
How to Lose Time and Money - michael_nielsen
http://paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html
======
axiom
A corollary is when it feels like you've just wasted a bunch of time, when in
fact you got a lot of work done. A common example of this is when you spend 18
hours trying a dozen solutions to a very hard problem, with none of them
working. At the end of it all you tend to feel like a failure because nothing
worked, but in reality you went through the very necessary process of
narrowing your solution space and learning about the problem.

I guess in general our emotion mechanisms misfire a lot.

~~~
robryan
This always frustrates me, if I try 3 different ways to do something of which
2 are dead ends and one works I feel that the 2 dead ends were wasted time
because very little of them ended up in the final solution.

~~~
henryford
On the other hand you needed those 2 dead ends in order to establish that one
way, and only one way, is the right one.

You cannot expect yourself to be that foresightet.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
Not just that. You also end up with the knowledge that those 2 paths were
actually dead-ends. It's important to know solutions that will NOT work.

------
tansey
I sense a bit of irony here: the guy who started HN is telling you not to
waste your time by sitting around being unproductive... and you are seeing
this article because you are on HN. :)

~~~
pg
I do worry about this a lot, actually. HN is a huge time sink for me, and I
worry that it is for other people too. It's way worse for me of course--
moderating a forum is exactly the sort of pseudo-work I'm talking about in the
essay-- but I often think about whether HN is too engaging for users too, and
whether there are things I could to make it less so.

~~~
abstractbill
I think it is dangerously engaging for me, unfortunately. The danger lies in
the fact that its so easy to rationalize my time here as being _good_ (for my
career, for my brain, etc).

It's an extreme idea, and I don't know of any other website that does it, but
I think HN might be addictive enough that the only surefire way you could keep
me off it is by actually _switching it off_ at certain times of day!

~~~
pg
I've considered doing that. What if we just shut down HN e.g. from 11 am to 1
pm Pacific = 2 to 4 pm Eastern? This feature wouldn't be much use for people
Australia, but at least it would be helpful for some users.

~~~
Tycho
I'd like a 'timeslot' feature that I could set myself eg. block my account all
day except between 10pm and 11pm. This actually occurred to me previously when
I activated the noprocrast feature, which was good also

~~~
jonpaul
I know technical solutions are fun, but why not just practicing good ol'
fashion self-control?

~~~
swombat
Self-control is hard and is a limited daily resource. I'd rather spend that
effort somewhere else.

------
thunk
> _The most dangerous traps now are new behaviors that bypass our alarms about
> self-indulgence by mimicking more virtuous types._

The flip-side is true, too: Many of us enjoy coding so much that it feels
self-indulgent, tripping the alarm incorrectly. I've often guilted myself out
of coding -- out of getting real work done -- because I enjoy it so much. So
while we need to watch out for pseudo-work masquerading as real work, we also
need to watch out for real work seeming like too much fun.

~~~
patio11
Unfortunately, coding can be a non-productive use of time. If you're not
taking active steps against it becoming so, it is _probably_ a non-productive
use of time. This is one of the core insights of the Lean Startup folks that
is valuable to all of us: building stuff does not necessarily move the needle
for the business, and the difficulty of building stuff bears _no relation
whatsoever_ to the business benefits realized by building it.

~~~
thunk
Sometimes I wonder, though, if methods like Lean Startup aren't
solidifications of this very illusion: that just building something awesome
and slightly gonzo is too much fun to be trusted. Lean Startups tend to miss
things people don't know they want, or that yield negative results when
market-tested with crappy prototypes. It's like "Design by Focus Group". It's
probably safer. The success rate is probably higher. But I think you pay for
it in loss of craziness. At any rate, startups either don't need to hear this,
or shouldn't listen to it.

------
ttol
This post reminds me of the story I read of a Canadian billionaire who
overcame this issue. Before he made big decisions, he wrote out on the notepad
pros/cons and weighted each point with a number from 1-5, depending on how
important each was to him. Then he would total it, and the side with the
highest number wins. He did this from broke to billionaire and the story says
he uses it to this day.

What are some HN'ers methods for keeping time & money?

~~~
nostrademons
I often write out the pros and cons, weight them, do out the calculations, and
then ignore them and go with my gut instinct.

There's some evidence that this is more effective than going strictly with the
numbers. Our unconscious minds are often able to process more information than
our conscious minds are: there're details that we're aware of, but don't
_know_ that we're aware of. They get missed in the calculation, but get
included by a gut check.

The reason for writing out all the pros and cons, even if you throw them away
later, is to force yourself to think about all the relevant facts that you
can. There's a difference between issues you've never thought about and issues
that you've thought about but can't hold in your head all at once. Plans are
useless, but planning is essential.

~~~
njl
Frequently, when I'm uncertain or ambivalent about a binary decision, I'll
flip a coin. When the coin lands, I feel that moment of happiness or annoyance
at the result. I then use that feeling to make my decision. If I realize that
I really don't care, I just go with the result of the coin flip.

~~~
prawn
I've been known to quote for clients by rolling dice.

------
staunch
Works for food too. Even if you completely avoid any obviously unhealthful
food (cake, ice cream, candy), it's quite easy to get overweight eating large
portions of normal food.

~~~
ellyagg
That's only because people don't realize all the obviously unhealthful foods
and mistakenly believe many healthy foods are bad for you because they contain
dietary fat. A baked potato is practically as bad for you as cake, weight-
wise. On the other hand, it would be extremely difficult for most people to
get fat eating large portions of pure meat because any sort of meat has such a
low glycemic index.

Any time my brother wants to lose weight, he goes to an all-bacon explosion
diet[1] and the weight just melts off. Several people at my work went on the
so-called paleo diet together and immediately started losing significant
weight.

If you look at most popular diets, they generally have the core effect of
deemphasizing high glycemic foods from one's diet, usually by shifting
calories to meat and/or vegetables.

Personally, I prefer to shift the calories to meat because it's easier to
build strength and muscle, when paired with an appropriate physical regimen.
In my view, physical strength is an underappreciated and core component of
modern fitness.

[1] Slight exaggeration.

~~~
Psyonic
I realize most people aren't terribly fit, but in what sense do you think
physical strength is underappreciated? I think most people are well aware of
the benefits, they just don't care enough to bother.

~~~
xom
What are all the benefits?

~~~
Psyonic
In this day and age, primarily looking good (to a point). But being strong
helps maintain better posture, and helps to prevent RSI and other injuries.

------
ojbyrne
From the various stories about sports figures going broke, there's another
obvious route - friends and family.

------
aresant
Shameless plug for one of my favorite startups:

See <http://www.RescueTime.com> :)

EDIT: Wow - did anybody that downvoted me actually read the article?

The conclusion of the article is 100% that we need to get better about
managing our time.

Time slips away like CRAZY - I am a RescueTime user, a fan, and nothing more -
it's a great service in the right direction for what the article just
underlined as a critical problem!

~~~
kristiandupont
I didn't downvote, but I think that RescueTime is of little help with what he
describes here, at least in some situations. I remember Eric Ries describing
his implementing a ton of features for their chat-thing, only to find no
market for it. Realizing that he might as well have been on vacation was
pretty hard for him.

~~~
Splines
Sounds interesting.

Here's the interview, in case others are interested in reading further (purely
for productive reasons, of course): <http://mixergy.com/ries-lean/>

------
rdamico
My personal experience: Sometimes you catch yourself in a state where you keep
getting stuck in "fake work" mode no matter how hard you try to be productive.
When this happens, take it as a sign that you may be approaching burnout
(especially for those who try to cram insane amounts of work into the day),
and GO RELAX / HAVE FUN (and don't feel guilty about it). Either way you're
going to lose some "real work" time, but at least this way you'll be doing
something that will help you refocus and be more productive the next time you
sit down to work.

------
nreece
Small correction PG:

    
    
       Just thinking about it makes we wince.
    

should be

    
    
       Just thinking about it makes me wince.

~~~
pg
Thanks, fixed. (Weird how it took me about 20 sec to see the difference.)

~~~
grinich
I couldn't see it either for 15-20 seconds. Must be a bug in human vision with
this typeface. I wonder how many letters can be flipped while maintaining
readability.

~~~
nreece
Aoccdrnig to rseearch, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod
are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the
rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit
porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef,
but the wrod as a wlohe.

<http://readingtest.sytes.org>

~~~
bmm6o
I wish I could find the article I read debunking that. It really only works
for short, common words. For an n-letter word, there are only (n-2)!
permutations that fix the first and last letters. If your words average only
4.3 characters, you are nowhere near cmnioiaaortbl epsiloxon ttrrreioy.

~~~
nreece
Research by Matt Davis at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy sheds some light -
<http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/Cmabrigde/>

------
scotty79
> Whereas if you start trading derivatives, you can lose a million dollars (as
> much as you want, really) in the blink of an eye. > ... > Investing bypasses
> those alarms. You're not spending the money; you're just moving it from one
> asset to another. Which is why people trying to sell you expensive things
> say "it's an investment."

"Investing" in derivatives is like buying million dollars in lottery tickets.

Same way you could "invest" in forex or short do stock trading daily.

You are not investing while doing those things. You just happily buy risk who
someone with more wit and better ways of estimating it is selling.

If I were to say how fortunes are lost I'd point to gambling. And, yes,
gambling includes "investing" in risky things you actually know about no more
than the person who is selling them. And I'm talking about actual knowledge,
not about your gut feeling and things you think you know better.

~~~
rchi
I don't know if you can differentiate between gambling and investing in real
life. Both activities involve making bets with certain payoff and certain
probability in mind.

It's often really difficult to know the actual risk you were exposed to and
whether your probability assessments were reasonably accurate.

~~~
scotty79
I'm sure that you can somehow differentiate between investing in government
bonds and "investing" in forex.

Maybe there is no sharp distinction between one and the other but I think
there is a spectrum of actions between investing and gambling.

~~~
rchi
I agree with you that there is a spectrum of risk taking from gambling to
investing. Nevertheless both involve taking risk and expecting payoff sometime
in the future. Both the estimate of risk and estimate of payoff could be wrong
or could change dynamically. I wouldn't be surprised if some argue that US
government bonds are more risky than investing a diversified portfolio of
forex today.

~~~
robryan
I guess you could equate them by saying investing in government bonds is like
betting on a team paying $1.01 to win. The odds are vastly in your favour to
gain from the investment but it's not certain.

------
travem
The point about the lack of "alarm bells" raised while doing busy work really
resonates with me. Its so easy to get in the habit of context switching
between multiple inputs (email, twitter, …) that if you don't strictly time
box it you can easily lose a few hours.

And don't get me started on meetings…

------
jdc
This reminds me Cal Newport's "pseudo-work"
[http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2007/07/26/the-straight-a-
gos...](http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2007/07/26/the-straight-a-gospels-
pseudo-work-does-not-equal-work)

------
markbao
Fantastic article.

Now to just get to that "have money" stage.

~~~
sliverstorm
Put another way;

ahh... to have rich people problems...

------
r00k
Reading that essay _felt_ like improving my life.

Fortunately, it _was_ fun.

------
sgoraya
>But the world has gotten more complicated: the most dangerous traps now are
new behaviors that bypass our alarms about self-indulgence by mimicking more
virtuous types.

That really resonated with me. Regularly looking at my phone and similar
devices for news/stock/random updates provides me an illusion of productivity
when it is not much more than self-indulgence.

------
adamilardi
<http://www.adamandtiffy.com/blog/if-by-rudyard-kipling>

If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of
pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe
a word about your loss; -Rudyard Kipling

I've recently seen this as a challenge to keep pushing forward even after
you've had great success. This is similar to PG's challenge of investing his
hard earned money. He had a heap of his winnings. He could store the cash in a
bank and forget it or risk it (intelligently of course). The author IMO
implies by saying to start over undeterred by loss or defeat that it's better
to take the chance than to hang on the sidelines. I do doubt that Paul would
"never breathe a word of his loss" after all they didn't have the internet
back then :) Thanks for the essay.

~~~
ajtaylor
Thanks for the reminder about "If". I had to memorize it way back in... 6th
grade I think? It's a marvelous poem.

------
bhewes
It is hard to know exactly what fake work is looking forward, but it is easy
looking backwards. Which means you must test your assumptions continually over
time. As what was real work in the past can easily turn into fake work. PG's
"Alarm Bells" idea seems to be a good start.

------
lvecsey
I don't think anything is really ever lost so long as you support the system
by remaining a US citizen. Losses in the financial markets and in business
just get carried forward, at the very least in terms of experience. It feels
like time is being wasted but I think that's just an illusion from the Obama
doctrine of spreading the wealth around; at some point down the line, money
will be made again hand over fist to both confirm the system is in play and
that people are being taken advantage of.

------
ww520
Actually my thought is that the "fake" work is just part of life. What are
real work and what are fake work? If real work means the work that supports
the bare minimum you need to survive, then everything else are fake. All the
extra money, fame, and success are just there to stoke your ego. People got
their ego stoked by playing Farmville. Are those fake work?

I would say just enjoy life, every part of it, fake or real.

------
jjs
_The most dangerous traps now are new behaviors that bypass our alarms about
self-indulgence by mimicking more virtuous types._

I quit playing all Facebook games when I realized why they are so bad for me:
so many of them are glorified work simulators (virtual farms, restaurants,
crime empires, etc.) that falsely satisfy that part of the brain that wants to
get some work done!

~~~
Tycho
Maybe our most effective strategy is pre-emptive avoidance? I've never played
any of those Facebook games, in fact I never joined a social networking site
at all for years, because I KNEW it would be a time sink. I like computer
games but i've sworn never to even TRY World of Warcraft. I felt pretty stupid
about trying EVE Online (I was intrigued by the business aspects) but turns
out it's very boring anyway.

So my point is, recognize in advance the time-wasting potential of prospective
activities, and that will save you some grief. Another strategy: treat these
activities like tradable items, like currently I'm considering "Buy: iPad,
Sell: Xbox 360" and then the net effect of a new gizmo should be nullified.

~~~
ww520
I still remember how much time I spent playing the first generation of RPG,
like Bard's Tales and Ultima 1/2/3. After a couple of these episodes, I tended
to avoid these kinds of games because of the huge time commitment. It felt
like a pain to start learning and playing huge time-sink games. I have been
cured since then.

------
dean
"the alarms that prevent you from overspending are so basic that they may even
be in our DNA"

"avoiding pleasure is no longer enough to protect you. It probably was enough
to protect hunter-gatherers, and perhaps all pre-industrial societies"

These feelings of wasting time and avoiding pleasure are probably more due to
culture than genetics. They sound like a description of the Puritan Work
Ethic.

------
MikeCapone
That's something I've been thinking about a lot. I don't have millions, but
what I have I want to a) not lose and b) make it grow.

There's always a tension between these two things, and I'm afraid that if I
take too many risks trying to do good on b), I might end up doing badly on a).
It's hard to decide how much risk you should be taking...

------
nopassrecover
How do you deal with the opposite problem - employment or just making money
feels like a waste of time?

------
reader5000
The other similarity between time and money is uncertainty. It is not usually
apparent (especially for those self-employed) where to sink their available
time so that it is most productive. Do I learn language X or Y? Project A or
B? etc.

------
Aegean
IMHO this sentence: "And yet I've definitely had days when I might as well
have sat in front of a TV all day"

could have been rephrased to be clearer to describe days lost without watching
TV but equally unproductive. Its rather subtle to get first time.

------
melling
Why not try to capture some of the Hacker News talent and create a crowd
sourced Hacker News project? I little bit of everyone's time could add up to
something interesting, and perhaps useful.

------
eande
And surfing in the internet for the latest and greatest is one my biggest time
waster. Although knowing it trying to avoid it, somehow time just clicks by so
quickly reading too many articles.

------
barmstrong
So how does PG invest his money?

I was kinda surprised because I thought the article was going there, with some
basic advice about how not to lose it in investments. But it took a turn in
focus.

------
SapphireSun
I wonder if cooking falls under this category. I feel like I should do it to
save money, but I wonder if I spent the time doing something better, I would
have a net win.

~~~
Kliment
So do it for fun, and stop treating it like something that needs
justification. If it's not fun, figure out why, and either start having fun or
stop doing it.

------
DanielBMarkham
There's a cognitive load -- an amount of brain-work -- that we have today that
we didn't have even 30 years ago. Let me explain.

Paul uses the day-spent-emailing example. The crazy thing is, _I don't know if
spending a day emailing is a good use of a person's time or not_ \-- although
I get his point.

Selling life insurance? Maybe 8 hours on email nets you a dozen leads. Could
be a great use of time. Swapping smalltalk with 40 people you haven't seen in
a year? Maybe yes. Maybe no. Sad fact is, the thing you are doing -- emailing,
Facebooking, blogging, writing an essay, etc -- is not a great descriptor
anymore of whether it's actually useful to you or not.

You sit on the couch and play video games or watch TV for 10 years, and (in my
opinion) you've wasted time. But if you don't email, don't communicate, don't
participate electronically -- you've also wasted time.

I've had a lot of questions about time management lately. I find it's a much
more complicated subject than money management. With money, there is a number
you can look at. Did you make more money? Did you spend a lot? With time, it
just keeps flowing along, and it seems like you're always trying to maximize
it before it's gone. But I'm not really sure there is such a thing as
"maximize"

Covey had a great book on time management a decade or so ago. Need to dig that
up and take another look at it.

------
vag
I propose to call that "Investment Fallacy".

------
Ardit20
"With time, as with money, avoiding pleasure is no longer enough to protect
you."

I think Paul Graham is an amateur philosopher and the problem with philosophy
is that it is not actually easy to do. This is so as it is very easy to speak
of a truth in one particular focused narration, which very much contradicts
with other circumstances. The quote above being an example in point.

Why would anyone want to avoid pleasure, let alone be protected from it? I
think watching telly for two hours can be pleasure, it is more difficult
however to find out of when it becomes not self indulgment but not pleasure.

The riches of the world are useless entirely if they do not grant you access
to pleasure. The entire point of existence is pleasure. Making money is
pleasure, disciplining yourself to not waste time is done so as to gain more
pleasure later than very little now, spending a lot of money is pleasure, as
is making them, and of course the greatest pleasure of them all is sex so have
plenty of it :P

My point Paul is that we do not need protection for pleasure. To the contrary,
we need protection from non pleasure. It is however extremely hard firstly to
identify what is pleasurable and secondly to acquire it. Investment for
example can be pleasurable but only if you make a profit out of it and you
feel comfortable with making the investment. That is, you can afford to loose
what you invest and thus can only gain pleasure either way. When, however,
large sums of money are invested, outside of that comfort zone, you are not
protecting yourself from pleasure, you are instead denying yourself pleasure
and giving in to its enemies, such as envy, irrational hope, lack of
discipline, too much confidence in yourself or others while the alarm bell
inside does ring so very softly that this might really not be right.

Thus perhaps, time and money should not be our currency, but pleasure.

~~~
Shorel
> My point Paul is that we do not need protection for pleasure. To the
> contrary, we need protection from non pleasure.

I think this is exactly the point PG was making.

~~~
Ardit20
"... avoiding pleasure is no longer enough to protect you"

I think that can not reasonably be interpreted but to suggest that avoiding
pleasure is a way of protection. That is, that we need protection from
pleasure.

However, I would be interested to know how do you think that Paul was saying
exactly that which you quoted?

P.S. I must say that the behaviour of individuals in this community is very
interesting and perhaps predictable. I have seen time and again before a
comment being upvoted until someone makes a contrary comment, at which point,
the original comment begins being downvoted. It is strange and perhaps makes
me naively think that people's opinion can be so very easily entirely changed
let alone influenced, even "intelligent" individual's opinion.

~~~
Shorel
Ok, here I go:

We don't need additional protection from pleasure, because guilt is our built
in protection:

> When you spend time having fun, you know you're being self-indulgent.

He also thinks that we need protection from non-pleasure:

> The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to
> spend it doing fake work.

------
mmaunder
Right on!

------
cosmok
Great read! I wish PG starts writing essays that are both short(emphasis on
short) and interesting to read as this one.

