My wife's step-dad is a surgeon, and an excellent one. Very methodical and careful, as you'd expect a surgeon to be. But his home life is often quite chaotic. E.g. instead of paying his electric bill on time, he just writes a big check every six months and hopes it works out. The lack of mental bandwidth is definitely a real phenomenon.
<i>Most busy professionals view the working poor who struggle from paycheck to paycheck with barely veiled contempt. These holier-than-thou Whole Foods shoppers marvel at the poor decisions of the poor, whether in consumption of fast food, using payday loans, or worst of all, buying lottery tickets.</i><p>Er, is this a Silicon Valley thing?
"...marvel at the poor decisions of the poor" - I've always wondered if rich marvel at the bad decisions of the middle class in the same way. And what they see as the big mistakes keeping them from being rich. E.g. the problem with the middle class is they just don't understand the importance of entrepreneurship / capital gains / ???
I have noticed this trend at many work places. Often the people who appear to be working the "hardest", are the people that have spun their work lives into a tapestry of chaos. Their schedules and workload are so intensely unmanaged that the only thing they manage to do is commit to more things.<p>Unfortunately this sort of behavior is often encouraged by higher ups, because it looks like you are doing a lot. However, I think it's obvious that spending a lot of time in the office doesn't equate to getting a lot done.
I enjoyed reading this article (and am excited to read future comments) because it resonates almost exactly with my current lifestyle and way of thinking.<p>This happened to me ~8 years ago. Solution was to spend 5k on a solo trip, all economy/hostel accommodations with a single backpack, walking around Europe (Poland, Budapest, Portugal) with a quick trip to Japan. Inner peace levels and happiness went up 10x what a 20k bonus ever provided me. It also helps to realize how small we are, how truly big an impact we can make by via technology, and that every single person you love, respect, run into will eventually die in some misery, with regret that brings tears to their eyes no matter how well they lived. So enjoy yourself, but don't take it too easy.<p>I'm a solutions engineer for tech startups which is generally very fun, challenging work, but tech really is like heroin (wasn't there a HN link about it?) and needs to be kept in-line.<p>If you anyone wants suggestions re. Europe travel, I'd be happy to share.
I agree with your points, however, the major differences is what each spends their 60 hour work weeks on.<p>The busy professional works on activities that has social prestige (even if it is a lot of useless meetings and e-mail) and ultimately, these activities build career capital which can be leveraged. Not to mention, they pay a lot more.<p>The working poor may also work 60 hour weeks, but their work does not carry social prestige, build career capital, or pay particularly well. Ultimately, their work can not really be leveraged into opportunities to focus on the big picture.<p>Again, I agree from a cognitive processing view that yes, both the working poor and the busy professional partake in activities that distract from higher value work, but the latter has much more opportunity to give himself breathing room to focus.<p>Good post!
One thing I keep coming back to is meditation. I believe it has improved my productivity by being more in the moment, getting distracted less easily and being more accountable with my mental bandwith.<p>Now if I could just curb my hackernews addiction...
<i>Re: What they've discovered is that shortages lead people to make poor decisions. That's because the brain can only process so much.</i><p>That's a real problem. Interestingly, I've experienced the opposite while working on several things in parallel - not having "enough time" forces you to make decisions instantly.