
How I got to 200 productive hours a month - miqkt
https://qotoqot.com/blog/improving-focus/
======
ulkesh
> Caution: The mentioned amount of hours is not advisable for people working
> on someone else's business for illusory stock options, with no payment for
> overtime. There's also no point in going beyond this number because working
> over 50 hours a week actually decreases productivity. Life should come first
> in the "work-life balance."

Great disclaimer in the article. The only problem is that many employers will
be quite happy with people working 50+ hours per week. It's up to the employee
to not let an employer take that much advantage of them (this includes having
enough savings to be able to put in notice at the job at any point, assuming
no contract or law would prevent it). The current landscape of the technology
field, while lucrative for an employee, especially in the United States, is
tremendously skewed toward the business where many employers see high turn-
around as the rule, and no longer the exception, leading the employer to
expect employees to work such high numbers of hours.

If a person likes working 200 hours per month, I wish them all the best and
hope they are hourly-paid. Being salary-paid and having a family means I will
continue to limit myself to 40 hours per week working for someone else. At a
point where I work for myself, then, of course, that number may change.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
A well run company will always have more work for each employee than is
possible for them to complete. This is because the employee is then forced to
prioritise their work themselves and only focus on the pieces of work that
align with their incentives. Which should align with the company incentivies.

If this was not the case, then the organization would need to employ
additional staff to plan work, in order to maximise efficiency. Which would be
waste.

So if you're working for someone else, prioritize and cut what you don't have
time for. You'll be surprised what you can cut.

~~~
randallsquared
> A well run company will always have more work for each employee than is
> possible for them to complete.

In a high-level view, sure. But if the employee is given more to do than they
could possibly do, it can be very damaging to morale. At review time of things
one was expected to work on, there are things you accomplished, and things you
failed to accomplish.

In particular, if one responds to "I accomplished task1 and task2" with "Okay.
What about task3, task4, ...?", that employee is being trained to believe they
cannot succeed in this position. At that point, they are left with finding the
fault either with this management style, or in themselves (...leading to
imposter syndrome? I dunno, but maybe that's part of why that's so common in
our sector).

~~~
Joeri
There's a difference between "must do", "should do" and "can do". The list of
"can do" should stretch years into the future, but the list of "must do"
should always be shorter than available labor capacity.

------
mbrock
TL;DR: Basically getting up early and doing 4 hours of deep work has changed
my life from really stressful and bad to really productive and nice.

One thing really fundamentally helped me, as someone who works from home on a
large project in an asynchronous 100% remote organization.

I work on a fairly involved project that demands a lot of hard work. At the
same time there are other things I want to get done: some administrative
duties, some nonprofit work, etc etc.

That makes me stressed and anxious, and my natural response to that is to
buckle down and try to "finish" the big projects, by overworking...

Except overworking doesn't actually tend to mean getting a lot of work done,
because I spend more mental energy being stressed about how much I have to do
than I spend on actually doing it.

It's a pretty vicious cycle and I guess it is a proximate cause of burnout.

It all changed when I realized I cannot sustainably do more than a few hours
of hard work every day, and took that to heart.

Now I don't try to get more done in a day than is sustainably possible.

I wake up pretty early, around 6, sometimes 7, sometimes 5. Then I make a cup
of coffee, some small breakfast, and sit down in my comfortable coding
environment, and do a sprint of serious working.

About 4 hours of that is usually enough to land a decent series of commits
that definitely advance the project.

Then I do the mental magic that previous me never did. I think: "Wow, that's
great work for one day! I'm definitely on track!"

And at this point it's like 11 AM. So I can happily go have lunch, another cup
of coffee, listen to a podcast or something, and know that I have plenty of
time in the afternoon for paying bills and whatnot.

I also like to take some time in the afternoon to improve my work life in some
rewarding way. This includes Emacs tweaking, build server and CI setup, etc.
Lately I've managed to get my business email into a form that I enjoy.

(Details: my maildir gets mined for all the important recurring PDFs which end
up in monthly folders, and since yesterday I even have a shell script that
uses "pdftotext -layout" to parse out due amounts and OCR/reference numbers
from the few recurring bills we need to pay manually. This eliminates a type
of drudgery that I really loathe, so it's a huge win in terms of mental
energy.)

~~~
nurettin
I miss the times developers would optimize their lives without all the online
rants and the sensitive encouraging, nodding and enabling of said behavior.

That said, don't you have banks which automatically pay your bills
(electricity/gas/water)? Which country are you from?

~~~
codeulike
I think 'paying bills' here is shorthand for the general administrative burden
of being alive, which seems to have grown substantially in recent decades.

~~~
smelterdemon
In what ways has it grown? It seems easier than ever to track and automate
personal finance.

~~~
logfromblammo
For me, "paying bills" is not the literal act of making payments to vendors
and creditors. It is the act of exporting one's labor outside the family, in
exchange for the medium of exchange required to pay one's bills.

I don't "pay my bills" by writing checks and mailing them. I "pay my bills" by
working at a corporate peon job for 40 hours a week. If I do the same kind of
work at home on a side project, that is still work, but not "bill paying"
work.

The literal act of paying bills takes me all of five minutes every month. An
hour per year, whenever I don't have to add any new payees to the system. I
spend more time voiding my bowels, which I always seem to have enough time
for, regardless of how much time I spend working.

Maybe ancestor post was referring to doing accounts payable and accounts
receivable accounting work for the business? Seems like that might be more
labor intensive than hitting the "pay" button for the electric bill, even with
modern business accounting software. Even then, it wouldn't be something I'd
do every day, and if all I felt I could do in the afternoons is light
administrative work, I think I'd just knock off early if I didn't have enough
to fill at least a solid 2 hours, or if it was the last day of the month.

~~~
mbrock
I'm the ancestor, and yeah, I do work through my own firm and there are some
monthly bills and bookkeeping that's not automatic. I also live overseas and
pay my utilities and rent via EU bank transfer.

------
syllogism
When I read the article I was thinking there was actually something quite
simple missing from it. I found that just _measuring_ the number of productive
hours per day was enough to be very helpful in breaking some bad habits,
because it made me mindful of how I was spending my time.

I was going to suggest the Qbserve tracker for this --- then I saw that that's
actually your app! I guess you didn't want to plug it more, but anyway -- it's
really good. I really missed it when I switched to Ubuntu.

~~~
mistersquid
I've been using Timing, an amazing software with a very small memory and
resource footprint. [0] If it matters, Timing's UX is very macOS-y both in my
experience and in the opinion of Mac aficionado John Gruber. [1]

I have no relation to product except that I'm a satisfied customer.

[0] [https://timingapp.com](https://timingapp.com)

[1] (disclosure: advert)
[https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/02/timing](https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/07/02/timing)

~~~
Lord_Zero
Anything like this good for Windows?

~~~
pdm55
[https://www.manictime.com/](https://www.manictime.com/)

------
shoover
I read this as a single article distillation of the principles in Deep Work by
Cal Newport, very well done. It's been a while since I read Pragmatic Thinking
and Learning by Andy Hunt, but the article feels familiar with that, as well
(I recall a helpful section on meditation). The Accidental Creative by Todd
Henry is another great resource.

Newport's sources showed that most people are capable of about four hours of
deep work per day. If you hit that level, add in 2-3 hours of shallower tasks,
and do it _every_ day, you reach 200 "productive hours" in a month. I'm not
sure how many people are willing or able to carve out two 3-hour blocks more
than five days a week, but it seems highly worthwhile to step back once a
month or quarter, with one's s.o. or family, if present, and think about what
is possible and what makes sense in support of mutual goals. From there, in
light of the goals and constraints, the article's breakdown for cultivating
the environment, body, and mind are clarifying. Ok, I'm sitting down with my
wife and doing this this weekend.

The gist of the article is what I try to practice, and I find the strategy
refresher motivating. I have had good success with removing push
notifications, removing the phone from the workspace, sleeping at the same
time, regular breaks to stay limber, targeted muscle work (rowing during
winter until it gets too boring, the Roam Strong workout plan currently), and
reducing junk calories intake. I've had less success building deep work
persistence by making streaks and subdividing tasks. I think it's time to
force the break to a separate device for leisure.

How much is it worth spending on a CO2 monitor? As a remote worker, I'm in the
same air space almost all day every day, so if there is a low grade problem,
I'm cooked.

~~~
ismail
Great post. What I am struggling with is the following: These processes of
deep work seem to be much easier to implement if you are doing remote work,
coding, reasearch and more solitary work.

Anyone successfully implement this in a business with staff? What are your
strategies?

~~~
shoover
Interesting question. I work three hours ahead of most people in my company,
so I take the offline time I can get in the morning and make myself available
the rest of the day. Something like that may work for a morning person in an
office, but without a time zone limitation blessing an early exit every day,
that may not be culturally feasible without just working more.

In the book Newport runs down more strategies than regular daily blocks,
everything from offsite retreats to people who can go deep on command whenever
they get a small window. He described one professor who would use different
modes based on his academic calendar, I think roughly by week or month
granularity. During teaching times he was 100% available to students and
staff, but during writing times his door was shut and everyone knew not to go
in. The book is definitely worth a read if you're interested in more
strategies.

------
kobeya
> Two years ago I could spend a week not working because I was avoiding some
> task.

This is a great article and there’s plenty to talk about in organizational
systems, even if this seems to be subtly pitching his own products in places.
But if anyone reading this identifies with this sort of chronic
procrastination, consider seeking psychiatric help. This is a giant red flag
for adult ADHD, which is a serious and often misunderstood issue, and one of
the few psychiatric diagnoses for which there is solid treatments (stimulants)
with near universal efficacy and very few side effects. Getting on Adderall,
then Vyvanse changed my life for the better, and basically solved this issue
overnight, as well as a bunch of other benefits.

~~~
tome
To add a counterpoint to all the apologetics, ADHD as a cause rather than as a
symptom is a point of view dominant in the US and not shared by most of the
rest of the world. If you're inclined to take drugs to try to fix it then so
be it, but you might want to try behaviour change first.

[FWIW this reply and "advice" is not directed at the parent, kobeya, but is a
general point of information.]

~~~
exergy
> "Not shared by the rest of the world"

And that is their loss. ADHD is very much a cause whose impact goes far beyond
just procrastrination. It causes people to be terrible spouses who are never
there when they are needed. It causes lost friendships through blinkered
social conduct. It causes persistent self hatred and anxiety and depression.

"you might want to try behaviour change first"

This is such a, forgive the harshness, ignorant way of thinking about ADHD
that it makes my blood boil. Behaviour change works when the person in
question has the capabilities of making that change stick. This is the
equivalent of telling a handicapped person to try b-mod to climb the stairs.

It. Just. Won't. Work. A shortage of persistence cannot be solved through more
vigorous exhortations towards greater persistence. Here's how I think of the
drugs. The drugs lay the platform so that I can implement the behaviour
change. They don't let me study better. They let me start studying in the
first place, at which point, all the best practices and behaviour
modifications can come into play.

~~~
kortex
Thank you. It's such a toxic sentiment which seems to only originate from
people with limited exposure to the condition. It makes my blood boil as well
to hear/read things like "you might want to try behaviour change first". I
want to be like, "what do you think I've been trying to do since the age of
8?"

Meds have been absolutely indispensable for at least starting to implement
good habits, extended focus, etc. And it's still a huge struggle.

~~~
tome
As disinclined as I am to enter a discussion about this I'd like to suggest
interpreting my hasty terminology "behaviour change" as encompassing a wide
variety of behaviours, and not just of the affected individual. "Environment"
might have been a better word. For example, under "behaviour" or "environment"
as opposed to "medication", I include the poor conditions in public schools,
the poor quality of food, the addicting quality of television, internet and
computer games and the poor quality of many interpersonal relationships.

~~~
loco5niner
Thank you for saying the things I wanted to say. Environment is certainly the
better word. Really, how much can an 8-year-old change? Not much.

*edit - of course, there is a level of individual responsibility as well.

~~~
wpietri
Eight year olds can't change the environment much. But if we are making a lot
of eight year olds struggle when we put them in an artificial environment, I
hope we're considering whether we've make mistakes designing that environment.

~~~
loco5niner
agreed. I assume you are talking about the school environment?

I would add home environment (parents and siblings especially), culture,
entertainment, friends, religion, sleeping habits, socioeconomic status...
etc.

------
welly
Who works 200 hours a month? That's either five 10 hour days a week or roughly
seven 7 hour days a week. My time off work is far, far too important to me to
be working either of those options.

It seems I value working less than other people. I'm fine with that.

~~~
crispinb
From the article it looks like he works 7 days a week, in two 3hr+ sessions.
Not so punishing perhaps in terms purely of hours, but .. really? Not even one
day off a week? In 2017?

> It seems I value working less than other people

I don't know anyone who works 7 days a week.

~~~
dispo001
I work 7 days most of the weeks but its physical labor. (the mind is reserved
for personal use) I've convinced myself that the joy of relaxing depends on
how hard you've worked and that the longer you relax the less enjoyable it
gets. You pretty much have to get back to work asap.

I stay productive by eliminating idle time between tasks. Switching should be
seamless. If at any time you don't know what you are going to do after you've
done the thing you are doing you are doing it wrong.

My coworkers all work harder than I do. End of the shift I've done just as
much but they are totally worn out (when I go to my next job)

I do procrastinate for a total of 20 min or so by spending excessive attention
on details. This amuses me greatly specially when it infuriates coworkers.

It is like a sport, the work it self is not important it is all about the
experience. If I ever get bored with this routine I take 3 or 12 months off
right at that very moment. The thought is very comforting. No way I'm going to
push it into burnout.

~~~
crispinb
> I stay productive by eliminating idle time between tasks. Switching should
> be seamless.

This is typically easier with physical labour I think (only 'typically': of
course there are variations). Our bodies are far better designed for physical
tasks than our minds are for purely mental ones. The latter mismatch forces a
variety of coping workarounds, amongst which are task-switching costs.

------
scandox
> The next step is taming your pocket monster.

This really meant something quite different to me. I think sex (in whatever
form) is an issue that needs to be taken semi-seriously within this context.

Professors Mitchell and Webb have good advice:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co_DNpTMKXk)

------
dispo001
These type of articles are always shit, I expected it to be shit but clicked
the link anyway. Imagine my surprise when it wasn't shit.

Now if only implementation didn't terrify me.... hah...

The big "trick" described seems to be an instance of: You are the product of
your environment if you like it or not. There is very little you can do to
fight its influences. The environment is there and you are becoming it. The
only conscious remedy is to make the environment into what you want to be.

I think the article provides the means to do a check list that could convince
companies to allow remote work.

------
wingerlang
EDIT: Not that sneaky, just me completely blanking on the sentence after the
actual link! Original comment below.

\----

Sneaky. I clicked around on the links he had on his tools and found one that
looked interesting (Qbserve) and it turns out it's one of his products which I
felt would have been nice to have as a note. The only indication of this is
the bottom footer header which also says Qbserve.

~~~
boundlessdreamz
Did the copy change? It says "our automatic time tracker" and it is also on
the same domain.

It's an excellent tool. I have only tried the free trial though. $40 feels a
bit high. $25 or below would have been an instant buy.

I think he will also get better conversions if the free trial is 30 days
instead of 10

~~~
beagleman
I've been using Qbserve for maybe 6 months. It has saved me, I don't know, 4-6
hours a month ret-conning and tuning timesheets. It's also meant I've gotten
paid for those trivial jobs that I always forget to enter into even the
simplest manual tracker. The productivity boost (which I have absolutely
noticed) is a nice bonus. I don't know what you charge for your time, but
Qbserve paid for it for me several times over in the first month.

~~~
ivm
Thank you, I'm happy to hear that it works as intended!

------
gazarullz
For those people that manage to get up pretty early, 4-5 in the morning, how
do they cope with the weekend and what kind of weekend schedule do they have ?

What time do they usually go to sleep and what is their noon daily pattern
(weekday and weekends).

Most importantly how do they spend their time after 7pm during workdays and
weekends ?

~~~
hacker_9
"early to rise, early to bed, socially dead"

~~~
tome
Here's an idea. I'd be interested in fellow HNers thoughts on it.

Get up really early, say 5am. Finish work perhaps 3pm. Sleep for four hours
until 7pm. Go out, do other stuff, party as much as you like until 1am. Sleep.

8 hours sleep a day in 2 chunks of 4 hours. Would that work?

~~~
CamelCaseName
This is called polyphasic sleep. Wikipedia can give you a much better
understanding than I can:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep)

From personal experience when I tried this briefly in high school, I wasn't
getting very deep sleep and just kept ending up tired. Perhaps if I had
continued I would have adjusted, but I gave up after just one week.

------
rdudekul
"Some people report success with Pomodoro, but I find it too short to make a
deep dive into work."

Pomodoro technique has been working for me very well. I started with 25 minute
Pomodoros, gradually increased the duration to now 50 minutes per Pomodoro. I
am able to do deep work (per my needs) consistently for about 4 Pomodoros per
day.

------
zerr
Interesting. Yet another "Mac" time tracker and todo management app. Do all
these apps make some ramen income (at least)? An article on this would've been
more useful ;)

~~~
ivm
> Do all these apps make some ramen income (at least)?

Yes, but 3-4 times less than I can earn by just freelancing. But it's mostly a
visibility problem — time tracking keywords are too competitive.

I wouldn't recommend developing Mac-only apps because they are too hard to
promote. Press is not interested in reviewing software for 15-20% of their
readers. Even Apple-centered press is more about iPhones nowadays.

~~~
zerr
Btw, any reason not going cross-platform (Win/Linux along with Mac)? Judging
by screenshots it doesn't look like a native Cocoa app, neither download size
corresponds to Electron - what framework did you use for the UI?

~~~
ivm
It's a native Cocoa app, we just styled it a bit.

Automatic tracking is the main reason for focusing on a single platform – it's
too close to the system. Even on Mac I encounter complex special cases too
often. Plus I have zero experience in Windows or Linux development.

------
McMini
Reading this while procrastinating feels good

------
dahart
There is too much good advice in this article. ;) By that I mean all the
advice is great, but it's very difficult to change multiple habits at the same
time, especially core habits like eating and sleeping and entertainment and
work. Whenever I do that I revert pretty quickly. Changing one thing at a time
and figuring out how to remove the friction from that one thing has been my
path to success.

For work hours, a simple work timer is what does the trick for me. I use Toggl
- I have no affiliation, I dont know if it's the best, and I don't necessarily
recommend it, but it does make it easy to keep track of how many minutes a day
I'm sitting at my desk, and to assign those minutes to various tasks. Just
having a metric for work hours is a big change and has helped me stay more
focused.

------
treehau5
I found a lot of this advice, coincidentally, in the book "Respawn" over at
game quitters (I had a horrible video game addiction that I decided I needed
to break) -- that is the advice to apply the same psychological principles
that get people hooked to video games to other things in life. This is the
ultimate life hack for me and something I am still working on.

~~~
wpietri
Could you say more about this? I was just talking with somebody about video
game addictions, and I'd love to have more resources to offer people
struggling with it.

~~~
treehau5
Well depends on what angle I could talk all day -- it's cathartic!

In any case, video game addiction is real, it is an addiction, and it fits the
bill just like any other type of addiction. Granted it is without the heavy
consequences sometimes faced by substance addictions, but nonetheless, it can
have real direct consequenses on your health.

To me the signs were clear:

1\. At the point where the instant you get bored and have free time, you
automatically think to play video games

2\. Thinking about video games or wishing to play while doing other activities

3\. Other important areas in life suffer as a result of your video game
addiction, such as neglecting a spouse or significant other, or falling behind
in work, or showing up to work late all the time because you stayed up all
night playing video games. Starting to lie about your problem or how much you
actually play ("oh I don't really play that much" when really you recorded 20k
hours of Counterstrike or you have played 1,000+ games in S7 to try and hit
Platinum for the first time in League of Legends), lieing to your friends and
family about your free time and missing out on important events "oh I am busy,
sorry I can't come" but then you just go play video games.

4\. Physical symptoms -- sleep deprivation due to playing video games, getting
out of shape from sitting in a computer chair hours on end, eating junk food
and takeout because cooking takes too much time and it cuts into your game
time, posture being affected, eye sight affected, constant headaches, wrist
pain, etc.

5\. The most important sign to me -- the feeling of regret that you aren't
accomplishing the things you wish to accomplish. Video games give you that
false sense of accomplishment, but deep down inside, you wish you could do
that side project, you wish you could hang out more with friends, or even get
out more to make friends, you wish you could go to the gym and eat healthier
to be in shape, etc. But even if it's not in this list, the most important
thing is you wish you weren't playing video games because you want to be doing
other things, but it's just so enticing. That's why this article is good
advice -- you have to take those same reasons it's addicting (provides the
sense of accomplishment, it's social, it's fun) and apply it to other areas in
life, almost like a replacement strategy.

[https://gamequitters.com/](https://gamequitters.com/) was the website I
eventually landed on. I saw Cam Adair's Ted talk and was inspired. I recommend
watching it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHmC2D0_Hdg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHmC2D0_Hdg)

a tl;dr is he outlines 4 major reasons people play games:

1\. They are a temporary escape

2\. They are social

3\. They provide a challenge

4\. They provide constant measurable growth

Understanding these help you overcome it.

Finally, the most difficult challenge I think in overcoming video game
addiction is that no one takes video gaming addiction seriously, therefore it
is hard to find support. It is a real addiction, and people are really
struggling with it, it is really damaging lives.

P.S: If you read this post and are struggling with video game addiction, I
would love to help and talk about it.

~~~
wpietri
This is great. Thanks!

Personally, I avoid most video games because I recognize how addictive they
are for me. But I definitely know people who struggle with this, and for them
it's hard to even recognize that this could be a problem.

------
dsenkus
Thanks for great article, I found some good ideas how to optimise my workflow.
I think everyone should spend some time adopting these techniques, instead of
relying on "autopilot" mode.

Here's my mindmap of this article if anyone is interested:
[https://imgur.com/a/RnRgV](https://imgur.com/a/RnRgV)

~~~
graeme
Nice mind map. Is there a larger version? It is very blurry when viewed on my
ipad.

~~~
dsenkus
Sure no problem, here's the larger one
[https://imgur.com/gallery/Nc2MP](https://imgur.com/gallery/Nc2MP)

~~~
graeme
Thanks!

------
notMick
Great advice for clearing the distractions. Another technique to use is to set
15 minute timers. You can try and get something completed in that time (ie
race the clock challenge), or just a "wake up" event to alert you that you've
been staring at a poster for the last 10 mins.....

------
emodendroket
I don't believe anybody is really productive 200 hours in a month. Focus on
fewer things if you feel you need to work 50 hours a week, every week.

~~~
dx034
It's 46 hours a week and if he works 6 days a week that would be 9h per day.
Considering that he has no commute it's probably not more than a 40h workday
for most people working in an office. Rather less than that.

~~~
emodendroket
I went for the simplifying but technically inaccurate "four weeks in a month."

Anyway, I'm not sure that commuting should be counted in the same bucket as
work, but, more importantly, you seem to rather glibly gloss over having only
one-day weekends. Like, OK, maybe I could do that a few weeks in a year, but
all the time? It's a big difference.

------
freshhawk
Besides the larger issues of whether or not this is something you _should_ be
doing, this seems a decent overview.

Except for one part, the amount of exercise is terribly low. A swim a couple
times a week and 30 minute walks every day is not good enough for your health
_or_ if you are chasing peak performance. First of all, this isn't even enough
to offset the damage this much inactivity will cause.

If you want peak mental performance and endurance then you want to be very
active and very fit. Doesn't really matter what it is, although it should
favour cardio over muscle mass at least a little.

~~~
therealdrag0
I thought the latest was that it's diminishing returns (of life expectancy
gains) after 30min of cardio (Assuming swimming is that) every day is not
required.

------
JetSpiegel
I was expecting the answer to be "hired a employee", not "worked 50h work
weeks".

~~~
derefr
I get what you're saying, but "productive hours a month" as a metric has to
really be per-person, because hiring a new person _should_ cause "reversion to
the mean" in the productivity calculus, instead of magically increasing the
total. Mythical Man Month logic dictates that a boss that is ~90% efficient at
using their own time, that hires and delegates work to someone who is only 50%
efficient, will end up getting less done (due to the quadratic communication
overhead) than they would have with no subordinates.

The best "productivity hacks", given communication overhead is a thing, aren't
those that increase the total number of people trying to be productive, but
rather those that increase each individual employee's productivity in a
_reliable_ way—such that they can be applied successfully by a large portion
of the organization, rather than just to one hypomanic dude.

~~~
KGIII
Over the years, I've employed a lot of people. Unless there is a crisis, I
don't want anyone working that many hours. If there is a crisis, then I still
don't want anyone working that many hours, so we need to figure out how to
avoid that crisis in the future.

I found that people start to lose productivity after about 36 hours per week.
Just four more hours, a full 40 hours, saw a drop in production. Over 40 hours
and it was very noticeable.

This mostly applied to mentally taxing jobs.

My solution was, as best as I could, to hire people to do certain jobs, not
hire them to fill seats for certain hours. Employees had a job to do and I was
happy so long as they got it done well and on time. If they got it done early,
they still got paid the same.

I'd not much care if they just went home after their job was done. So long as
they met the time constraints, it was all good. Now, they usually stuck around
and worked on other stuff, helped out, or refined their work. We also had, at
one office, a pool table and small bar in the back - so they could opt to just
hang around.

Still, once knowledge workers go past about 36 hours, they start to really
slow down - by my observations. It really wasn't worth it, most of the time,
to have someone working overtime. They get sloppy, slow, and unhappy. It can
be done for a crunch time, but that I found that should be a rare thing.

The Seattle Hundreds that I hear about? Yeah, if I caught an employee trying
to do something like that, I'd probably have reprimanded them. If they kept it
up, I'd have probably terminated their employment with us. I don't want worn
out employees and I don't want others feeling pressured to work long hours.

Heh... Sometimes I kinda miss the office. Threads like these bring back fond
memories.

~~~
quickthrower2
Wow! Where do I apply?

~~~
KGIII
LOL I sold and retired ten years ago. The now-parent company has pretty much
completely rid themselves of the old culture.

By the way, I never took a course in management or anything. My methods are
all learned in the trenches. Theoretically, I'm working on a book that is
about my experiences and why I ended up managing the way I did.

In many ways, it was a bit like the Old West, with slightly less prostitution
and better hygiene. Also less murder... Come to think of it, it wasn't that
much like the Old West, but it was very different than what I read about
today.

The most important lessons I learned were to remember that I'd hired them to
do things that I could not. As such, they knew their job better than I did. If
I could have done it myself, I'd not have had to hire them.

Hire people you can trust. You have to trust them to be adults. Give them
clear goals and then get the hell out of the way so that they can do their
job.

Give them the tools they ask for, not the tools a vendor suggested. They have
a reason they asked for a proprietary compiler, get it for them.

Respect goes a long way and begins in the recruitment phase. It surely doesn't
end there. To get respect, you have to give respect.

Train, train, train. If you treat your employee right, you can absolutely
train them and not worry about them being poached. Salary is actually a small
part of overhead. Pay them well and treat them well. Our print room cost more
than a senior employee. There's no reason to pay crap wages.

At the same time, wages aren't everything. Everyone wants to make good money
but when you're already assured of making good money, other things start to
count. Help your employees in their goals. If you have a QA that wants to move
to dev, don't offer to pay back their educational expenses, but pay their
expenses outright, pay for their child care, pay for their books, and keep
paying their salary while they work a reduced schedule. Really, if you're
treating them right, they won't just up and go to a new company after you've
trained them.

I can go on, but there's a few things I've learned.

------
empath75
>Such news don't actually inform us but spread sensationalism, negative
emotions, and outright lies to capture attention. What do you gain from
following the latest political crisis or some scandal? You can't do anything
meaningful about these events. They only depress you and occupy space in your
mind. It's better to direct your focus toward things that we can actually
impact and improve.

This is a depressing point of view to have and dangerous to the future of
democratic system.

~~~
Asdfbla
That statement doesn't preclude some political activity if you consider it to
be something that you can actually "impact and improve", in the author's
words. Of course I can only speculate about the author's original intent, but
I think I agree insofar that most daily news out there is irrelevant for most
individuals. Even if you have a political cause you are interested in, you
have limited time and energy, so it might be better to just stay informed in
those areas that concern you and ignore the rest of the daily news.

You can't fix the world as an individual, so it's pointless to concern
yourself with things you can't impact. Of course that still means that
everyone should probably find a little thing where they can try to make a
change.

~~~
freshhawk
Perfectly reasonable stance to take. Of course that assumes you do not ever
vote, because you are not an informed citizen and voting would be both
ethically and morally wrong.

~~~
ashark
It's easy enough in our lesser-of-two-evils system in the US to spend an hour
(or less) before an election and nail down pretty well which is the _lesser_
for each race on the ballot. Day-to-day following the news 100% not required
unless you just like doing that, or have the means and/or will to contribute
substantially outside of voting.

This assumes a general awareness and understanding of political, economic, and
social topics that one might not have without having spent at least a few
years "plugged in", though, so maybe only viable for oldsters.

~~~
freshhawk
Sure, american federal elections are simple enough for this to not apply in
that case.

------
fidraj
One of my coworkers is doing this: wake up early at about 6am, work till 4pm =
9 hours with a lunch break and commute.

After he comes back home, he spends time with his gf watching tv but still
coding for another 2 hours at least.

This way he can work 220 hours a month not counting his side projects he works
on weekends/free time.

He is easily pulling about 250-260 hours a month.

Yes, he's a workaholic.

------
shade23
While I love the advice, my qualm are with the measurement of productivity,I
use qbserve too,checking my logs I see 307 hours as an average for the past 4
months.(this includes office and my personal projects and also my
studies(distance masters).But not every moment you spend on an
IDE,terminal,<insert other tools associated with productivity> .. productive.I
know that I spend 20% of time yak shaving.Trying to figure out why something
simple is broken.This is not the time I would count as productivity.

Measuring productivity as the completion of goals/output generated per hour
spent seems to be a more viable quantity, however goals get modified too.Plus
this is a much more time consuming process than just measuring hours.

I find measuring time spent on productive apps to be analogous to measuring
productivity using LOC, both are opaque and do not convey the actual meaning
of what they are measuring.

------
unfamiliar
Are there any MyFitnessPal alternatives that don't force you to log in so that
they can monetise my eating habits?

~~~
jacalata
What functionality are you looking for exactly?

~~~
unfamiliar
The ability to easily log all contents of meals, with a large searchable
database so that I can just scan a barcode for most things or type the name.
Then have the app tally up daily caloric intake, maybe macros, and graph it.

------
SubiculumCode
The author mentions that George R.R. Martin uses a similar set-up to separate
work from leisure.

Then I think: George RR Martin is a notoriously slow writer. Many are
legitimately worried he will not finish GoT before heart disease takes the
beloved author.

~~~
treehau5
Yet GOT will last generations upon generations. There will be many reboots,
rewrites, and scripts all based upon the work he has done long after he is
gone. That is to say sometimes the best things in life take time. Most of our
software projects won't make it past one year.

~~~
SubiculumCode
At the end of one of his books the author notes that the reader might be
asking "Where is Tyrion?" The entire book had not contained my favorite
character of the Game of Thrones series: Tyrion. The author continues, and I
paraphrase "The story has a lot of plot lines and I decided to separate them
into two books. No worries the next book will come out in a few months."

It was in fact many many years

------
ivanhoe
So he basically works effectively 6 hours a day, every day of the week? If he
wouldn't work for weekends that would be 30 something hours a week, which is
for the most people a pretty relaxed work week. Plus he works on his own
project from home (no clients to talk to, no deadlines, no distractions by co-
workers, full control of the environment). Not to say that advices author
gives are bad in any way, all of them are great and worth reading, just that
the whole thing isn't as epic as the title suggests.

------
hobos_delight
I just finished this[1] book with tips about how to get back into that deep
work routine, and whilst I'm not there yet - there have been some immediately
tangible benefits.

Like turning off work email push notifications, developing a routine (for my
study after work - MSCS) and scheduling all parts of my day and sticking to
them.

It's not a long book, but I highly recommend it.

[1] [http://calnewport.com/books/deep-work/](http://calnewport.com/books/deep-
work/)

------
chiefofgxbxl
> Walk for at least 30 minutes daily in a green place to relax your mind.

If you have this resource available at your workplace (or even from home),
consider yourself lucky. I imagine most software developers, including myself,
don't have access to green space to be able to take a 30min walk!

Maybe its time our zoning codes require preserving some green space around
work places...

Whether I'm at work or even at my apartment, I'm surrounded by sprawl -
highways, roads, parking lots. I am trapped no matter where I am.

~~~
otterpro
If going outside to green environment is not an option, I recommend
surrounding your work space / desk with greenery, such as ferns and low-
maintenance houseplants. It does wonders and instantly changes my mood and the
atmosphere.

------
leksak
Am I the only one trying to do less?

~~~
jventura
Nope, I'm reading this and thinking how I could do only 1 to 2 hours of deep
productive work. I want to simplify my life...

~~~
leksak
Yeah I'm kind of tired trying to achieve things all the time.

------
c3534l
Oh, the irony of reading this when I was supposed to be working.

~~~
Zezima
Not ironic if you start making changes to your work and become more
productive!

------
sevensor
Work from home, sleep more than seven hours, take naps, work in uninterrupted
3-hour bursts? I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess the author has no
children.

------
patwalls
> Get a separate device for leisure and use it far from your workplace to
> cultivate location-based behaviors.

Can someone explain this more? Curious to how others approach this as well.

~~~
skinnymuch
I'd like to know how others do this as well. I left my iPad Air on a plan.
Older iPad I have is too slow to be used leisurely. iPhone is okay but
sometimes I like having a more involved break. In that case I'd prefer having
an ipad at minimum. I like to walk around at a fast pace while taking my break
too when possible so a chromebook wouldn't work so well.

Because I just have my phone as my break device. I've started to blur the
lines again and take breaks at my desk too much and feel like I procrastinate
more now. I just set up a productivity app that blocks sites and apps. Will
see how it goes until I buy a newer iPad or think of something.

------
agumonkey
> The core principle of a productive environment is increasing the friction
> required to slip into distracting activities, so that it takes a significant
> effort to get distracted

I somehow believe that subconsciously, that's why we "go to" work. Staying at
home doesn't disengage the leisure part of our brains enough for most.

Being far makes it easy deep down to care about something else.

------
phasnox
"Procrastination itself can have different causes — maybe the task is too
complex or too boring, fear of failure or simple laziness. Even a slight
presence of these negative factors can make us go for instant rewards"

My entire life described in 2 sentences.

------
scirocco
There are very few applications I allow to send notifications.

------
PikelEmi
How many was reading this article while on work?

------
mezuzi
I was enjoying the article until the first occurrence of the word
"meditation". How about telepathy or neuro-linguistic programming??

~~~
ivm
Keep reading and there will be a link to the NIH article with a list of
studies.

(The downvote is not mine, by the way.)

------
saikatsg
Turn off notifications...now!

~~~
aversafe
and ringtones, the imessage link with your computer, etc. Put your apple watch
on cinema mode. :)

------
jlebrech
I found when I freelanced I would only work on direct requests that needed
immediate action for the first half of the day and count that as me time, and
work post office hours on the stuff that needed my focus.

------
throwawagrrm
questionable choice on the grrm citation

