
Ask HN: Tips on hiring a “life manager” or coach to be productive? - keiferski
Long story short, I work remotely, am building a few side projects, trying to get in shape, learn a foreign language and a million other things. Unfortunately, like everyone else, I end up wasting time on the internet and making excuses. Self-motivation has its limits. Specifically as a remote worker, I’ve found it’s easy to fall into an “unstructured abyss.”<p>I recently had the idea of hiring someone to ‘keep me on track’, so to speak. A cross between an assistant and a coach.<p>Has anyone done something like this? I’m even thinking a 60 minute session once a week to just review my goals, make sure I’m getting stuff done, and being accountable to someone is a good start.
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wilsonnb3
Learn to love wasting time on the internet and then you won’t need a life
coach.

I agree that self-motivation has its limits but I think the solution is to
just do less.

Is there any reason you need to be building all of your side projects, getting
into shape, learning a foreign language, and whatever else you’re trying to do
right now?

Maybe just work on one side project. Maybe focus on getting in shape and six
months or a year from now, once you’ve built some good habits, start working
on that foreign language.

I understand the temptation to do everything ASAP but I believe it’s an
unhealthy way to live.

~~~
rootsudo
Heh, this is funny.

I was in the exact position as OP and I think wasting time on the internet is
bad because:

1\. You trust a few sources, and you forget to see hidden bias. HN, Reddit,
Facebook, other misc forums.

2\. Internet addiction is real, it's a continued feedback loop that creates a
dopamine addiction, especially if you lack dopamine in the first place. e.g.
ADD/ADHD, like me.

Self improvement is discipline, and I always suggest it --- I wasted a year,
and my teenage years just messing around on the Internet. Sure it shaped my
life, future into being in IT, but it can be a bad cycle if you don't know how
to properly use time management techniques to reduce "wasting time."

Time is valuable.

Setting aside time per day compounds to week/monthly accured time. This can
lead to new skills.

OR just knowing the newest gossip.

Learning new skills is good, and OP should do it. Seek experts, in what you
want. Network, travel and be friends.

Frittering away on the Internee in an endless loop of content is not the way
to do it.

------
dawidw
Our time is limited.

It's not possible to have 20 interests and spend 2 hours each day on all of
them. You need to choose some of them.

How to do that? Calculate your free time and use it for the things which are
important/you want to develop. Eg. each day you need 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours
of work - that gives us 8 hours a day for other things. From that take some
time for commuting, higene, shopping, eating. Let's say that you have 4 hours
from Monday to Friday. Plan those slots. Taking care of your body: 1 hour
phisical traning Mon, Wed, Fri. Plus 10 minutes stretching each day. Learning
language? One hour Tue and Thu. Plus Anki session each day. And so on. Start
with that. Then if you see that you still have some time available, add next
thing. Remember - consequence is the key. You can't do 3 fitness trainings on
Saturday to cover whole week. You can't sleep 24 hours to cover next 3
sleepless nights.

> and a million other things.

You simply can't. Sad but true.

~~~
dawidw
I haven't heard [1] because it's just come to my mailbox but it seems you may
find some answers to your questions.

[1] Podcast #450: How to Make Time for What Really Matters Every Day

[https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/podcast-450-how-
to-m...](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/podcast-450-how-to-make-time-
for-what-really-matters-every-
day/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheArtOfManliness+%28The+Art+of+Manliness%29&mc_cid=7ea4a32a12&mc_eid=3189aff46f)

------
haxel
Take a peek at Functional,
[https://functional.benome.ca](https://functional.benome.ca), a side project
of mine that's in beta-testing that aims directly at your problem. Because
it's also my problem, as a remote worker, and it definitely helps keep me on
track.

If you're interested, I'll create a "remote-worker" group for us so we can
help motivate each other from a distance.

Any other remote workers are welcome to join too, email me at steve at
haxel.ca and I'll hook you up.

~~~
konschubert
This looks like a super interesting project, but the website is
(intentionally?) confusing and I don't get what it does.

~~~
haxel
The website is indeed not ready for public consumption, so if there's anything
I can clarify for you, I'd be happy to do so.

Edit: does this help?

The basic idea is that to solve a problem, you must take the right kind of
action more often. Yet what compels us to take these actions when we are not
self-motivated? Functional does, by taking it social.

1\. Identify your problem or interest

2\. Join or create a group whose topic is that problem or interest. The group
may provide seed activities. Each activity has a target frequency (e.g. once
per week)

3\. Optional: add more activities you'd like to do more often

4\. Tell the Functional when you do those activities

5\. Everyone in your group gets to see _how_ you're doing. Nobody gets to see
_what_ you're doing.

6\. If you fall behind on an activity, you'll receive a message to do that
activity from someone in your group.

The system is designed to be persuasive so that those simple messages (and
other stuff) are as compelling as possible.

~~~
konschubert
That looks really cool. I tried to sign up but I have a German cell phone
number. Does this mean that I'm out?

~~~
haxel
Right now, unfortunately yes. I'll be sure to mention that limitation in the
future. Supporting regions outside of Canada/US is too much of an overhead for
me right now.

While the system does support non-SMS communication channels, it looks like
the regulatory overhead (GDPRS, etc) means I'd need a fair bit of funding
before expanding to Europe.

------
ilaksh
It sounds like it could help.

One alternative idea is rather than making it one person's job to hold you
accountable, spread that out to multiple people.

Have routine online meetings with people you work with. They can hold you
accountable for the work.

Get a personal trainer for fitness.

Find someone who might be a user or otherwise care about your side projects
and share progress updates or get feedback from them.

------
jryan49
You are trying to do too much at once. The desire to do so much at once, plus
letting yourself down due to high expectations is sabotaging yourself, and
tiring your brain out too. We all need to take breaks and rest. Your brain is
like a muscle. Try throwing out your todo list. Be bored for a while. Come
back in a few months and pick one thing that you find really motivating.

You obviously do not want to actually do any of these things if you're not
doing them already. You probably feel social pressure from HN to be super cool
startup person.

------
tekkk
Create routines or habits, slowly but persistently. It will take some time to
ramp up to get into the "work all the time" -mode. And once you're there
well... You'll notice that there is other things in life.

Schedule your days and focus on doing things well. Gym to me is now easy but
for beginners they might feel a bit discomfort going there. Get a PT if
necessary but do not quit.

About building side projects i recommend focusing on one thing at a time. Then
it's just finding the time coding it, if you feel that it's too hard to even
start you should go to an environment where help is available. Internet cafe
perhaps? Look around if you see developer looking people and ask for
help/opinions about stuff. You have to build momentum to get things moving and
doing everything on your own only for yourself makes that difficult.

Good luck! Remember to balance things out, it's very important in the long
run. Do sports, do social interactions, do arts if that's your thing. Dont put
all your efforts into coding only.

------
justtopost
Wow, a lot of negativity here. Quick, abandon all your hobbies and focus on
programming! /s

Real talk: Prioritize. Some hobbies or interests will rise to the top, and
most others fade off. It is true that the fewer you pick the deeper you will
explore them, but many hobbies are quite shallow when you exclude the
egocentric powerstruggling communities and focus on the fundamentals, and can
be a constant source of unique experinces. Workout in the mornings, do a
routine that includes short warmup, resistance training, and
stretching/mobility, while keeping heartrate up for extended periods. Record
your weights and seek progressive overload as your body adapts. But abs are
made in the kitchen, diet is not unimportant.

You know what you need, give yourself that 60 min session. Put it on your
calendar, treat it like a job interview. Dress nice, and make it a thing.
Review your goals and progress. Set some rewards or perhaps even penalties for
stuff you need extra motivation for.

I cannot speak to actual coaches. I am fortunate to have friends who I can
occasionally bounce things off. It is always good to have a, somewhat
disinterested, outside perspective for spotting 'obvious to anyone else' type
issues. Reminder to cultivate your friendships, they are not static.

For doing stuff that does not need the internet, unplug it. Yup. Dead serious.
You will feel like a damn fool each time you forget and try to check HN,
email, etc. and quietly shame youself into keeping focused. Its like an
electric shock when you are confronted with your, usually invisible, lack of
self control. May work poorly in shared offices, and shared wifi. If your
phone is the problem, turn it off as well. Works even better when it has an
obscene boot time to let you remember and confront yourself. Part of improving
is learning to change yourself willfully, and choosing to see whats ugly in
yourself so you know what to change. Change for its own sake is just chaos,
usually only useful when everything is bad and lacking orientation.

I once 'hired' a friend as an adhoc manager. I had a project that would make
me money based on performance. Being unmotivated at the time, I offered her a
cut, for everything above what I would lazily do. Ended up doing 3x the work
just thanks to her refocusing me. She, meanwhile, had zero technical knowledge
of my project, and frankly, didn't much care. This helped her see the big
picture I was missing with my head buried in the logical challenge.

Never stop learning.

------
dmitripopov
Work from a co-working center, it helps to eliminate unconstructive time
waste. But make sure that people there are actually doing things, not hanging
around chatting.

------
nickff
Consider reading "The Productivity Project" by Chris Bailey, it has a lot of
techniques that might give you a start. The exercises in the book are also
very helpful.

Having a good idea of where you stand and what you are looking for is helpful
if you do choose to go into a coaching, therapy, or psychology session.

------
MrMontyBurns
Isn't that what psychiatrists are for? A friend of mine has sessions on a
2-week basis although he doesn't have any issues. His reasoning is basically
that it's nice to have time to talk about himself with someone.

~~~
dickeytk
you mean a psychologist I think

~~~
astrange
Or therapist.

A psychiatrist is someone who can diagnose you and prescribe medicine. You can
talk to them if you want but it costs more.

------
invalidOrTaken
I think the big thorny issue is the same one pg highlights when hiring
programmers: if you're not a good one, you can't discern between the good and
the bad.

You shouldn't hire me, because I'm not a professional, and you probably
couldn't tell if I were, but I've recently had great personal victories in
this area after many years of frustrating failure. I'd be happy to spend some
time on Skype sharing what I've learned, particularly on how to approach what
you call the "unstructured abyss."

Email is in my profile.

~~~
gt2
Can you summarize here for the rest of us?

~~~
invalidOrTaken
At the risk of coming off as an asshole, one of the things I've learned is to
avoid holding forth on the internet when I have other, time-sensitive things
to do. Now is one of those times.

The other consideration is that I am not being completely altruistic here: I
would gain something from getting to know keiferski "in person" (or "in
video," anyway). A remote dev with some side projects is a valuable person to
know, for all sorts of reasons. And of course there's the simple pleasure in
getting to know, and hopefully helping, a human being.

~~~
gt2
Well at least you gave one piece of advice while you were taking the time to
reply.

------
JSeymourATL
> trying to get in shape, learn a foreign language and a million other things.

Clarity is as important as motivation and willpower.

Good food-for-thought on defining what is meaningful from Brendon Burchard >
[https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/brendon-burchard/hph-
deluxe...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/brendon-burchard/hph-deluxe-
audiobook/e/51684698)

------
bsvalley
I’m surprised no one mentioned it yet, but how about getting a “normal” job
with office hours? This would destroy your free time and force you to focus on
the essentials. You might be someone who needs a well structures environment
to function properly.

And also, I’d search for a mentor instead of a coach. I would want to learn
from a successful person and try to apply that to my own life, rather than
having to report to someone about things I already know.

------
h0h0h0
You really really need to do one thing only. This list is way overwhelming. No
wonder you're actively avoiding your work. Looking for a life and productivity
coach maybe will make you accountable to someone, but i have a suspicion it's
another clever way to avoid actually working.

Seriously. Trim that todo list. That's insane.

------
wetlag
I am interested in working with some sort of life coach as well.

Maybe check out the Work Gym from Ultraworking? The basic idea is that
everyone brings their own work, and a moderator guides everyone through a
structured process for getting things done. Lots of highly motivated people
there, and I’ve been really productive on these sessions.

[https://www.ultraworking.com/the-work-gym/](https://www.ultraworking.com/the-
work-gym/)

~~~
jryan49
I found it quite funny to see how miserable the people in the picture are
"trying to achieve their goals":

[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/589c04f52e69cf9719483...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/589c04f52e69cf971948389f/t/5ba1b869aa4a99ebfd07c23c/1537319586762/workcycles.png?format=750w)

~~~
quickthrower2
That's the look of delayed gratification.

------
nyrulez
I do it every week and it has helped me tremendously over the last 3 years. If
you can find someone you like and can afford it, I highly recommend it. I
found my "coach" on Craigslist and since then have stuck with it. Let me know
if I can answer any questions.

------
krypt0n
Would be interested to see if I can be of any help. I think I have seemingly
opposite problem. I go to various parks with a small board which says "Not any
professional. But if you want you can have a nice short talk. No commitments."

------
TheAlchemist
How about doing the 60 minutes sessions, writing it down as letters to your
future self ?

------
eudora
I'm suddenly grateful for my mum basically doing this for free my whole life.

~~~
quickthrower2
I doubt any parent would make a good life coach for their kids. There may be
exceptions but it'll be rare. Parents would find it hard to suitably detach
and there is going to be a shit load of emotional baggage, biases etc. from
their childhood. Even if they are a good life coach for other people.

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WAthrowaway
I'll do it for you for only 100 dollars a session. I will also send you
reminder texts and set checkpoints for you to keep you on track. Email is in
profile

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jczhang
Heh, I'll offer to be anyone's life coach on here if they're interested. Free
initial consultation to see if there's a fit :)

------
sotojuan
You’re trying to do too much. Get rid of some hobbies. Otherwise enjoy burning
out in two months.

------
eddof13
[https://store.tonyrobbins.com/products/the-time-of-your-
life](https://store.tonyrobbins.com/products/the-time-of-your-life) you can
try the Tony Robbins RPM method or a similar solution.

Alternatively you could hire his coaches but they are expensive I wager.

