In the particular case of the first problem there may be a shortcut that is worthwhile exploring. As I see it, your problem is that you would like to know how much leisure time to allocate to improve your productiveness (including the possibility of zero leisure time). The ‘improving of productiveness’ is the important goal to you, not the philosophical distinctions regarding the optimal work/life balance. Since productivity is something approximately measurable, you yourself can optimise over this domain.
With that in mind, you can perform an experiment on yourself. Start by allocating an amount of leisure time you think is excessive, but not wildly so. You want to pick a number that means you will be completely relaxed when you attempt to perform productive work, such that your productivity is ‘100%’ (however you want to define that). When I was at university I needed between one and two hours a day, now I work a full-time job I need closer to three. I’d suggest based on my experience alone that two hours a day would be a good starting point. Force yourself to have this much leisure (but to optimise substantially, train yourself that activities like exercise, cooking and meditation are pleasurable). If you find yourself worrying about not benefitting the future, think to yourself, “I am currently engaged in an experiment on myself, the results of which could make me substantially more productive for the rest of my life. It is highly unlikely that the insights of a marginal two hours’ work will benefit the future more than the insights from this experiment.”
After the end of your first week of this, reflect on whether you think you could reduce the number of leisure hours you spent and maintain your productivity. In particular, you should reflect on whether you can achieve the same level of fun in a shorter space of time, or whether you can decrease your marginal fun without decreasing your productivity. For example, would a ten minute break each hour be more refreshing than a two-hour game of Civ? Reduce your leisure hours by a small fraction of their total value; maybe schedule ten minutes less leisure next week. Repeat. It is important you don’t decrease fun too quickly or too sharply; you need to have a slow-ish period of optimising your fun.
Eventually, you will come to the point where you cannot possibly decrease fun without cutting into productivity. Here you want to make the decreases in your scheduled leisure time much shorter, and try to track more closely the impact they have on your productivity, such that you can identify the point where a marginal minute would be better spent resting than working. Remember that productivity isn’t simply the ability to churn out mediocre code with few errors, but the possibility to have a ‘brainwave’ and capitalise on it. After all, Friendly AI only needs to be solved once! Personally, I think I would happily take an extra half-hour out of my day if it meant I could guarantee I would be working perfectly productively for the rest of that day, but if your cost (in time) is high for a marginal unit of productivity you might differ.
Determining the amount of fun time in advance seems like a good idea in itself.
This reminds me of how I have to set an alarm clock during meditation. If I don’t… I will spend most of the time thinking “should I already stop, or should I continue?”, which defeats the whole purpose of meditation. I suppose the same kind of worry can also spoil fun. So just set up an alarm… and until it rings, feel completely relaxed about not being productive.
In the particular case of the first problem there may be a shortcut that is worthwhile exploring. As I see it, your problem is that you would like to know how much leisure time to allocate to improve your productiveness (including the possibility of zero leisure time). The ‘improving of productiveness’ is the important goal to you, not the philosophical distinctions regarding the optimal work/life balance. Since productivity is something approximately measurable, you yourself can optimise over this domain.
With that in mind, you can perform an experiment on yourself. Start by allocating an amount of leisure time you think is excessive, but not wildly so. You want to pick a number that means you will be completely relaxed when you attempt to perform productive work, such that your productivity is ‘100%’ (however you want to define that). When I was at university I needed between one and two hours a day, now I work a full-time job I need closer to three. I’d suggest based on my experience alone that two hours a day would be a good starting point. Force yourself to have this much leisure (but to optimise substantially, train yourself that activities like exercise, cooking and meditation are pleasurable). If you find yourself worrying about not benefitting the future, think to yourself, “I am currently engaged in an experiment on myself, the results of which could make me substantially more productive for the rest of my life. It is highly unlikely that the insights of a marginal two hours’ work will benefit the future more than the insights from this experiment.”
After the end of your first week of this, reflect on whether you think you could reduce the number of leisure hours you spent and maintain your productivity. In particular, you should reflect on whether you can achieve the same level of fun in a shorter space of time, or whether you can decrease your marginal fun without decreasing your productivity. For example, would a ten minute break each hour be more refreshing than a two-hour game of Civ? Reduce your leisure hours by a small fraction of their total value; maybe schedule ten minutes less leisure next week. Repeat. It is important you don’t decrease fun too quickly or too sharply; you need to have a slow-ish period of optimising your fun.
Eventually, you will come to the point where you cannot possibly decrease fun without cutting into productivity. Here you want to make the decreases in your scheduled leisure time much shorter, and try to track more closely the impact they have on your productivity, such that you can identify the point where a marginal minute would be better spent resting than working. Remember that productivity isn’t simply the ability to churn out mediocre code with few errors, but the possibility to have a ‘brainwave’ and capitalise on it. After all, Friendly AI only needs to be solved once! Personally, I think I would happily take an extra half-hour out of my day if it meant I could guarantee I would be working perfectly productively for the rest of that day, but if your cost (in time) is high for a marginal unit of productivity you might differ.
Determining the amount of fun time in advance seems like a good idea in itself.
This reminds me of how I have to set an alarm clock during meditation. If I don’t… I will spend most of the time thinking “should I already stop, or should I continue?”, which defeats the whole purpose of meditation. I suppose the same kind of worry can also spoil fun. So just set up an alarm… and until it rings, feel completely relaxed about not being productive.