that much more to do.

------
neves
Nice! We have a lot of time. Hey morons, stop whining and work more.

This article represents a crazy mindset. We are not in the middle of the
Industrial Revolution. Nobody should have to work so much any more.

BTW. She has 4 weeks vacations.

------
uberstuber
“To me, ‘busy’ implies that the person is out of control of their life.” –
Derek Sivers

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, I am out of control of my life. Because I need money to live, and so
does my family. So I'm slaving the days away.

~~~
coldtea
Sure. People that need to work to feed their family (as opposed to working by
choice, on things they like at their own terms, and having the financial
support to not work for years on end) are out of control of their life in that
regard (they have to be somewhere for 8+ hours each workday, they cant change
places unless they found a job at the new place, etc).

------
ap22213
The lack of time is really a perception caused by mental overload. Most people
I know have extra time. They're just incredibly overwhelmed with the
background noise of work. They have time, but extremely little of it is
mentally useful time.

------
bm98
I have a time tracking code called "HN". 33.19 hours logged so far this year.
I think it's time well spent...

------
spoinkaroo
What kind of systems do you guys use for time tracking, priority organization,
and achieving goals/finding meaning? I've flittered around with various
systems, but never settled on anything. (Planning out my week in advance, time
tracking from 15 minute intervals to morning intervals with what I have during
the day, to do lists organized by urgent+important // important // urgent //
neither, etc. It can be overwhelming, but I strongly suspect a system that
makes me cognizant of my behavior, decisions, and where I am adding/finding
the most value is superior to having no system at all.

~~~
parasubvert
I've found that a rough version of GTD has really helped me focus on "getting
things done" when I feel i need structure because I am pulled in many
different directions.

Don't worry about all the self help material, it really is a simple workflow:

[https://goo.gl/images/R7ciME](https://goo.gl/images/R7ciME)

From an overall "how to think and act effectively" philosophy, the original is
still the best IMO: "The Effective Executive", by Peter Drucker, written in
1967. It contains very simple ideas, but I've found them to be tremendous life
lessons on how to do the right things, rather than just doing things right.

------
tra3
Are there any suggestions for time tracking apps? Start-stop timers don't seem
to fit me very well: I fall off the wagon real quick. I also tried reporterapp
(www.reporter-app.com) but that didn't last long either. Any advice?

------
sjclemmy
Fascinating. But there is something wrong with this analysis and I can't quite
figure out what it is. Maybe there's a presumption that efficiency leads to
happiness - it's not explicit but I'm sure it's hinting at it.

I'm a big believer in not trying to fit too much in. As the author says, there
are only so many hours in a life time, so actually experiencing it rather than
trying to fill it is perhaps another way to look at it.

------
the_cat_kittles
nice article, but i think its the wrong metric. as others on here have noted,
its _energy_ not time that is the true finite resource. i have only about 3-4
good hours of focus per day. who cares about free time when thats the bigger
constraint?

------
rosstex
Is there a Chrome extension or program that does something like mentioned in
the article, asking you every half-hour "what did you do this last half-hour?"
I think that would be an effective way to get me logging my time.

------
beyondfantasy
Reading this made me want to watch an episode of Real Housewives.

------
SilasX
Reminds me of the WSJ's infographic of tax-hike impacts and the forlorn
expressions on their faces.

[http://i.huffpost.com/gen/944732/original.jpg](http://i.huffpost.com/gen/944732/original.jpg)

~~~
andruby
Wow, those income numebers are insane. Was that a sarcastic infographic or was
it serious one?

~~~
phd514
It was from this article on the upper middle class:
[http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/21/not-just-
the-1-the...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/06/21/not-just-the-1-the-
upper-middle-class-is-larger-and-richer-than-ever/). The HuffPo article
conveniently omits "upper".

~~~
nerfhammer
I wouldn't call that upper "middle" class, I would just call that upper
class...

~~~
Swizec
Upper class is when you no longer have a salary, just investments. Upper
middle is when you have a high salary and some investments, but your main
source of income is still leveraging time and skill for money.

~~~
nerfhammer
So a CEO with a seven figure salary is still upper middle class? I think not.

~~~
Swizec
If said salary is their main/only source of income, why not? Afaik as long as
you _need_ a salary to maintain your lifestyle, you're middle class.

Grey areas abound of course. Whichever definitionwe write down, someone can
find an example that doesn't _feel_ right.

Like, what if your 7 figure CEO is 8 figures in debt and all their assets are
leveraged to the brim and if they lose their job it's all getting foreclosed
by the bank and they're homeless in a month?

What if a 5-figure small business director/owner lives a comfy life well
within their means and has 10 years of fuck you money?

Life's weird.

------
chillingeffect
This is going to be devastating to feminists:

"I have found that for women especially, it is the best antidote to the
pernicious narrative that professional success requires harsh sacrifices at
home."

and

"... a narrative of craziness, the sort professional women in particular tell
one another as we compete in the Misery Olympics,"

~~~
qntty
How so?

~~~
chillingeffect
Well, think about it:

These quotes minimize the legitimate problems women face. It authoritatively
relabels the real concerns women have in communicating their struggles as
"crazy" and a "misery olympics." It tells women their experiences are a
superficial social game rather than actual problems.

Feminism has been trying to instruct the world as the seriousness of women
balancing careers and family life, but this article tells them these stories,
based on real experiences of learning and coping are just "pernicious
narratives."

After reading this article, they're going to have to battle uphill to regain
ground lost by this (ironically) woman telling them the issues they face are
"lies."

