[HN Gopher] Marc Andreessen on productivity, scheduling, reading...
___________________________________________________________________
Marc Andreessen on productivity, scheduling, reading habits, work
Author : prostoalex
Score : 117 points
Date : 2020-09-20 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (a16z.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (a16z.com)
| chinathrow wrote:
| That's actually a repost from three months ago.
|
| Previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23516890
| te_chris wrote:
| Mind blowing that such a pedestrian (dare I say Protestant?) life
| is so venerated and celebrated. Do as you like, but is this guy
| really one of our deities?
|
| The whole glory of work thing is so droll. Outcomes are what
| matter imo.
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| What I learned from this was that it is great (if you can afford
| it) to have an "amazing and indefatigable assistant". In
| Andreessen's case, this assistant, Arsho Avetian, is credited,
| but her contribution is not described beyond that. Some highly
| successful people employ staff that helps them produce. How does
| having staff benefit?
| jstandard wrote:
| I call it "disruption management". A strong assistant knows
| your priorities, often times better than you when you're being
| bombarded. They help manage the firehose of requests,
| logistics, details, and information to keep you focused on
| what's important.
| ghaff wrote:
| Once one gets to a certain level of being highly scheduled and
| more demands on their time than they can deal with:
|
| - Pre-screening
|
| - Making travel arrangements based on known preferences
|
| - Setting up meetings with other people who are hard to reach
| and also have busy schedules
|
| - Following up on various things
|
| And so forth. Not that I'm at that level but my understanding
| is that executive assistants can be incredibly helpful.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| This productivity porn needs to end.
| chubot wrote:
| _The problem of having to finish every book is you're not only
| spending time on books you shouldn't be but it also causes you to
| stall out on reading in general. If I can't start the next book
| until I finish this one, but I don't want to read this one, I
| might as well go watch TV. Before you know it, you've stopped
| reading for a month and you're asking "what have I done?!"_
|
| Yeah I've found that many people have a weird hangup about this.
| I guess it's because of how they learned to study in school.
| You're "supposed to" finish the book.
|
| In my mind, the point of reading is learning/retention/permanent
| change, not "completionism" in finishing the book. I just get a
| bunch of books from the library, and read the PARTS of the ones I
| feel like reading, that I feel have some relevance. I get 5 books
| for every one I finish, and I don't feel bad about it.
|
| Often when I get to a "bad part" (and most books are filled with
| bad parts), I just read the first sentence of every paragraph,
| and nothing is lost. Paradoxically, you may get more retention
| that way! The bad parts have low information density.
|
| But there has to be some retention, and I have a couple tactics
| for that:
|
| - I take notes on every book I read. Key point: it's not a lot of
| notes. It's not page-by-page notes, and I don't do it while I
| read. It can be 4 sentences for some entire books. If you can't
| remember the notes you want to write after 24 hours, then the
| book might not be that good.
|
| - I take notes in a wiki and use hyperlinks. If what you read
| doesn't cause you to think of some other book you read, or
| something someone said, then you probably didn't learn anything.
| Everything is related, and different authors say the same thing
| in different ways. If you're not recognizing that, then you're
| probably reading the material without understanding it.
|
| -----
|
| Related:
|
| http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html
|
| _What use is it to read all these books if I remember so little
| from them?_
| aahortwwy wrote:
| Most non-fiction has a recursive introduction, body, conclusion
| structure. The nature of the structure varies a little from
| author to author, but can be identified pretty quickly. In pop
| non-fiction (and especially in business/management/productivity
| non-fiction) at a certain depth in the tree the body will be
| entirely filler and can be skipped wholesale. This is how I
| "read" most non-fiction now: first and last paragraph of each
| chapter (or section), first sentence of each paragraph in
| between, if something strikes me as particularly interesting or
| unintuitive I'll backtrack and read the full paragraphs before
| and after. Once I've done a first pass like this I'll decide
| whether I want to go back and read the full thing word-for-
| word. Typically the answer is "no."
| Droobfest wrote:
| The guy doesn't seem to take a lunch break, ever.
| faizshah wrote:
| Could be the OFFICE blocks? I'm more concerned about only have
| 30 mins to get ready on Sunday, although maybe I'm
| misunderstanding what an "UP" block is.
| imperialdrive wrote:
| I admire the drive and capital that he and others like him/her
| offer, which in turn empowers a decent chunk of our economy and
| technological development, but o lord what a cross to bear. I
| feel especially thankful for my own schedule now, which is maybe
| two meetings a week and the rest creative engineering... having
| to schedule sleep!? What a world our souls occupy.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| It's important to recognize that different people have
| different goals in life and there's absolutely nothing wrong
| with that.
|
| This advice is great for people looking to maximize
| productivity. If that's not your thing, that's fine too.
| aborsy wrote:
| Honestly, what a boring life :)
|
| Basically few hours of sleep, plus a lot of business meetings in
| a rigid schedule!
| cinntaile wrote:
| Rigid schedules are good if the things you plan are the things
| that you actually want to spend time on. Time allocation
| guarantees that you'll work on whatever is scheduled and a
| side-effect is that it forces you to be be more effective.
| was_boring wrote:
| Curious if this applies to people who do not have the same
| wealth and power.
| k__ wrote:
| I heard, the average nun looks much younger than the
| average woman, because of the rigid lifestyle.
| was_boring wrote:
| Interesting. In the article it mentions Fortune 500 CEOs
| having highly regulated schedules without downtime
| (because they are meeting with different stakeholders all
| the time). It seems they have the wealth but maybe not
| the power?
|
| Where as a nun perhaps doesn't have wealth but has power
| over their time.
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| He gets a solid 8 hours of sleep, 19:30 to 23:30 are his to
| spend with friends/family/hobbies/reading.
|
| His working days are arguably packed working on the cutting-
| edge of business and technology, working with the individuals
| from 0.001% of the world's most talented/lucky/interesting/educ
| ated/resourced/entrepreneurial/hardworking people.
|
| + vacations and weekends almost entirely free.
|
| I definitely wouldn't want to trade with him, but it's because
| I'd burn out and have no real passion for the life of a VC, not
| because my life is so any more interesting.
| chrisdbanks wrote:
| This does not sound like a fun life. Spontaneity brings life's
| most rewarding moments. He's basically reduced spontaneity to
| zero. He may be successful, but success is sometimes a prison.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-09-20 23:00 UTC)