You must waste time. As Aftershock21 notes, it is the only way you can be creative rather than productive.
It's also important not to burn out. You are roughly infinitely more useful to your startup when you are well rested than when you are burnt out.
Wasting time helps a lot with that.
Wasting time also gives you a great opportunity to take a step back and gain some perspective on everything and see whether you're working in the right direction, otherwise how do you know you're being productive rather than just doing busywork?
If there's one thing founding a startup has taught me, it's to avoid busywork like the plague and that when you are busy busywork looks the same as being productive.
tl;dr: from the trenches being busy and being productive look the same. You need to waste time to be able to tell the difference.
From the article, she mentions that she goes for an early-morning walk and watches the sun rise over Oakland. That seems to fit your definition of "wasting time."
Her definition of wasting time seemed to refer instead to realizing what's important to you and what's not, then spending less time on that unimportant stuff. Her "getting up and checking email/Twitter/Facebook" was an example of unimportant stuff. But she gave plenty of examples of taking creative time instead of just staying busy.
"Don't waste time" is not the same as "don't take creative time".
It's important to keep reminding everyone (including myself) that creative time most often looks like wasting time when you feel the weight of the world is on your shoulders.
I've gotten some of my best ideas and insights by farting around on twitter. Or on a four hour coffee with a random friend.
It would be extremely difficult to justify either of those as anything but wasting time.
I you haven't seen it, go read The Programmer's Stone, http://the-programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/ , which goes into detail about dopamine, stress, brain states and group dynamics, and how it impacts programming and creative thinking.
It's ironic that stressing out about building the next big thing could be preventing you from building the next big thing...
Here here to this. For some reason when I'm taking a shower, I usually come up with solutions to problems that I've never been able to do elsewhere. Probably because when I'm not in the shower, I'm "keeping busy" and that restricts my creative abilities.
I think the idea is that you have do something with the full intention of "wasting" time to trick your mind into thinking creatively. I usually don't step into the shower ready to tackle a hard problem -- it's not the best place to do any kind of work. And I'm sure if I decided to solve a particular problem in the shower, I would probably not come up with a solution -- it's when you don't intend to work, do creative solutions appear in front of you.
When you decide to solve a problem, your mind goes at it with a very direct engineered approach which may not reveal solutions that come from a different angle.
Also, I've found when I can't think of solutions, it's usually due to my mind being tired, and the best way to solve it is to actually waste time -- go for a bike ride or something that forces your mind to stop thinking.
Personally, it took me a long time to realize that time was not wasted. Mostly because it doesn't feel directly productive.
Also, having your mind actively on and turning over a problem defeats the purpose of letting your mind wander freely in search of serendipitous solutions. Having it actively "on" is the same as keeping busy.
On the topic of getting up early and finding that time between 6 and 9 when "nothing happens in the tech world": I happen to live one time zone over from most of my clients (I'm in Halifax and my clients are mostly in Toronto), which means that the emails/phone calls/meetings/etc. doesn't start until at least 10am my time. I never use an alarm clock, usually have a real breakfast, and walk to work.
If you already work remotely, it's worth considering a time zone shift. It's even better if you can live in a place with a lower cost of living than where you bill. If you have a lot of California business, try living in Denver. Chicago business? Try Montreal or Columbus Ohio. Customers in London? Try Berlin.
Obviously, this won't work for everyone - but in certain situations it can be a great way to get an extra hour in the best part of your day.
This works great in my experience as well. I work remote (full time) for my company, but several employees are on the West coast while several are on the East cost (myself included).
We find it works great. I can take my time in the morning, having some coffee and reading Hacker News. Then I get started, make some progress and by time I run into needing to collaborate, my colleagues on the West coast show up for work. At the end of the day, I sign off informing them what I've finished and still need to do, and they can keep working without having to to talk to me.
More time doing work does not translate to more creative output. Wasting time is the most effective way to come up with ideas. Its been proven and written many times over. But I guess when you are in a startup and taken funding from external sources, its hard to explain why you waste time!
I don't know why programmers consider themselves as a separate bunch of lot which considers that nothing in the world that applies to others, really applies to them.
There are a lot things that are similar to programming, and sometimes difficult too. Things like Surgery, Music, Some mind based games like chess all come under a similar category. Some times you have to play with intensity.
If there is something I have learned over the years. People who burn out, who are under burden of chasing tough deadlines constantly. People who are always sprinting towards their goals and have desperateness in completing what they have will inevitable end up doing more work. Sure they will be stressed, they will burnout, they will go through some pain.
But I would love to experience such a sweet pain often. The best sleep I've have is when I'm too tired. Athletes, boxers and other sportsmen experience happiness after going through a rigorous regime. They will be undergoing pain, but it still makes them happy. They are also getting stronger and better than everybody else. This is called 'Going the distance'. Ever heard of runners high? Every time I felt like I have been stressed or burn't out I feel happy, Because I have clocked more work than anybody else around me.
You don't need a ocean of creative ideas or a storm of opportunities to be successful, what you need 1 or 2 good ones,and then you need throw all you have to chase them and work on them make them happen.
Sure you need to rest well, but you need to do it properly and then start over again.
Its not going to be easy, Its going to be difficult. There are too many people working 9-5. And commonly done things, bring common results and make you look common. Getting some distinction will require you to 'Go the distance', it will painful, stressful, you will burn out on the way, it will test your will power to persist.
I think on HN the crowd is somewhat different. The danger here isn't that we will work a 9-5 and then consider that "hey, maybe I should get rest too".
The danger is that we will work a 9 to 11. Then eat dinner. Then work until 4am. Then do this 7 days a week. And after three years wonder why the fuck we haven't gotten anywhere and why we can barely see straight ... maybe the caffeine/redbull/<insert other possible substances> no longer do anything.
That's why on HN, and to HN-like people, I _always_ say "Get some fucking rest! Now."
I mean, there was once a point in my life where I was abusing caffeine so much I needed two redbulls before noon just to keep my eyes open. That's not normal.
Don't get me wrong but what you describe looks like unplanned slogging in a blind direction hoping for a miracle to happen. This is what makes hard work look so inglorious.
I always liked the advice what Stephen Covey gives in '7 habits of highly effective people'. Begin with the end in mind , You must first plan where you wish to be in the next 3 years. Then divide what is would take to get there. Find out what you need to do at the end of every year. Then every 6 months, then every month, then weekly, then a day.
Blindly throwing your work for 3 years pushing 16 hour schedules and hoping things to work is like attempting brute force solutions towards complex computational problems. Its doing a lot of work for nothing.
If you plan, schedule, track and readjust course properly. Then you can be productive with a busy schedule. Yes resting is very important. Sometime no matter how urgent the task on hand is, I just slam my Laptop's lid and sleep. But other wise, I drill through my task list like there is no tomorrow.
We must learn to run a marathon in durations of sprints and periods of rest.
I'm not sure if this was directed at my post or other comments in this thread. I'm not advocating a "common" or 9-to-5 life or work style, I'm advocating getting up at 6am, getting mentally organized and physically prepared to meet the day, and then work my ass off from 9am to 11pm. This is very particular to startups and how I work at startups, and I would not recommend it for everyone.
Further, there is a time to ease off from this style - probably worth another future blog post
Whereas I do advocate 9 to 5. Not literally, of course. 6 to 2 is fine, or 12 to 8, or whatever suits your situation and style. But eight hours a day five days a week is sustainably productive. If you're trying to work a fourteen hour day, you might be productive the first few days. After that, you're going to end up getting less done than somebody who works intelligent hours.
Human intuition says the universe works by trade, that if you make a sacrifice, the gods will reward you. If we destroy our lives working fourteen hour days, surely the mere fact of paying such a high price must confer some blessing. One of the hardest lessons is that the universe doesn't actually care, and sacrifices can have negative payback just as easily as positive. But it's a lesson that has to be learned if you want to actually accomplish anything.
This was not directed at your post. Was just replying to comments in this thread.
Whether you wish to get up early in the morning or work late in the night. What is you basically need is tuits(Uninterrupted stretches of time, which can be used to complete work on something).
Most people (although probably not most people on HN) I think if they have to choose between doing incredible things or having a comfortable, stable life, they would choose the stable life.
I personally believe in balance myself. But then again I'm not a world-famous developer or filthy rich entrepreneur either. Though I have done some things of note. Perhaps a balanced life is one that may be happy, but not especially distinctive. Oh great now I just depressed myself...
I agree with you. But after coming from a poor financial background, let me tell if had settled down for a 'stable life' working 9-5 I would be no where.
Opportunities in my life were as scanty as getting a bucket of ice cold water in the middle of Sahara desert. Sometimes things don't happen, you have to 'make them happen'.
9-5, stable life et al is sufficient to keep the status quo and maintain things as they are from one pay check to another. But they are not life altering.
Same here, my family was quite poor growing up although my parents were really motivated. They managed to improve our living situation and give me opportunities in school. Whatever drive I have is largely due to my parents.
But, I'd say the majority of everyone I ever knew in high school are just doing the 9-5 thing raising their family and I think they wouldn't have it any other way.
>>But, I'd say the majority of everyone I ever knew in high school are just doing the 9-5 thing raising their family and I think they wouldn't have it any other way.
Sometimes having it easy in life is bad for you. I can myself relate to this. I knew a lot of a my friends from pretty well off families, who had all the money in the world to get them education and buy them time to do anything they would have wanted. Instead they seem to have ended up doing to small time courses and now working in Call centers and support centers. Its because those people never feel the hunger to win, the thirst to do something big, they never feel the dire needs and desperateness to win. Too much luxury spoils a person.
I see the same now as an Adult. People who get too many opportunities do well only on the shorter run. On other hand, people with fewer opportunities work more hard and are better prepared to win big on the longer run on their own merit than depend on 'luck' or wait for 'somebody else to do it for them'.
I wasted a moment clicking on the link only to get a server error page...I guess there are a lot of people wasting moments checking out why they should not be wasting moments.
"I had another habit I wanted to break – checking my phone for texts, emails, Facebook, Twitter, and news as soon as I woke up. I wanted to stop doing this because it pulled me into the reactive world of other people’s needs, focuses, and demands on my sacred morning hours."
I have to keep battling to avoid falling into the consumer mindset. As soon as I start reading Facebook, Twitter, Hacker News etc, I can almost feel switching out of creator mode and into a consumer.
There's so much interesting accessible content out there nowadays, and it's all optimised to hold your interest. Usually, reading this will be more immediately gratifying than the work that goes into actually building something.
I definitely think there would be a productivity boost to saving all of that consumption till the end of the day.
"I’ve seen the incredible power of time passing and the importance of the small choices we make every day. Its crazy to realize the success or failure of a company is a collection of days and the things we decided to do or not do on those days. But that’s it. It really is like poker or chess – trying not to make mistakes"
Well for the sake of others here as well as yourself let me point out something that you need to take action on for a choice you have already made.
You've chosen to name your site and use "refer.ly" because you don't have "referly.com".
Now the name "referly.com" is owned by someone in Mountain View so maybe that's your partner and you simply haven't forwarded it to your site. But I've seen this happen so many times I have to point out that it's a huge mistake to not lock up the .com name and to go by a .ly name. Not that people haven't done it. Not that people who have done it haven't been successful. But unless there is a super compelling reason it's definitely something you want to avoid. It's just going to cost you money and/or problems down the road when you need to buy the name.
I understand that there is an entire group of entrepreneurs out there that think domains don't matter for this or that reason. But they do matter and it's not that difficult to keep that in mind before you get to attached to your branding.
Although I agree with your view in general, their case is slightly different. Their entire product is at its core URLs, while it's advantageous to obtain the .com of their name in this case I don't believe it's the end of the world nor will it be a big issue. With a site like Twitter word of mouth is important and valuable, but with a site like refer.ly where all encounters with the site will come with a URL it's no big issue.
The local pizza shop probably isn't aware of bit.ly. Which now uses bitly.com (bit.ly redirects.). Ditto for recur.ly -> recurly.com.
- Their current branding shows "referly" not "refer.ly"
- Email addresses at the company are @refer.ly and could easily get addressed to @referly.com - best case scenario it bounces (and the bounce is noticed). Worse case scenario the email is read by someone else.
- You are underestimating the amount of word of mouth in a domain being passed along. You don't want to have to spell it out that's refer dot .ly anymore than you want to call it "referlee.com" and have to spell that out.
- A mainstream media article on the company will throw off potential customers that aren't familiar with .ly domains
- Ditto for mention on any TV etc.
Swimmers shave their body hair to gain any additional advantage in speed they can. Definitely worth avoiding problems in this area. The name of a company is always an important issue to consider.
Thank you, I have been working on that for quite awhile now. I have owned refer.ly for 3 years and began pursuing the .com domain as soon as I decided to turn it into a business.
Also, our product is (currently implemented as) a link shortener so the .ly domain choice has served us well
Waking up early, having a set routine immediately on waking up (so you don't need to worry about making decisions while half-awake), etc. is one of the best hacks. Particularly if you have to manage other people or otherwise do non-maker work, it's quite likely you'll get more actual work done between waking up and 10am than for the rest of the day.
(5:46am is a particularly good time, especially to the sound of a pager)
I'm about to find out if this is true because I'm kicking off a "work out every morning" routine as we go through YC. I figure when I first wake up is the best time to sneak in something that I don't need all the gray matter for anyway and that will serve double duty by kicking the noodle awake more than a cup of coffee would.
The article has a lot of positive points and good that it works for the author. But must point out some important experiences that I had:
>I always believed I was one of those people who just needs 9 hours of sleep, but I am now easily rested on 6-7 per night and reclaiming 2-3 hours a day
Those rewards are only upto a point. There was a period, I reduced my sleep from 6-7 hours to about 4-5 hours. And I didn't feel anything. Or if I felt anything I would shake it off. I would go for my normal run of about 5 KMs, and do stretching/strength exercises after wards. The only problem was the next health checkup showed a higher BP and I had to go on meds. And please note all this while I did not feel anything out of the ordinary.
So learnt the hard way, that there are no simple gains, there are trade offs. I would not recommend any sudden change to life style, few exceptions apart like kicking a proven bad habit.
Being intentional about creating frequent - even if brief - sanctuaries from business is crucial. As much as I and many here love their jobs/startups/companies, you have to step back occasionally. It's not healthy to be 100% consumed be something all the time, even if you're madly in love with it. You need little breaks to reflect, recharge, and reconnect with other important parts of your life occasionally.
Love the early mornings. I need to muster up the discipline to make that happen, too.
Whether you are working or wasting time is decided by the pre frontal cortex, which is responsible for the decision making process in the brain. However the creativity is a whole-brain process, it takes many brain regions to come up with insights and inspirations. So it makes sense not to depend on your pre-frontal cortex to decide activities of the whole brain. It almost like uninformed non-technical manager deciding the technology stack for the programmers.
I've found this to be absolutely true as well. It's astounding what a boon it's been to get on an early schedule where I 1) wake up without an alarm, 2) watch the sun come up, and 3) deliberately avoid mail, news, twitter, etc. for the first several hours that I'm awake.
The most recent experiment has been a regularly scheduled nap in the afternoon, which I find allows me to get to bed later but still feel rested when I wake up.
Thanks Aftershock21 I agree, tldr version: if you have a crazy sense of urgency you might try reclaiming some hours by waking up earlier, and make room in your life for a couple of hours of low pressure introspective stuff every day in the early morning hours instead of just reacting to what the outside world asks of you
I wonder if this post is mis-named, curious what those who read it through think
I used to go through a period where I felt I had to squeeze every minute of the day, and not waste any time. After a month, I got mentally exhausted, burnt out, and hated working.
Question is, are you actually HAPPY when trying not to waste time? I would not be able to feel free and happy whilst trying to artificially fill up my schedule.
It's also important not to burn out. You are roughly infinitely more useful to your startup when you are well rested than when you are burnt out.
Wasting time helps a lot with that.
Wasting time also gives you a great opportunity to take a step back and gain some perspective on everything and see whether you're working in the right direction, otherwise how do you know you're being productive rather than just doing busywork?
If there's one thing founding a startup has taught me, it's to avoid busywork like the plague and that when you are busy busywork looks the same as being productive.
tl;dr: from the trenches being busy and being productive look the same. You need to waste time to be able to tell the difference.