[HN Gopher] Your work matters - Build your schedule accordingly ___________________________________________________________________ Your work matters - Build your schedule accordingly Author : yarapavan Score : 113 points Date : 2022-09-21 15:57 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.calnewport.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.calnewport.com) | cgrealy wrote: | Eh, I'm at the point in my life where a more relevant title would | be "your life matters - if some work happens to get done, that's | a bonus" | LesZedCB wrote: | i would prefer not to | | this whole story sounds like the "before" segment of an article | on burnout. | Swizec wrote: | A quote I'll never forget: "Productivity is for people with no | leverage" | | The correct way to optimize your schedule is to do less | dangarbri3 wrote: | How to get leverage | skadamat wrote: | One of Cal's earlier books is ALL about this: | | https://www.calnewport.com/books/so-good/ | extrememacaroni wrote: | reduce dependency on other people | manholio wrote: | Leverage, by definition, is having others depend on you. | teucris wrote: | Be the one holding the purse strings. | jasonjmcghee wrote: | Gain experience, conviction, credibility, and wisdom. | | Make decisions. | | Drive initiatives. | Ancalagon wrote: | Propose changing the title: "Your work matters (probably mostly | for someone else) ..." | bot41 wrote: | That's a great quote! | [deleted] | jcowdy wrote: | I'm a big fan of Cal Newport. His overarching theme is to be | intentional about how you use your time. If you aren't | specifically planning and blocking your schedule, it will turn | into a fragmented mess and not allow you to get in the deep | thinking periods that many projects require. This is a good | reminder that you may need to advocate for yourself (and work | with your partner) to establish these slots in your schedule. | WesleyLivesay wrote: | I think the theory of this article is fine, but the solution of | sacrificing weekend time with family to eek out some time for | work goals feels bad to me. It also involves pushing more child | care onto the partner in the relationship, when it sounds like | they are already sacrificing large chunks of their time on a | commute so that the family can live close to the researchers | place of work. | musicale wrote: | Replacing non-work time on the weekend (especially time with | children or a partner, or personal time) with work seems like a | bad idea. | | Moreover, from years of personal experience, I have found that | working on weekends doesn't seem to improve productivity and is | harmful to health and happiness. | anothernewdude wrote: | What I do, is schedule work tasks on the weekend that I know | won't matter if they're not done, and then not do them. Works | out great. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | > Turning her attention to the weekend, Elizabeth arranged for | her husband to take the kids from 12:00 to 4:00 every Saturday, | freeing up another four-hour research block. | | Being deliberate about schedule management is great. | | However, my goal with schedule management is to get work done | during the work week so I can spend _more_ time with my kids, not | carve out a large chunk of the weekend to avoid the kids while I | work more. | | There were some decent points in this article, but it really | needed some better examples. Obviously parents can get more work | done if we conveniently have our spouses watch the kids alone | every weekend while we work more on Saturday, but I didn't really | need a long blog post to tell me that. Nor do I want it. | | Realistically, I've found a lot of success in being more ruthless | about my own schedule management: Withdrawing from meetings I | don't need to be in. Requesting smaller 30-minute time slots | where people unnecessarily schedule 1-hour meetings. Leaving | meetings entirely if the scheduler doesn't show up within 5 | minutes of the start time, sending them an e-mail asking to | reschedule when they're available. Forcing meetings into e-mails | when they don't need to be a meeting. Requesting agendas and pre- | work before meetings so we avoid design by committee. Implemented | tactfully, these can squeeze out a lot of the time wasters that | happen during the course of a week. I'd much rather do things | like that than to give up and work weekends. | [deleted] | voxmatt wrote: | Plug for https://www.getclockwise.com/ | | Cal's writing has been a key source of inspiration for what we | build. | skadamat wrote: | Cal's key ideas for the uninitiated: | | - Deep Life: Kind of like essentialism / minimalism: Be | intentional & focus on results / remove what matters. Create 5 | pillars for your life, and work fits into it: | https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2020/04/20/cultivating-a-dee... | | - Deep Work: do one thing at a time, in a focused way. Context | switching is expensive on the brain and stressful / anxiety | inducing | | - Career Advice (So Good They Can't Ignore You book): become | great at a skill or the intersection of multiple skills. When you | become good, you'll learn to love it and you can trade in your | expertise for more lifestyle traits (more pay or less hours or no | boss) | | His podcast is awesome too: https://www.calnewport.com/podcast/ | molsongolden wrote: | Any favorite podcast episodes you'd recommend for someone | listening for the first time? | sorry_i_lisp wrote: | I think using the Core Ideas Playlist and starting there | would be good: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8xK8kB | HHUX43VVxO3b7s... | | I have never listened to a podcast, just the cut out snippts | on the youtube channel. | skadamat wrote: | Good question! | | 1. Deep Life Principles: | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-204-deep-life- | princ... | | 2. Decoding the Deep Life: | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-200-decoding-the- | de... | | 3. Quieting the Ambitious Brain: | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-199-quieting-an- | amb... | | 4. Fun experimental episode on Shop Class as Soulcraft: | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-116-re-reading- | shop... | | Also as the person below me pointed out, the Core Ideas | playlist is great: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8x | K8kBHHUX43VVxO3b7s... | | Most of them have the same format (except the last one | above): | | - Deep dive into a topic he's thinking about | | - Listener questions | | - Once a month update on books he's read | tomcam wrote: | Love this kind of curation. Thanks | fhrow4484 wrote: | > Your work matters. It's okay to fight for it in your schedule. | | Nice conclusion, but half of the solution in this article is to | work "12:00 to 4:00 every Saturday"... | | Does your work matter that much that you have to sacrifice every | weekends? | | My 2C/: fight harder to carve time during weekdays instead | majikandy wrote: | I think it really means fight hard to get the time, and | choosing any time in particular doesn't matter, weekend or | weekday is irrelevant, it is just an agreement with yourself | and those close to you that those times are reserved, a bit | like sleep at say 11pm to 7am is non negotiable (unless you | choose to). | mgkimsal wrote: | If... you're being intentional about your time/schedule, do | 'weekends' matter as much? | | EDIT: I can understand 'kids' aspect. Outside of that, if I'm | doing the things I want to do at the times I want to do them, | the notion of 'weekend=do_what_i_want' isn't as compelling. I | try to schedule in things I want to do when I want, weekends be | damned. | david_allison wrote: | Aside from kids: it's much easier to meet friends who have a | 9-5 schedule on weekends | drainyard wrote: | If you have children weekends are incredibly important. | manmal wrote: | Only if you are unavailable on week days. | cgrealy wrote: | Even if you're available weekdays, the kids are not | (they're in school) | UncleOxidant wrote: | > do 'weekends' matter as much? | | I guess I would be fine if I was trading those 4 hours of | freetime I normally would get on Saturday for 4 hours on a | weekday. But that doesn't seem to be what's being suggested. | | Also, given the nature of how our days are organized in | society, there tend to be events that happen on the weekends | that do not happen on week days to accommodate people's work | schedules - concerts in the park, community events, social | events, etc. so moving some of your work to the weekends will | mean you could miss out on those. | the_af wrote: | Yes, weekends matter a lot because it's your time with | family, leisure and friends. Weekends matter if your life is | not owned by the company where you work. | ok_dad wrote: | Weekends only matter as much as you argue here if your | company owns your ass 9-5 Mon-Fri (plus commute, | sometimes). If you're able to be more flexible, it's nice | to go out when everyone else is working. | | I understand your point, though, I work max 30-35 hours a | week, often on weekends, and spend as much time as I can | with my son and wife. | DoingIsLearning wrote: | I like a lot of ideas from Cal Newport but there is something | wrong with our work culture when working on the weekend is now | seen as a productivity hack. | UncleOxidant wrote: | I didn't realize this is where Newport was going. Most of what | I've read of him in the past advocates for getting off of | social media to gain control over your time - which I think is | good advice. | | I'd recommend Oliver Burkeman's _Four Thousand Weeks: Time | management for mortals_ as it 's very different from the | productivity-oriented time management books that tend to | dominate the genre. | DoughnutHole wrote: | It's always worth remembering that Cal is an academic - a | culture in which it is considered virtuous for your work to | be your life, or at the very least the defining element of | it. | | This is a source of a lot of the ongoing exploitive or | outright abusive behaviours and treatments of those on the | lower rungs of the academic totem pole that are frankly | endemic in most institutions. | cjpearson wrote: | He is an academic, but in Deep Work he argues that | excessive working hours are not necessary for success in | the field, using himself and a few other academics as | examples of successful academics who've achieved both a | work-life balance and tenure. | | I assume that the weekdays which Elizabeth spends caring | for her children are not spent working at the same time. | She has an unusual schedule, but I doubt she works | excessive hours. A big part of Deep Work is quality over | quantity. | phist_mcgee wrote: | Academia is feudalism with an intellectual veneer. | | Source: Academic for 5 years. | ok_dad wrote: | I actually work half days during the week often, and then work | part of the day on Saturday and/or Sunday. This allows me to | work with my head down on a weekend day without co-workers | messaging me, and the same for working early in the mornings on | weekends when my family is still asleep. This actually allows | me, personally, more flexibility on weekdays to go out with my | family when there aren't as many people out and about, and go | with my wife to our son's medical appointments and other | important things like that. | | I wouldn't advocate everyone can or should do this, but I think | that the "don't work outside working hours"/"must work during | working hours" status quo can hurt flexibility a lot. | Personally, weekends to me are just another day of the week, | and I want to try normalize that wherever I go. | DoingIsLearning wrote: | > This allows me to work with my head down on a weekend day | without co-workers messaging me | | I appreciate that this works for you but to me this comes | across more as an issue with work boundaries more than the | benefits of weekend work. | | Advocate for 'no-meeting days' multiple times in the week. | Advocate for blocks of half-days in the work week where the | whole team goes radio silence. We implemented this in both | the team I am working in now and in my previous gig. | | Managers will absolutely defend the team's time like this if | you pitch it constructively and the team delivers results to | back it up. | wombat-man wrote: | If you can go offline for half a day then I would think | that you could block out "focus time" on your schedule. | Some of my coworkers do this, and I do too from time to | time. | skadamat wrote: | Eh, if you listen to his podcast episode you'll see that's not | quite what he's advocating. He's advocating for intentionality | and to design your life with work as a part of it. For some | people that could mean that doing a creative work project on a | Saturday is the best way to do that. | | His points are way more nuanced than "work on weekends". I | think he mentions Laura's story as a case study in | intentionality, not in "work life balance" etc | jonas21 wrote: | She's working partial days on Mon, Tues, and Fri, full days | (and perhaps a bit more) on Wed and Thurs, and a 4-hour block | on the weekend. | | It sounds like our work culture is doing a pretty good job at | giving her the flexibility to schedule work around the rest of | her life. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-21 23:00 UTC)