I think I became pretty significantly harder working. Here’s my actual history:
Early/mid-twenties: Working at an advertising firm, developing coding tools. On average I think I worked 2-4 hours most days, doing a lot of facebook/etc at my day job. I did sometimes work much more/harder when there was either a particularly interesting project or a client with a tight deadline.
I was frequently trying various hacks like Beeminder, accountability buddies, or Chrome extensions that “sort of” blocked distracting websites but were easy to circumvent.
Late twenties: Worked at a startup. I had some kind of “unlock” that bumped me up to more like 6-7 hour days, that came from a combination of:
the work itself being more meaningful along many axes
discovering the apps Self Control and Freedom.to (which block distracting websites).
I think both the previous pieces were necessary. Without the meaningful work, I think I would have been sufficiently motivated to route around Self Control (i.e. finding new distractions even if the other ones remained blocked, or just disabling it). Without Self Control, I think some bad habits would have made it hard to get invested in the meaningful work.
30ish. Worked at Spotify in the IT department. This work was a lot less intrinsically meaningful, but I think I had established a better set of habits for myself and I was able to find meaning in “leveling up at coding” even if I didn’t care much about the product.
I think I probably worked like 4-6 hour days here (while also doing random other stuff during the day that I cared about more facebook but which wasn’t related to my real job)
(Throughout all of this I’d periodically work more intensely on short projects I cared about, for like 1-2 months at a time)
Early 30s. I moved to Berkeley and joined LessWrong. I think I was probably doing 6-7 hours of “real work” during a day, although it gets tricky because there’s a lot of discussion/philosophizing involved which wasn’t “focused work” but was an actual part of the job.
Mid 30s. LessWrong re-orgs into Lightcone. We do a lot of types of work that is less cognitively demanding but is more physically demanding. It involves a lot of 12 hour days for weeks on end. It’s very draining/burnouty for me, although I think it would have felt a lot less so if they were more like 10 hour days and I felt like I had more control over them.
I “quit” the campus team, shift back to LessWrong work. I think I mostly work “6-7 real work hours” each day, but a couple times a year have months where I’m working more like 10-12 hour days 6 days a week (in situations where I’m particularly “in-flow”, or I care a lot about the outcome)
Most recently: when I did my Thinking Physics sprint recently, I was really only able to do like 4 hours of “thinking work” a day, and I felt completely wrecked in the evening. In some sense this is “the hardest I’ve ever did ‘thinking’ work” where I was constantly on the edge of my ability. I heard from a coworking that this felt similar to when they were doing “fulltime Research.”
Are Self Control and Freedom.to for different purposes or the same? Should I try multiple app/website blockers till I find one that’s right for me, or is there an agreed upon best one that I can just adopt with no experimentation?
Freedom is overall best (it syncs across your devices and can block apps on desktop), but self control had a different mechanism that was harder to circumvent
Used to be. Now Freedom is a lot better. They have an app to block you from your phone’s and tablet’s apps/websites (on top of your computer’s websites and apps). Self Control only blocks websites on mac. Self Control is free, but Freedom is worth paying for imo.
And you can create custom block lists and scheduled block time in Freedom.
I used to use Cold Turkey, which I liked, but Freedom is much better.
I think I became pretty significantly harder working. Here’s my actual history:
Early/mid-twenties: Working at an advertising firm, developing coding tools. On average I think I worked 2-4 hours most days, doing a lot of facebook/etc at my day job. I did sometimes work much more/harder when there was either a particularly interesting project or a client with a tight deadline.
I was frequently trying various hacks like Beeminder, accountability buddies, or Chrome extensions that “sort of” blocked distracting websites but were easy to circumvent.
Late twenties: Worked at a startup. I had some kind of “unlock” that bumped me up to more like 6-7 hour days, that came from a combination of:
the work itself being more meaningful along many axes
discovering the apps Self Control and Freedom.to (which block distracting websites).
I think both the previous pieces were necessary. Without the meaningful work, I think I would have been sufficiently motivated to route around Self Control (i.e. finding new distractions even if the other ones remained blocked, or just disabling it). Without Self Control, I think some bad habits would have made it hard to get invested in the meaningful work.
30ish. Worked at Spotify in the IT department. This work was a lot less intrinsically meaningful, but I think I had established a better set of habits for myself and I was able to find meaning in “leveling up at coding” even if I didn’t care much about the product.
I think I probably worked like 4-6 hour days here (while also doing random other stuff during the day that I cared about more facebook but which wasn’t related to my real job)
(Throughout all of this I’d periodically work more intensely on short projects I cared about, for like 1-2 months at a time)
Early 30s. I moved to Berkeley and joined LessWrong. I think I was probably doing 6-7 hours of “real work” during a day, although it gets tricky because there’s a lot of discussion/philosophizing involved which wasn’t “focused work” but was an actual part of the job.
Mid 30s. LessWrong re-orgs into Lightcone. We do a lot of types of work that is less cognitively demanding but is more physically demanding. It involves a lot of 12 hour days for weeks on end. It’s very draining/burnouty for me, although I think it would have felt a lot less so if they were more like 10 hour days and I felt like I had more control over them.
I “quit” the campus team, shift back to LessWrong work. I think I mostly work “6-7 real work hours” each day, but a couple times a year have months where I’m working more like 10-12 hour days 6 days a week (in situations where I’m particularly “in-flow”, or I care a lot about the outcome)
Most recently: when I did my Thinking Physics sprint recently, I was really only able to do like 4 hours of “thinking work” a day, and I felt completely wrecked in the evening. In some sense this is “the hardest I’ve ever did ‘thinking’ work” where I was constantly on the edge of my ability. I heard from a coworking that this felt similar to when they were doing “fulltime Research.”
Are Self Control and Freedom.to for different purposes or the same? Should I try multiple app/website blockers till I find one that’s right for me, or is there an agreed upon best one that I can just adopt with no experimentation?
Freedom is overall best (it syncs across your devices and can block apps on desktop), but self control had a different mechanism that was harder to circumvent
Used to be. Now Freedom is a lot better. They have an app to block you from your phone’s and tablet’s apps/websites (on top of your computer’s websites and apps). Self Control only blocks websites on mac. Self Control is free, but Freedom is worth paying for imo.
And you can create custom block lists and scheduled block time in Freedom.
I used to use Cold Turkey, which I liked, but Freedom is much better.