[EC1]

>A few years ago I wanted to know everything. I spent the day at work thinking about what I would do when I got home and then spend the evening studying various things as hard as I could. I would stress over how there werent enought hours in the day to do what I wanted to do. There was rarely an hour in the day where I wasnt productive in some way.

Oou, this resonates with me. For the past year I've been trying to optimize my life as best I could. This meant cutting out time for food + commuting which were my biggest factors in sucking away time, as well as distractions. I moved about 10 meters from my place of work, and I cook all 7 days worth of food on Sunday nights. Now I can work 7am - 4pm at my day job, then 4:10pm - 11pm I can work on my own side projects. Been doing this for a year now and it's working out great, the revenue I make from my side company is almost level with my salary, then I can quit and truly be free, working entirely under my own vision.

I don't feel like I will ever burn out. I have a list of topics I want to know before I die, and they're sorted by priority. Any time I am distracted, I read a bit from the top item of my list. Now when I'm working and become distracted, my "distraction" is reading material based around the project I'm working on. If I don't want to get back to that material, I choose something else and drag it to the top of my list, I prioritize pretty much my entire life with the "Clear" app.

It's been going great, I'm thinking of writing a very in depth blog post about the way I've optimized my life and how it has helped me out. I've read more than 30 books this year, I have 6 developers working for me full-time, I have learned SO MUCH. I hope to keep going like this for the rest of my natural life.

I rather sacrifice my 20's to live it up in my 30's. I cannot stand wasting any minutes on anything, I don't know when the switch flipped, but at some point, it did. I used to love spending hours on video games or jerking around, now, there is absolutely nothing in this world that I wouldn't give just to buy me some more time. This mentality has engrained itself in my brain now.

I find myself ecstatic if I can make a new hour or free up some time somewhere just so I can read or learn more.

People often compliment me on how motivated and ambitious I am, but honestly, it's just how I am, I don't wake up every morning saying "okay you're going to be motivated today". It just is.

[teacup50]

From someone in his 30s for whom this also resonates:

The list never gets smaller. If anything, it not only gets longer, but the list items themselves grow even more ambitious and far reaching.

I've done great things. I've started sustainable companies, released a prodigious amount of code, and some of it has shifted the course of industry and secured my position in it.

At the same time, I'm exhausted. I'm tired of never taking breaks. My wife feels like she has to beg me to just go for a walk, or do something "non-productive". I view everythig through the lens of productivity, and barely know how to unwind anymore.

There are experiences I'm missing out on. Outdoor activities -- 20s and 30s are the best years for them. Making friends -- it's well known that this gets harder to do as you get older, and many friends you make when younger will be your friends for decades.

If I could give 20 year old me some advice, it would be to pick something off that list of mine, make my work on it economically sustainable, figure out how to get other people working on it, and live a balanced life.

People like us may be able to do the work of 10 engineers, but if you hire 10 engineers, you'll have an economic engine capable of hiring 10 more. If you have the level of energy I do for solving problems, treat sustainability and scale as a problem to be solved; don't try to implement your entire list yourself.

[equalarrow]

"The list never gets smaller. If anything, it not only gets longer, but the list items themselves grow even more ambitious and far reaching."

Well put. Just wait until your 40's. Or wait until you have kids! (If you plan on that). Sure, the list may get longer, but once you have that feeling of time is running out - that's when it gets freaky.

My wife and I had this discussion over the weekend. There's the rotten underbelly of tech that is overload and burn out. Personally, I'd love to walk away from tech. It has great money attached to it, but a lot of the time it's not worth it. If you're single with no responsibilities, it can be the best thing ever. You can meet like minded people who don't want to leave 'campus' and everyone can build their life around the job.

But if you have a family, it's probably not the best industry to be in. Sure, some places recognize this and allow for 'flexible hours'. But for most of the companies I've come across that are 'family friendly' this means working late into the night, which means you're tired the next morning. Rinse and repeat.

If I could give the 20 year old me some advice it would have been to apply at Netscape when I had the chance. :)

[MAGZine]

> If I could give the 20 year old me some advice it would have been to apply at Netscape when I had the chance. :)

Can you give a 20 year old ME some insight into what this means exactly? Unfamiliar with Netscape's culture, they were on their way out while I was on my way in!

[EC1]

That is exactly what I'm doing, thanks. I've realized slowly that I'm actually a huge extrovert, and that I need to see someone for at the very least a beer, every week or two, to fill that bar up. Once I feel it draining, I start getting a bit depressed and my productivity really takes a dive. I can actively notice this, and I know what I need to do to repair it. I need to be around people.

That's why I'm moving in with a buddy of mine who is part of a really awesome social circle. I feel if I live with him and we have people over once in awhile, that "meter" will never deplete and I can essentially live in a productivity vacuum.

It's also great that I live in a place that has crazy winter for most of the year, so there really is no option to even GO outside because in -20, the last place you want to be is outside.

I do however plan to travel for a few months and completely disconnect myself, something that I'm looking super forward to and acts as a behind the scenes motivational motor of sorts, a long term "goal".

[noja]

Being non-productive can be very productive.

[Mandatum]

You and your wife should try going out into the wilderness for a week. Here in New Zealand it's not so common as outdoor activities are so popular, so there's no point to it, however for those of us who never seem to cut ourselves any slack these can totally give your mind the break it needs and let you feel completely rejuvenated.

I've managed to get a few good ideas for side projects I'm truly passionate about that I'd really consider low-hanging-fruit in terms of work vs. satisfaction. Idea's I'd never in a million years think about if I didn't just sit down for a day and just think. And I didn't have to do that, because for most of the day we were strolling through forest, looking at trees and rivers, planning where we'd travel to the next day.

Plus it's pretty great to do this sort of thing with your SO.

[falcolas]

> I rather sacrifice my 20's to live it up in my 30's.

A quick bit of unsolicited advice on this life plan: Plan for tomorrow, but live for today.

The reasoning behind the hard-earned advice: How do you know you'll make it to your 30's? I've had too many friends die unexpectedly to take it in faith that I'll hit any particular age.

Relatedly, I know far too many people in their 60's who spent their entire lives working their butts off so they could eventually retire who now find themselves unable to stop working. The cost of repairing that 35 year old home is now more than their morgage ever was, their pension fund was plundered by execs, and their nest egg didn't grow at the same rate as inflation.

They're back working now, and wondering (typically bitterly) if all that extra work was worth it, or if it would have been better spent enjoying the time they were in.

[tracker1]

I used to be fairly similar.. usually chewing through a book a weekend, and working on learning something new every other week. It gets old after a while. I actually make myself take lunches away from my desk most days. I try to live about 20-40 minutes from work so I can wind-up/down well. I tend to veg most evenings, but do a fair amount of reading still.

I actually took my first real vacation in about 7 years this past year. I left my laptop/tablet behind and my phone had no cell service most of the trip, it was actually in airplane mode most of the time. As an aside, it's amazing how long a cell phone will last with the antennas off.

I'm turning 40 at the end of the year, and still love programming. I'm still learning, and working with newer technologies, and now have the experience to see a lot of issues I may have glossed over, or ambitiously tried to circumvent when I was younger. My life is far more pragmatic now, and I assign value into down time. You should too.

My brain is still working through problems to be solved, and solutions to be worked through when I am at lunch, and in my off hours. The difference is that now I am much better prepared to deal with them during the on time.

[jotm]

That sounds great - but don't you get tired? After 6-8 hours of mental work (incl. learning), my ability to understand things is severely diminished.

I can go on working on simple tasks, physical work or something that I already know, but not on something new or anything that requires extensive of thinking/planning. Using any drugs?

[EC1]

My current day job is a mobile frontend developer. I'm not thinking up intense algorithms, doing crazy math, calculations, or whatnot. The hardest thing I do is performance optimization, and since the apps we develop right now are incredibly simple, it's by and large cookie cutter work.

It's not mentally exhausting because of my perspective on my job: I'm basically a construction worker, but in a virtual domain. So I'm doing construction, minus the intense physical work, with barely any mental workload as well. My day job just takes time. Dragging pixels. Uploading pixels. Shifting pixels. Zooming in on pixels. Deleting pixels. Asking for input on combinations of pixels. It's all pixels.

My day job is rarely mentally intensive, nor is my post-day job. Drafting contracts? Sending emails? Talking on the phone? I can't really remember the last task I had to do that wasn't purely just DOING. I can't remember the last time I had to bust some pen and paper out and seriously think about some sort of methodology.

So no, I don't find it tiring. I find it rewarding, especially since my hobby just so happened to turn into my career. I did UI/design on my spare time just for fun, then someone hired me, now I do it full time, and started my own company.

Yeah I use drugs. I use adderall (only used it twice in the past half year) if the previous night consisted of less than 6 hours of sleep (I always make sure to get 8 hours a night no matter what, doesn't matter how much work I have) and I smoke pot a few times a day, as well as a lot of coffee (2 strong in the morning - decaf throughout the day). It's not too bad right? I think my only "problem" is weed, and even then, I don't think it's a problem. I smoke because it's like relaxing WHILE working. I can smoke a bit, get this nice mild head rush for a few hours, and keep working, all the while enjoying the sun more, enjoying the tunes more, and generally being happier. Kills two birds with one stone.

[biscarch]

I do something very similar (although with an approach that is different) and I find that doing harder intellectual work has to be balanced by doing harder physical work (roughly speaking).

As an example, some of my recent intellectual work (and "distractions") included writing a book on Haskell web development, building out a product, some Android contracts and casually reading new papers. This is balanced in my life by training to compete at a professional athletic level (beach volleyball/high jump training. Roughly: Oly lifting, sprint workouts, plyos, etc) and music (Playing drums, guitar, bass and covering songs on my own).

Both training for athletics and playing music have a mental states that lend themselves to "recovery" from intellectual pursuits.

[mzarate06]

> For the past year I've been trying to optimize my life as best I could. This meant cutting out time for food ... [now] I cook all 7 days worth of food on Sunday nights ... it's working great.

Have you considered intermittent fasting? I typically only eat 5 or 6 days out the week. Aside from the health benefits, IF lends itself to productivity; I love having days where I don't need to worry about food or cooking at all.

There are various IF approaches, and it does take some getting used to, but I've found it worth it.

[EC1]

I heat up one meal after I get home. Then a second meal towards the evening. Each 1200 calories. Allows me to smoke weed and indulge for a bit, and not gain weight. It's great because I'm a coffee addict so during the day I get to look forward to coffee every few hours, with the added benefit of not having an upset stomach or taking a shit at work frequently.

[napsterbr]

Looking forward to that blog post

[EC1]

Mine was mainly about nutrition, and how I formed a super rigid and efficient routine. I have recordings of all my daily commutes, how many calories I ate every day, when, how much, every macronutrient, every coffee, beer, everything. Every movie, every "distwraction", every second I'm actually working. All of these things I've been working to decrease to as small as possible.

I'll write it up ASAP.

[sehr]

Definitely interested in this as well, are you using any specific applications to track all the data?

[EC1]

iPhone logger that I wrote myself which I'll be releasing the source code + app to.

[tvxedoman]

Mind shooting me an email when it's up?

[warrenmcwin]

please let me know! your "zoom" is bossy

[_zen]

You don't make any room for exercise? That's going to hurt you down the road. Your health is all you really own in life.

[agumonkey]

Knowledge is probably the best time compressor, except sometimes only experience can teach.