Do you make productive use of idle time?

[hobbsyoyo]

Well let's be honest, the average worker might spend 8 hours at work, but also does about two hours a day at anything that can be called work.

Not to be that guy but do you have a source? Either you are off by half or more or I'm freakishly productive at work. On a normal day I put in a solid 6 hours of real effort. Much of the other two are brainstorming or day dreaming about various problems I'm trying to solve.


My idle time isn't super productive but I do read, write about and discuss space stuff with a lot of my idle time which in a round about way makes me a little bit better at my job. But most of the rest of the time I'm playing games, watching movies or at the pool/hot tub/grill.

 

[Ryika]

Not to be that guy but do you have a source? Either you are off by half or more or I'm freakishly productive at work. On a normal day I put in a solid 6 hours of real effort. Much of the other two are brainstorming or day dreaming about various problems I'm trying to solve.

Yeah right, keep pretending! "After all, my boss might be reading this! *hurr hurr hurr*"

 

[Hygro]

Do you drive, Valka?

Your subconscious can drive as long as you're still looking at the road, and there's only light traffic.



I have seen "app contains ads" on every "ad-block" service I have seen. :eyeroll:

whats light traffic?

 

[Zelig]

whats light traffic?

Green on Google Maps.

 

[Hygro]

I thought that color was just a myth.

 

[Zelig]

I don't commute to work unless it's green the entire way.

 

[Synobun]

Not to be that guy but do you have a source? Either you are off by half or more or I'm freakishly productive at work. On a normal day I put in a solid 6 hours of real effort. Much of the other two are brainstorming or day dreaming about various problems I'm trying to solve.


My idle time isn't super productive but I do read, write about and discuss space stuff with a lot of my idle time which in a round about way makes me a little bit better at my job. But most of the rest of the time I'm playing games, watching movies or at the pool/hot tub/grill.

You have a markedly different job than most. If you were just a pencil pusher in HR or something you'd probably have a completely different perspective. As it stands, though, you're actually important to what's going on.

 

[civvver]

I don't think of driving as idle time. I mean you are doing something, you are driving. I listen to talk radio, mostly sports talk with some npr and local news thrown in. But sometimes on longer drives with my family when wife doesn't want to talk but won't stand for my talk radio (she hates talk radio) I'll plan stuff in my head. Usually it's cooking related, going over recipes, meal planning, sometimes it's work related, organizing my tasks in my head, and the last part of the time it's entertainment related- what tv show I'm planning to watch next or what goal to go for in a video game. Like maybe I'll think of a tech path in civ4.

Idle time I thought you meant like sitting around waiting for the cable guy to show or free time when all the kiddies are in bed. That's the only time I have to game.

Not to be that guy but do you have a source? Either you are off by half or more or I'm freakishly productive at work. On a normal day I put in a solid 6 hours of real effort. Much of the other two are brainstorming or day dreaming about various problems I'm trying to solve.


My idle time isn't super productive but I do read, write about and discuss space stuff with a lot of my idle time which in a round about way makes me a little bit better at my job. But most of the rest of the time I'm playing games, watching movies or at the pool/hot tub/grill.

Yeah but you're an engineer right? A lot of solo work? I am too but most people have to interact with others to get jobs done. Imagine being a project manager and how much crap you have to do just to get people to meetings on time, how many reports you fill out that's mostly busy work. A lot of people just talk to other people as part of their job. I'm not saying it's not work, it just consumes a lot of time.

If I look at my day, I go in short bursts of extreme productivity actually making things then long phases of planning and design meetings, and unwind time in between, but those things enable the bursts so they're kind of needed and work in their own way. Like you can't bust out 1000 lines of working code in a couple hours without a very clear software design and requirements up front. But yeah I probably only code for 2-3 hours a day, plan/design stuff for 3-4 and rest is a mixture of down time to recoup or talking about other work stuff with people.

 

[rah]

God, If I only put in a couple of hours of productive work a day, I'd be standing on the street looking for a new job.
Granted part of it is strategic planning but it's very productive.
I'd fire anybody on my staff that was only giving me 25% real effort.

 

[civvver]

It's not only 25% real effort, it's that ~75% of time is spent in meetings. The boss schedules them too so.

 

[rah]

I never schedule my developers for that many meetings.
My weekly staff meetings usually run no longer than 20 minutes. I hate unproductive meetings.

 

[cardgame]

whats light traffic?

Like this or even less

or were you making a joke about your local traffic density?

@Valka D'Ur

A famous sci-fi author backed my point up yesterday

 

[Valka D'Ur]

@Valka D'Ur

A famous sci-fi author backed my point up yesterday

Source, please. Which author?

I can relate to the part about the concert pianist, somewhat. The only way I made it through the Western Board of Music exams was to train my hands, fingers, and feet to know exactly what to do at every moment throughout, no matter if it was a scale, arpeggio, or Bach. Since I learned to play by ear many years before I learned to read music, I've preferred not to rely on sheet music for a crutch in case I lose my place.

This meant hours each day of practice and intense concentration, and it drove my family nuts; I couldn't stand to have any extraneous noise around - not TV, radio, or conversation. It was a case of making the keyboard and pedalboard extensions of myself, and it was an amazing feeling when everything came together.


But if it's true that drivers go from point A to point B and have no memory of anything road/driving-related in between, why would people keep asking me how many traffic lights were between their starting point and my place when I was giving them directions? Why ask, if they don't notice them?

Traffic lights aren't anything I notice unless I have to cross a street and there's a light on that corner. If I'm giving directions to get here, and they're starting out from downtown or farther south, I'll give them a few landmarks, and at one point there is the invariable question that comes when I tell them to head north at a particular intersection (where a popular hamburger place is located): "Which way is north?"

Um... it's the opposite of south. Depending on the time of day, the Sun is either to the left or to the right. It's not like there are any tall buildings there that block out the view of the Sun, so how can people not be able to figure these things out? Don't they teach basic map-reading anymore?

Don't ask me about how many traffic lights there are between Point A and Point B. I've never needed to know that, so it's not something I ever bothered to memorize. My concern with traffic lights is whether or not I can make it across in time, because whoever programmed those things didn't bother accounting for people with reduced mobility (a point brought up by a former city councilor, who informed his clueless colleagues that it really wouldn't be good for seniors and disabled people to get run over because of not having enough time to cross a street).

 

[Synobun]

But if it's true that drivers go from point A to point B and have no memory of anything road/driving-related in between, why would people keep asking me how many traffic lights were between their starting point and my place when I was giving them directions? Why ask, if they don't notice them?

Counting lights is easier than looking for landmarks that may or may not exist anymore or be visible.

 

[cardgame]

@Valka D'Ur Peter Watts

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Counting lights is easier than looking for landmarks that may or may not exist anymore or be visible.

I don't suggest landmarks that aren't there anymore. I know this particular landmark exists, because I ordered takeout from there several days ago. It's not exactly invisible. But I always ask, "Do you know where _____ is?" and if they say yes, I tell them, go to that intersection, go north up the hill... and the next thing they say is to ask me which way north is.

Well, if they can't find north, they should at least be able to find the damn hill. There's only one.

@Valka D'Ur Peter Watts

Thanks.

 

[Quintillus]

Of course I make productive use of my idle time, I play Civ!

But really, the answer is sometimes. I consider things like learning, working on a personal project, or cleaning my apartment productive, and I do that occasionally. But there are also times when I just relax and play Civ, or something like that. And a few times a week I'll find myself lying on my couch not doing anything other than thinking about whatever comes across my mind. I try to strike a fairly healthy balance. And a lot of ideas occur either when I'm doing "nothing" or after taking a break to do "nothing".

For commutes, I generally read a book (I also take a bus). Usually history or literature. Depends on who you ask as to how productive that is - it doesn't help me in a job, beyond helping accumulate random facts that co-workers sometimes find impressive, but I consider it productive in terms of it's thought-provoking.

If I am driving somewhere, I'll alternate between listening to National Public Radio, a CD/music radio, or none of the above. NPR is pretty interesting, and makes me a more-informed citizen, so I wouldn't call that unproductive either.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm with Narz on being willing to pay for content for the convenience and to support the artist. It's also an economic model that's more ethical than data-mining and advertising, and more sustainable, since ad-based models hit downward spirals with ad blocking, which requires more ads for everyone else to be sustainable, which results in more ad blocking, etc.

No, I don't drive. I never have. And I wouldn't feel safe riding with anyone who was only using their subconscious to do the driving.

Counter-intuitively, it's actually safer if someone is able to drive subconsciously (although indeed, you do want them to be paying attention to the road and not distracted, even if that attention is subconscious). An experienced driver, in normal conditions, will be doing a task that they're sufficiently familiar with that they can do it unconsciously, just like eating a meal while reading a magazine. And if something unexpected does happen - something jumps into the road, they are cut off, etc. - their conscious decision-making will kick in as well (provided they were not distracted), just as if the person enjoying a meal will start paying conscious attention if they accidentally bite their tongue.

On the other hand, if someone is continually paying conscious attention to what they are doing while driving, they probably are a relatively new driver, who is still figuring out how far you need to turn the steering wheel to get the desired effect, how sensitive the brake pedals are, what their field of vision is in the mirrors, what typical distances between cars should be, etc.

The other odd thing is that even when someone is acting subconsciously, it may look like they're acting consciously. Turning their head to check for traffic, for example - it is often habit as much as anything, though in unusual cases it can become conscious, such as when the view is obstructed.

 

[Hrothbern]

Like this or even less

or were you making a joke about your local traffic density?

There are investigations that estimate that more than 50% of your time while driving is in that mental autopilot mode.

The time I was travelling a lot, and I made more than 50,000 km per year, it was mostly on motorways in the Germanic area, that had a lot more traffic than on that picture.
Just going with the flow on the left lanes.
I cannot remembering doing it during traffic jams or really bad weather. Also not when I was sleepy.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Well let's be honest, the average worker might spend 8 hours at work, but also does about two hours a day at anything that can be called work.

you would know, right? pfffft