Ask HN: How does one do it all?

61 points by akzfowl 4 years ago | 34 comments

Or to elaborate: how does one make time for it all? I understand that this might sound trite and a 'normal' existential crisis in a cliched way but I am genuinely interested in figuring out how people go about deciding what to do with their time? Is it all about one's job or family? How does one balance the pleasures and stimulation of good art in the way of books, movies, tv, music, games, etc alongside more rigorous dives into subjects that might interest one (and potentially not be related much or altogether to one's profession fortunately/unfortunately) such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, literary theory, etc as well as producing one's own 'art' whatever that might be? Add to this concerns such as volunteering, a social life, taking care of one's physical and mental well being, fulfilling obligations to those around us, paying at least some attention to world events, etc. As a person with eclectic tastes/interests, limited time to pursue them and a finite (atleast last time I checked) lifespan, I have found it increasingly difficult to figure out how to spend my time and seem to end up with an overall feeling of being overwhelmed and settling for the easiest activity at the time. Is it just a question of time management and prioritization?

As a person who is moving from the 'conventional studies' portion of their life to that portion which consists more of 'work' and when people increasingly enter into more serious relationships and make important life decisions such as marriage,children,etc, and is also increasingly aware of the paucity of time and what one can possibly do with it, I wanted to hear people's take on how they manage it all or have learned to manage it over time. I understand that making the most of one's life is a relatively common concern and that answers to this question can be wide ranging and often verge on the abstract but I am open to all manner of answers ranging from the practical to the philosophical. Keeping in mind the typical audience on here, it seemed like a question worth asking.

mlac 4 years ago |

They don’t. If they do, they shouldn’t and need to relax some constraints.

I’ll offer four books.

-> “Getting things done” -> Dry as hell, but useful for basic organization and “adulting”.

-> “Essentialism” and “Make Time” -> prioritization

-> “Four Thousand Weeks” -> perspective

Life is trade-offs. The thing you are doing at this very moment (reading this comment) has been prioritized over everything else in your life. Analyzing everything this way can be exhausting and can lead you to beat yourself up, but it’s good to keep in mind at a high level.

When I say “they don’t” do it all, I mean anyone you see doing anything is, by definition, not doing everything. They are doing that one thing. A few people can do a lot of different things in a day and keep a lot of plates spinning, but there is a natural breadth vs. depth trade off.

I would encourage you to not try to do it all, but explicitly make trade offs for your time (e.g. hiring a house cleaner, ordering in from restaurants, getting a nanny if you and your spouse both want to work). Whatever your comfort is for that sort of thing, there’s nothing to be ashamed of for bringing in help to keep life moving. The best people have teams helping them get things done. Whatever your pain point is, throw resources at it. These will change over time.

Time != Energy. There are baseline skills (diet, exercise, sleep) that are force multipliers and have a positive ROI on Energy. There are things that have a highly negative ROI. Finding both for you is useful.

You will never “get there”, even if everything is perfect. Change is constant, and living is staying current and adapting with the change.

As Willie Nelson said, “All we have is right now”. That took me a long time to get.

As Bill Gates said, “We underestimate what we can accomplish in a year and overestimate what we can accomplish in a day.”

““You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” - Wayne Gretzky” - Michael Scott

And Warren Buffet says to write down your top 25 priorities, and absolutely do everything you can to avoid the bottom 20, focusing only on the top 5.

apohn 4 years ago | |

>And Warren Buffet says to write down your top 25 priorities, and absolutely do everything you can to avoid the bottom 20, focusing only on the top 5.

And make sure you revisit that list every couple of years. It's going to change a lot over a lifetime.

Flankk 4 years ago | |

Do you use GTD on a daily basis and does it help you? I found the system terrible and convoluted. David Allen is a member of The Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, which I've read is a cult. The history of the system seems a bit shady when you look at it from this perspective. Essentially GTD is actually just a cult like any other. Scientology is meant to use science to actualize people to their full potential, as another example. I'd love to hear your perspective.

mlac 4 years ago | | |

Yeah I hadn’t heard it was a cult, and I wouldn’t read too far into it. Anything taken to the extreme gets weird, and he has made his life from it so he’s as extreme as it gets. I think for him it’s definitely something he came to while taking psychedelics, so it’s probably spiritual and “the right way to live”.

In my mind to have a cult you need other people, and I’ve never met with anyone for a GTD meetup. To me the point of GTD is for it to be as low drag and out of the way as possible, so that you spend as little time on it as necessary.

It’s a tool in the tool belt like anything else. The key ideas I (try) to use:

- Weekly review (just carve out time to get organized each week in a structured way)

- Inbox / place to capture things

- 2 minute rule - if it takes less than 2 minutes, do it (sometimes 5 depending on the context)

- Contexts to let me think about work and personal items separately (though I keep them physically separate and work stays on work machine).

- Agendas (@person) which is a bucket used for anything and everything I need to talk to the person / team / group about. I’ve got tons of agenda lists.

- Snoozed items - need to change oil in 6 months? Put it in the inbox to call the shop to set up an appointment, and snooze it for 5 months.

- Delegate / Defer / Do workflow for email and (somewhat) zero inbox.

- Horizons of focus, and making sure I’m not too heavily focused in one area or missing one completely.

- Natural planning method is also good.

Viewing GTD as a cult to me is like viewing agile as a cult (which… now that I think about it…). In all seriousness, GTD is a way to think about to do lists and all the incoming information, and presents a way to handle it to get it out of your mind. There are a lot of ways one could do that besides GTD, but the book + tools (I use omnifocus) are well established and mature, so it’s a good and time tested approach.

Its about having the right information at the right time so that you can take the desired (pre-planned) action to achieve some outcome. If you want it to, omnifocus will tell you when you are nearby a physical store (context @bestbuy) and show you the to dos or things to purchase only when you are there (project get kids’ Christmas gift & task buy printer ink). Or if you shop online you could make your context @computer, so when you open the computer you can look at the list and work out of it. I don’t go that far, but some do.

TimonKnigge 4 years ago | | |

IMO the key takeaway from GTD is that you need to write things down in some sort of anything-goes inbox, so that they don't bounce around in your head. What kind of sorting/tracking mechanism you use after that is less important.

codingdave 4 years ago |

You won't have time for it all. And when it is all over, nobody wishes they had spent more time working. So find the balance - do the work you need to do. But then put it away and do the activities that will leave you on your deathbed (hopefully old) saying, "Yeah, that was a good life."

If you keep that perspective when making all your choices... well, you'll still make mistakes - mistakes are part of youth. But they will be made with good intent and hopefully keep you growing and living in a good direction.

apohn 4 years ago | |

>And when it is all over, nobody wishes they had spent more time working.

This is true. But I think it's also important for people to realize this on their own based on experiences in their own life, not just in theory. Sometimes the only way to really understand this is to overwork and burn-out at a job and realize it's not worth it.

If I was on my deathbed when I was 20, I'll bet one of my regrets would have been not working harder to contribute to science, make an impact, be recognized, be an entrepreneur, etc. I haven't been in my 20s for a while and my views on work have definitely changed to what I quoted from you above.

koalakeeper 4 years ago |

100000% seconding the recommendation for Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. You sound overwhelmed–just focus on what you need to do today. My litmus test: If you spent everyday like today, what would your life be like in a year? That way I make sure to not skimp on two big things:

•Health: exercise, eating well, sleep •Something that will expand my life over time: learning and satisfying a non work-related curiosity; doing something social 1-2x a week

Set limits on: •Things that annoy you and steal your time; say no to energy vampires, social media, etc •Occasionally I'll try to address an inefficiency (for me, it's meal prep), but make sure that it's not my main focus.

No one does it all. It only looks that way because people only post their highlight reels on the internet, and no character on TV spends time realistically. Most of life is commuting and chores and errands, the unsexy stuff of maintenance. Since this can't be avoided, don't act like it's a waste of your life. It IS a lot of life.

apohn 4 years ago |

Here's a piece of advice I might have found useful in my early 20s.

Don't project long term consequences on short term decisions. It's really easy to ask yourself what the "right" decision is and then consciously or unconsciously weigh this against every other possible decision and how it could affect your entire life. Even with something like "Should I choose to spend to spend the next 6 months learning anthropology, literary theory, or psychology" turns into an agonizing decision if you start trying to determine how that decision could effect the rest of your life. The truth it, it probably doesn't matter which one you pick or even if you decide you'd rather stare out the window for 6 months first, and then decide which one to study.

Sometimes even the big long-term decisions don't matter in the long run. I know somebody who got married and was divorced by age 22. Now they've been married to somebody else for 10+ years and has 3 kids. They learned some lessons from the first marriage, but in the long term it didn't matter all that much.

999900000999 4 years ago |

First off, don't envy anyone. On the outside you see someone with a great career and a great relationship. Reality, they just got laid off, they've been separated for about 6 months.

Be grateful for what you have, and don't compare yourself to anyone else. You don't know what they actually have

mlac 4 years ago | |

They may actually have a great career and a great relationship (with their spouse).

But their relationship with their parents is bad. Or they are in debt. People typically show off what they optimize for. I’m not posting pictures on instagram of my figure skating…

PaulHoule 4 years ago |

If your life was a play it would have multiple acts.

Every 7 years or so you will have some major upheaval in your routine, so you aren't stuck with the choices you make right now.

For instance I went through a phase of playing video games heavily and now I've almost entirely quit. I had a time when I worked a lot on side projects, then I quit (except for work I've been doing on a committee.) Last year I started a series of art-related side projects and now my son and I laugh at Meta, Magic Leap and such because we make products that work with 3D glasses that get amazingly good image quality despite costing just 20 cents a pair.

apohn 4 years ago | |

>Every 7 years or so you will have some major upheaval in your routine, so you aren't stuck with the choices you make right now.

At least for me, the big realization is that a lot of the "important" decisions made in the past suddenly don't feel that important anymore. In hindsight all thought and stress about making the right decision wasn't worth it.

codingdave 4 years ago | |

So you used to do side projects, quit that, but you toss in a line at the end that sure sounds like you are fishing for interest in a new side project. Are you sure you've quit doing side projects?

PaulHoule 4 years ago | | |

I think you read it wrong.

I have three side projects right now that are like Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. The first one is reaching a point where it is "done" enough I can think about the other two. Then effort goes into the next two.

I started the first of those projects a year ago without really understanding what I was getting into. The hiatus started circa 2013 or so and ended last year.

truxten 4 years ago |

I struggled with this too, and the conclusion I've more or less come to is that you can't. In the end, you have to figure out what is worth prioritizing and what you are okay with letting fall to wayside. The one practical thing that I've found to be useful is to try to think in terms of what I don't want to spend my time doing - and then actively trying to avoid doing those things - rather than trying to think of all the things that I want to do.

apohn 4 years ago | |

Another thing to keep in mind is that every couple of years, an internal or external shift is going to change what you think is important and what's not worth the effort.

Maybe today you want to focus your time on learning different things and don't want to focus on your job. But then you turn 30 and you realize you want to focus on your career and spend less time learning random stuff. Just make the best decision you can at that moment with the feelings and data you have.

AnimalMuppet 4 years ago |

As others have said, you can't. And that's all right. You don't need to have it all.

You need to decide what you need to have, not what everyone else says you need to have. You need to go after that. (And then you need to learn to live without the things you "have" to have, because you may not be able to get even that much.)

searchingalways 4 years ago |

An impossible task. One I also am tempted to try and do.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God's gift to man. I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away. Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness, and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?” ‭‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3:1-22‬ ‭ESV‬‬ https://bible.com/bible/59/ecc.3.1-22.ESV

seanhunter 4 years ago |

You can do almost anything but you can't do everything. Your choice matters but it has to be your choice.

Your post is certainly a question worth asking but primarily it's a question worth asking yourself. You're basically asking about how to create a meaningful life, which is something that a person has to figure out for themselves given everyone's values are different.

My recommendation would be read "Man's search for meaning" and then keep asking yourself questions like this while trying not to be too bogged down. As my motorcycle instructor told me in a completely different context, "Keep your head up and look where you want to go".

ranuzz 4 years ago |

I don’t follow any time management techniques outside work hours and have accepted the fact that I can’t do everything. So, I do things in phases, for some weeks I play a lot of video games, for some weeks I go to gym very regularly, for some weeks I read a lot of books etc etc. Keeping in touch with people and maintaining a social life is an entirely different ball game. I am struggling on that front, you tell me when you figure it out.

bobblywobbles 4 years ago |

We cannot do it all; of course that should not dissuade us to be lazy or not attempt to reach goals we have set for ourselves! As other's have made similar comments, having a good balance of activities leads us to pursue our interests, grow, have hobbies, and be involved in our communities. Everyone varies, but I would recommend to:

Exercise 2-3 times a week Have social time with friends at least once a week Make effort to stay close to your family Give yourself free time to explore/grow/have a hobby Eat fresh/local/natural food to maintain your health Donate your time/talent/treasure to others Always invest in growing/learning

*Also - the mere question of asking how we can do it all implies that this life is the only thing worth living for. I might get down-voted here, but there is a life after this one, through Jesus. Having this understanding gives me peace in so many things. I would recommend exploring Christianity/Catholicism if you haven't yet before.

selenasecor 4 years ago |

Highly recommend this book. The author did a project that tracks working mom's time spent for a week. Very interesting findings. Also a fun read.

https://www.amazon.com/Know-How-She-Does-Successful/dp/01431...

kleer001 4 years ago |

Mostly by cutting out the BS. There's a lot of contemporary nonsense floating around there hungry for our attention, a lot of super-normal stimulation. Stop letting it into your life. Psychedelics might help with that. Therapy might too. Get off the internet for fun, stop social media, stop playing video games, etc...

burntoutfire 4 years ago |

Most people do just a few of the things on your list at a time. However, life is long, so you can alternate over time - e.g. at some point you can take a less demanding or part time job (or even be FIREd already) which opens up time for other aspects of life. Even then, you'll have to choose just a few that you focus on, but again, you can still alternate over time - say focus on studying humanities for a couple of years, then maybe later do art for a couple of years etc.

captainbland 4 years ago |

Suspect a time machine and a dose of immortality would come in handy, but a close second is hiring many other people to do everything for you.

For the rest of us, just prioritise what's important to you and do what you can.

breckenedge 4 years ago |

You can’t do it all and that’s a beautiful aspect of a mortal life. You continuously have to choose what’s most important to you, what’s fulfilling.

mikewave 4 years ago |

> how does one make time for it all?

You truly don't - it's impossible. It's like the CAP theorem: there are fundamental limits that all stem fundamentally from a lack of time. You have to sleep, eat, wash, exercise, do your chores, etc - these are fixed costs on your time. If you have children - and I recommend it, it's amazing - those fixed costs increase significantly.

If what you want is to continue to have a really good career - well, you'll either have to find a way to keep it within work hours, or you will have to sacrifice something else. Some people sacrifice exercise, sleep, hygiene, etc. but this always has its own costs in return. Some people sacrifice all of their free time, which instead has mental health impacts.

Instead, you have to...

- Become as efficient as possible at all of the above. Cut the corners that can be cut while still fulfilling the requirements. - Accept that you will not be able to perform the same as someone who is dedicating every moment of their lives to do something. You have to accept the benefits you get from your other pursuits in life as being worth the sacrifice of not getting extreme career advancement, not getting every moment of leisure time you want, etc. - Know that you can still achieve your goals to a large extent as long as you are willing to have a long horizon (low time preference).

> As a person with eclectic tastes/interests, limited time to pursue them and a finite (atleast last time I checked) lifespan, I have found it increasingly difficult to figure out how to spend my time and seem to end up with an overall feeling of being overwhelmed and settling for the easiest activity at the time. Is it just a question of time management and prioritization?

100%. For example, I love hiking and camping, and I would love to take a week away from my young family to explore the mountains, but ultimately doing so is somewhat selfish as it would lump all the work on my wife for that period of time. If I can find a way to enable her to have her own week of leisure, then maybe that can balance out; but more realistically I am going to be on a hiatus from week-long outings until the kids are older. This doesn't mean the occasional weekend can't happen, though!

Planning in advance and ensuring unknowns are minimized for yourself and your partner is key to ensuring that you can still do what you want.

I will leave you with this:

I have no idea what the hell I was doing with all my free time before I had children. There must have been hours upon hours in the average day that I had absolutely nothing to show for other than consuming content or excess calories. Now, every moment is utilized; there's way less "downtime" but honestly I don't even want it - I just want to get to have "uptime" of my choosing, and it happens as long as I make it happen.

I know parents who are overwhelmed and never get any free time, according to them, but when I watch how they live it is clear that this is happening mostly because of their own inefficiencies and the fact that they expect downtime to look like vegetating in front of the TV, where hours slip away, instead of going out and doing something like hiking / spending time with their family on an outing / etc. No wonder they feel like nothing is getting done and that their days are drudgery! "It's all I have energy for" is a poor excuse - the more you do, the easier it gets.

tmaly 4 years ago |

I can’t do it all.

You have to figure out what you really want and then make a plan.

All the other stuff you have to put less focus on.

Time management and focus are important.

aruanavekar 4 years ago |

scope and define all and then try best to make them all happen for that day. My personal way is pick 3-3-3(work-home-pleasure : that would be my all scope) and be extremely happy is ALL are accomplished. Many times even before I can jot the first item I'm already distracted :)

MarcelOlsz 4 years ago |

There's only 24 hours in a day, so I try to kind of create a gradient of things important to me and try to weave one into the other. Each activity I do should somehow compliment something I already know, or fill in a need somewhere else, leading to a compounding effect. Example: I'm a pianist, so instead of picking up electronic music and getting lost in analog stuff, I'd pick up something like a clarinet, which works towards my goal of creating the sound I am after (helping me launch my album quicker), and doesn't require relearning multiple fields. This is the "density" factor of an activity I consider. Then I figure out where on the gradient between founder and career and hobby it falls on. The further the activity is towards hobby, and the less dense it is, the less time I will spend on it. The reason is at this point in my life founder/career trajectory is more important to me, to be able to afford the space and time to fully enter the hobby realm, at which point the hobbies are no longer hobbies, but become what I love doing, and cease to be either a career or a hobby.

Right now I am doing:

1) Leetcode in the mornings. On my (founder -> career -> hobby) continuum, this falls firmly on career, as it doesn't help me as a founder (except tangentially), and I don't code for fun (not a hobby). I will spend only a little time on this every day, 30m-1hr.

2) Language study - I am deeply interested in language. I am also studying math.

3) Math study - relearning my highschool math so I can get into a good university (sort of a backup plan if my MVP's fail)

4) My MVP - since the leetcode, language, and math all sort of work into each other on a loose level, I consider these small tasks I have to accomplish daily but with minimal time dedicated to each, such that I am still making progress in them, but with the bulk of my progress on my MVP.

When all of these wrap up, they will compliment each other very well. Once the MVP is launched, I plan to use that money to go back to school for math, where the Russian will help me. The MVP will also help me establish my skills in the public domain, helping me land a career, in which case the leetcode will also come through.

When I am done wrapping up the founder/career portion of my life, I will drift further towards hobby, trying to replace one with the other (replace career with hobby, hobby becoming the main thing I do), and then these hobby activities will take up a larger portion of my day.

I try to arrange all of my interests this way so I don't waste my own time on things that don't matter and don't help me. I focus on what fulfills me most, and place it last in the gradient, as a point to move towards.