
How I optimised my life to make my job redundant - henrik_w
http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/07/how-i-optimised-my-life-to-make-my-job.html
======
fideloper
Having known people exactly like this, I'm going to guess that Troy is blind
to the people he affects around him while he is working so "hard" and jumping
around so much.

Unless he has some super-human abilities, doing things like stopping to "churn
out a para or two" is NOT helping his productivity. I'd guess he's succeeding
despite of that workflow (many hours spent) instead of because of it.

> "That might mean being on a conference call and also responding to emails
> (I’m happy listening and writing at the same time)".

The people who I know did this missed very important details of meetings, and
even has to be clued in that someone was speaking to them. They constantly
relied on others around them to pay attention to the important details of any
meeting. Definitely led to confusion and issues (and blaming).

I stopped reading after the first section because all of this brought back
memories (and a really strong negative reaction) of such crazy ridiculous
ego's I've worked with in the passed. I won't believe Troy is doing life
better than us. He's working (very hard!) and _will_ be successful, but at the
cost of others around him and ultimately to the detriment of his quality of
life.

~~~
ohitsdom
Agreed. If you're responding to emails during a meeting, you are either
missing important information from the meeting, writing bad email, or you
don't need to be in the meeting in the first place.

~~~
kyllo
Realistically the latter is extremely common in business settings. A small
percentage of business meetings even need to happen, much less need the
presence of all attendees.

~~~
megaman22
This. 95% of meetings could be replaced by sending a couple of emails, or just
paying attention to the bug tracker/version control system.

~~~
ryandrake
Many of those 95% happen because either:

1\. People don't read their E-mails promptly or

2\. It COULD be done over E-mail, but it would take 10X the time because the
topic requires synchronous back-and-forth discussion, which is not efficient
over E-mail.

I've seen E-mail chains that lasted WEEKS, where a 45-minute meeting would
have been enough to resolve the problem.

~~~
stonemetal
Two things, was it something that needed to get done in the next 45 minutes?
If not then a meeting is a big hammer for a small problem. If it only took 10
mins spread out over the course of several weeks it is still a time savings.

Second sure the discussion part could have been dealt with in a 45 minute
meeting but how long did the thinking part take? Perhaps someone tested a few
theories before presenting what they thought was the best approach in a short
email. You aren't going to do that in a meeting you either end up taking the
path of least resistance or you end up in another meeting after everyone has
had a chance to go think and try stuff out.

~~~
sheepmullet
"Two things, was it something that needed to get done in the next 45 minutes?
If not then a meeting is a big hammer for a small problem. If it only took 10
mins spread out over the course of several weeks it is still a time savings."

Not true. There is an overhead to loading the relevant context into your brain
each time you approach the issue.

Looking at an issue 10 times over the course of a month is typically going to
take much longer "person time" than blocking out the time to look through an
issue all at once.

------
fweespeech
> I often worked until 1am. I’d usually start at 6am. I always worked on
> weekends, albeit with leaving time for family activities as well. The laptop
> came on every holiday and I had to work very hard at balancing productivity
> with time out. Like I say, that’s not very palatable to many people but this
> is what it took for me to get this amount of stuff done.

Does anyone else feel like this falls under a combination of "workaholic" and
luck of genetics?

Even with caffeine, I simply can't do two nights in a row with less than 7
hours of sleep and retain a level of mental acuity I need to "work"
effectively.

Of course he may not be meaning this literally but I have the feeling the way
that is written he is.

~~~
lmm
Depends on the work though. If he was spending 2 hours/day reading and writing
emails, maybe half-asleep is a perfectly appropriate state to be doing that
in.

I program more than twice as well when I've got a good night's sleep, and I'm
happier. But if I wanted to get promoted at all costs, I'd probably sleep less
and spend more time in the office. I'd be less productive, and less healthy,
but I fear that, sadly, in many corporate environments I'd be more likely to
get promoted.

~~~
SZJX
Not really "sadly" though I guess. If your manager has ability he'll know
whether you've produced quality work or not. Just working for extra hours for
its own sake at the expense of low-quality work, that doesn't contribute
anything at all. If the IT managers are like that they'd be doing a horrible
job.

------
aesthetics1
This almost made me sick. This article is pages of bragging basically. "Check
out all my things", "I have money and can buy other people's time", "I quit my
job", "Here's a pic of my wife".

His tips? Give me a break.

~~~
juliangregorian
Haters gonna hate. He figured out how to milk Pfizer for a salary to
underwrite him while he built his personal brand. So what if his github
account is weak, this guy hacks life.

------
ericson578
After reading that article it did not answer the question of how he made his
job redundant.

It did tell me to hyper multi task and be more efficient (wow ground breaking
/s).

Am I being obtuse? Was there an answer in there that I missed? I was really
curious how he quit his day job...

~~~
jimmy0x52
Same. I was looking for how he was able to survive financially and quit his
job. It just seemed like many paragraphs of bragging and rambling (and
boasting about his speaking/blogging engagements).

~~~
dharma1
maybe he started writing about that but got sidetracked context switching :)

~~~
MyNameIsFred
After 2 years on HN, I finally created an account so I could upvote this
comment.

------
us7892
>> I’m happy listening and writing at the same time

Right. Stop multi-tasking in our meeting when you should be paying close
attention and participating. I'm tired of having to repeat myself because
you're writing an email.

~~~
mcdougle
As others have said in this thread, it's entirely possible (and, in a
corporate setting, very probable) that he could've been writing an email
during a time in the meeting where is attention wasn't needed.

I can tell you that there have been plenty of meetings I've been in where I'm
hard at work on something _actually important_ while listening at the same
time, because I know I'm not missing anything. I know which meetings are
important and require my full attention (a requirements meeting for a new
project, for example) compared to something I can just kinda half-listen to
(e.g. the weekly team meeting where everyone discusses what they've worked on
since the last meeting)

------
swalsh
I have two distinct experiences giving a presentation to "executives". One was
a CEO who is very widely known, and has a lot of respect. The other just got
promoted after the person above him got axed.

When I presented to the first guy, everyone else in the room was half
listening, on their laptops "multi-tasking". He was giving me 100% of his
focus. When the demo was over he shot me several really insightful questions.
No one else had any substantive comments.

The second he spent the whole meeting writing an email on his phone. When the
demo was over, he said "great work, keep it up", got up, and excused himself.

One of these guy is a multi-millionaire, the other is unemployed.

------
pmx
Task switching absolutely kills my productivity but I think that may be down
to procrastination. I procrastinate more than I would like and once I've
gotten myself going I need to keep momentum. If something kills that momentum
- like switching tasks, I'll quickly find myself checking my email or looking
on Reddit, PH, or HN again.

~~~
falcolas
Task switching tends to kill software development productivity, period. My own
personal experience mirrors that outlined in the "Human Task Switches
Considered Harmful"[0] blog post; interruptions can takes minutes or hours to
recover from, leaving me functionally unproductive for this time that I'm re-
building my mental context.

The OP even admits to this ("That’s not just for the sake of clean audio, but
it’s for my own concentration"), they just seem content to accept the lack of
attention for most of their tasks.

Personally, I've found that I am much more productive when I focus on one task
to completion (or to a natural stopping point) and then switch tasks. In
series, I can complete a set of tasks in a fraction of the time it would take
to complete them in parallel. Also, my colleagues on phone calls tend to
appreciate my attention to what they are saying.

[0]
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000022.html)

------
Xophmeister

        85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in "human
        engineering," your personality and ability to communicate,
        negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to
        technical knowledge.
        
        -- Carnegie Institute of Technology
    

Uh oh...

------
briandear
I don't know this guy; I've never heard of him until now, but based on what's
I've seen, the theme seems to be "how awesome I am." Something about this
rubbed me the wrong way, like a lesser version of Tim Feriss.

We get it; you're really busy. Multitasking is less efficient:
[http://simple.icouch.me/the-waiting-room/multitasking-
psycho...](http://simple.icouch.me/the-waiting-room/multitasking-psychology-
get-more-done-by-doing-less)

~~~
theklub
Yeah, those are the types of people who are like "You too can be rich just
like me, buy my ten step book to learn how!"

------
kriro
The post only implicitly answered how the job was made redundant. I'm assuming
he lives off what used to be sideincome (consulting, training courses,
blogging etc.) now?

The way he works sounds pretty unhealthy (or at least it would be for me) and
is often the exact opposite to what I strive for. I don't write mails while
waiting I let my mind wander around and try to "do nothing". I have batches
for handling email and don't check outside those times (surprisingly the world
doesn't stop if you don't answer email for most mails). If I'm in a meeting,
I'm in the meeting. If the meetings seem irrelevant the right course of action
is trying to get rid of the meetings not hanging around but writing mail (imo)

Basically feels like he needs to "actively do stuff all the time". I'm quite
the opposite and try to actively do nothing (my brain will work really well
during those times but it's not looking active). And when I'm doing something
I try to optimize doing exactly that and not squeezing in other stuff.

~~~
cylinder
I would lose my mind if I was like this all the time. Sometimes it feels great
to be very busy as you get a nice flow and momentum going that leads to more
productivity. But I need downtime to retreat into my head. I don't answer
phones or emails on weekends. Guess I'm destined to be poor.

------
JamesBarney
Most research on multi-tasking shows that the difference between self
described multi-taskers and others is not the ability to multi-task but the
awareness of cognitive deficits induced by multi tasking.

My take away from the article is "having a supporting wife, multi-purposing,
and working very hard helps one achieve success despite constant context
switching".

------
jimwalsh
So this guy works a ton of hours, after work hours. He works from home it
appears. He is constantly double dipping his time multiple ways. How does this
actually effect his family life?

Some of this write up makes him come off incredibly selfish with his time.

~~~
mgiannopoulos
"How does this actually effect his family life?" It's probably where the wife
part of his article comes in.

------
recycleme
I can empathize with others in this thread saying that his lifestyle is
unhealthy (which is probably based on the anti-workaholic ideals a lot of us
hold). However, he is just describing what worked for him to get to where he
is and he seems to have accomplished a lot. Not only that, he describes how he
is keeping himself healthy.

One reason for his success is that he multitasks well, whereas humans
typically do not. This enables him to work the way he did/does.

The top post at the moment states that he will cause the "detriment of his
quality of life." Actually, it seems he has improved his quality of life
significantly (he left his corporate job, has more time to spend with his
family, etc.). The top post OP also mentions not finishing the article so he
may have missed all that.

Someone else stated that he is just boasting about "how awesome" he is. I did
not get this vibe, but from my perspective, he is someone who has the
confidence to speak about his subject. Which is completely fine. You should
have a level of confidence when it comes to your craft and there's nothing
wrong with that.

As stated in this article, this might not work for everyone. This is true,
people work differently. Some people, oddly enough, don't need breaks. I do.
And so on..

~~~
emodendroket
> One reason for his success is that he multitasks well, whereas humans
> typically do not. This enables him to work the way he did/does.

But this is self-reported and multitaskers are known to significantly overrate
their own performance.

~~~
recycleme
Yes, it is self-reported but the evidence is there to back it up.

~~~
emodendroket
Is it really? Maybe he would be producing much better work if he were to
focus. We don't really have the information to judge.

------
brightball
I'm terrible with task switching also and have had to do some reduction in my
side stuff to keep my sanity. I have code projects that I want to build, but I
can't focus on those while focusing on the code for my full time job that is
by far primary.

I had a programming business with a lot of legacy contracts when I shut it
down to go work full time, so I sold off the business to another guy just
because it was killing my focus.

Now I blog and present about a lot of tech related topics where in almost
every situation it's something that overlaps with my full time job. That way,
just as he's describing, I'm more thoroughly researching and articulating
things that will pay dividends at work as well. The overlap makes it like
getting paid (sometimes) for side research that I would have done anyway and
it keeps me sane.

Also makes it easier for my wife to understand me spending time outside of
work reading about this stuff. :-)

------
cosmolev
So, basically the guy is a CPU.

------
s3nnyy
He claims that he is using a Lenovo W540 "for punching out emails laying on
the couch". My colleagues and I are forced by our employer to use the exact
same model and everybody hates it.

Lenovo omitted designated buttons and as a result the navigation is a mess:
One clicks, if one wants to scroll and vice versa. Maybe Troy is using a mouse
when he works from the couch?

------
singold
I find it interesting that writing this post he is using his own advice

Because this will help him In his task of helping his spouse to do the same

------
michaelochurch
This seems like the opposite of the Four-Hour Work Week (which I also don't
buy, because while most office jobs can be compressed into 4 hours/week, most
worthwhile work can't) in the sense of the emphasis on multitasking and
working hard early in order to be able to relax later.

I do think that there's value in it. If you genuinely enjoy what you do, you
work in a low-stress environment, and you're not a subordinate, you can work
60-70 hours per week continuously without ill effects. If you have a regular
office job in an open-plan environment, and you're a subordinate, then a
60-hour week will murder you over time. If you call the shots over your own
work (there's always a boss, so the distinction of "not a subordinate" is more
about degree and the people around you than formal reporting structure) then
you can work harder and much more efficiently than typical disengaged office
workers and it won't hurt you.

An important concept, that I've cribbed from Havel, is Living in Truth. At
some point, I realized (to my annoyance) how much of an advantage the rich
kids had in the career game. (Growing up in Central PA, I thought _I_ was a
"rich kid". Then I worked in finance in NYC.) They worked as hard as anyone
else-- I'll never say that they didn't-- but it was received better and led to
rapid promotion. If you're from a middle-class background and bust your ass,
your bosses assume that it's because you want money and to be like them, and
that doesn't really endear you to them. If you're already from a rich family,
then people assume that you have a _genuine_ work ethic when you put in the
40-55 hours that is taken for granted from everyone else.

So, I started thinking about it, and I realized that, most of the time, it's
not obvious what peoples' actual backgrounds were. No one consciously favors
the rich kids; it's the confidence and status that they carry with them that
gives them the advantages. They expect to be treated with respect, even by
powerful people, and most of the time, that's what happens. Paradoxically, the
people who didn't fear their bosses or take the corporate nonsense too
seriously were the ones who got ahead. That's when I realized that it's
possible to act as if you were economically free-- to work only on the stuff
that matters, either because it advances your career or because it helps
someone or some cause that you care about-- and, most of the time, to get away
with it. If you're ethical and hard-working but, at the same time, don't allow
anyone to lower your status, _ever_ , you definitely invite short-term
rockiness (see: my Google experience) but people respect you more in the long
term. Obviously, you have to be tactful and sometimes a bit political. When
something not worth doing gets dropped on your plate, you need to find a way
to get higher-priority and valuable stuff on it...

I bring this up because it's impossible to be efficient if you _don 't_ live
in truth. You'll have recurring commitments and drudge work delegated onto
you, and eventually the only escape will be to change jobs and, since you're
going to be tired and bitter by that point, you'll get a mediocre raise (the
3-5% per year that you didn't get where you were) but no real promotion. I
don't know the OP, but I'm guessing that he mastered the art of Living in
Truth. For example, in an hour-long status meeting, he probably had a
rehearsed and compact 2-minute update that didn't invite follow-on questions
(status meetings are like Scrabble; good players aren't trying to drop
100-point words so much as they're trying not to open up the board) and 58
minutes to work on stuff that actually mattered. And while there's a lot
that's in productivity literature that isn't replicable for most people, I
think that the general concept of Living in Truth has a great deal of value.

~~~
CPLX
> No one consciously favors the rich kids; it's the confidence and status that
> they carry with them that gives them the advantages. They expect to be
> treated with respect, even by powerful people, and most of the time, that's
> what happens.

Yes this is a very important and subtle dynamic that this group uses to great
success.

Though I think it's worth mentioning that it's just one of a few archetypes.
There's also the street-smart working class hustler type who is just
absolutely relentless and tireless as a self-promoter and takes no opportunity
for granted, always puts in the extra effort. That approach can be effective
too.

What's common to both is that they are not passive, and that neither believes
in a myth of "fairness" that promises them rewards simply for their work
ethic. What rich and poor have in common -- and the middle class often misses
-- is a keen understanding that the system isn't fair and isn't designed to be
fair.

~~~
SZJX
That's not really true. I'd say any basically intelligent guy will have
immediately figured out the injustice of the world when he matures, no matter
his class background. And what action to take after this realization also
differs a lot. Maybe he'll just think "fuck it I don't care climbing the
ladder with you lot" and sets his sights on some other pursuits. And also a
lot of rich kids are just spoiled and do nothing well. It all depends.

