Ask HN: What's the biggest time waste on your workday?

[andriosr]

I've been thinking about things I have to do regularly, but are not worth the time.

Examples for me:

- manual tasks I didn't have time do automate yet (technical debt) - writing boilerplate code - unproductive meetings to discuss things that would be 1000x more efficient over text/a document

These are things I do regularly and they don't make me learn or improve at the rate of more interesting stuff.

Are these the same for you?

What are you doing that you wish you weren't?

[decafninja]

Useless meetings.

The worst is where some middle manager or project manager or business analyst calls in 20 different people into an hour long meeting. 5 people might actually get some meaningful benefit from the meeting, let alone actually utter a single word.

You try to skip it, but then said organizer pings you asking why you aren't present.

The same meeting is scheduled daily, because reasons. Never mind that there has been no meaningful progress or update to the project during the last 24 hours.

[yowlingcat]

You may want to consider having a conversation with the middle manager about how this meeting is ineffective and needs to be split into separate, more targeted meetings with smaller groups of individuals where delegates from each meeting eventually sync with one another to discuss findings. You say it is "scheduled daily because reasons" but do you know what those reasons are? Have you tried to understand the goals of the meeting from the organizer and suggest more efficient ways to get to that goal if you find the current mechanism wasteful?

If either you or they do not both have 1) The understanding of why this is necessary 2) How to go about it successfully

Congratulations! You are now the lucky owner of two problems. You (or perhaps your manager) have your work cut out for you. For what it's worth, I was having a conversation with another engineer on my team this week, and we both thought a lot about how actually tricky and yet high value this labor is. The truth is, probably nobody likes that the meeting has become so large and unwieldy. Everybody can probably sense that something is not working properly.

But nobody knows what to do. Or maybe, they're scared to take initiative. Will you be the person that steps in and tries to turn things around? I promise, it's usually easier than it looks!

[vulcan01]

Try asking for an agenda, then if they give you one, you will know one of two things: I can contribute to this discussion, or I can't contribute to this discussion. If they don't give you an agenda, then they don't know what they're going to talk about either ...

[chrisaycock]

Yep, and it's worse when someone I don't even report to demands regular status updates. Rising-up in that firm meant demonstrating leadership by getting people to report to you, even if in an unofficial capacity.

Or there was the company where we had four (!) hours of meetings per day: two in the morning and two in the afternoon. All we ever discussed is what we didn't get done during lunch time.

After I left all that, my one question when interviewing with a hiring manager became: "How often do you have meetings?" A lot of people got very flustered with that one.

[woebtz]

I have a friend who used to start every meeting with writing down how much the meeting will cost the company (pp person/hour, etc.) on a whiteboard.

They worked for a university's budget controller, so large meetings were regular, but, fortunately infrequent!

[ericmcer]

I feel like I have two currencies at work, one being time and the other being mental fatigue. Average time wasting (snacking, reading, going for a walk) only consumes time, but coding and meetings both cause mental fatigue. It’s worse for my productivity than if I spent an hour laying outside.

[schoolornot]

Do you have any tips for what to do when you're beginning to lose your autonomy to out of touch PMs?

[gorbachev]

A variation of this is my pet peeve.

Meetings with no real agenda. The conversation will ramble, nobody is taking control, nothing gets decided and the meeting takes 4 times as long as it should.

And then we repeat it again next week, because nothing got decided.

[codq]

The general distractions of the web/news/life.

One thing I recently realized is the secondary effect of gmail being open in a browser tab.

I like to be aware of my email in real-time so I can respond to pressing situations, therefore I keep gmail open in my browser's first tab. However, the secondary effect is that my browser is always open, and the distractions of the internet are just one new tab away.

I recently started using TwoBird as my gmail client, which now keeps my email and my web browser separated. Yes, everyone who's been using a stand-alone email application has known this for years, but it's new to me.

I'm happy that I can now live/work/breathe without having a web browser open at all times.

[ipnon]

Try checking email 2 times a day, when you begin work and when you end work. If the message requires an urgent response, the sender won't wait on an email anyway.

[GregarianChild]

I split my email addresses into 5 (private, university teaching, research, commercial work, side business), and use different computers (though fewer than 5) for different jobs. In part that was forced by my commercial employer's trade secrets etc.

I find the friction to rapid swiching that this division of communication channels and tools introduces quite helpful for focus.

[Klinky]

You can appify sites using Chrome's create shortcut feature. This has always allowed me to run GMail in its own window.

[laurentdc]

All project management tools introduce enormous overhead for me. All of them, they're clunky to use, either too general purpose or too specific, and when you need that bit of info you never know where exactly your colleague put it. Trello, Jira, Notion, even searching for something in Google Docs is a massive context switch and just feels dreadful with those sluggish single page applications that make laptop fans spin in five second bursts while they load.

So I have my own todo.txt with a plain old bullet list that I keep open in tmux+vim, and at the end of the day if there's some time left I update all the other tools.

[bearer_token]

> when you need that bit of info you never know where exactly your colleague put it

> So I have my own todo.txt ... if there's some time left I update all the other tools.

Do you see the irony?

Not saying this is wrong, just that you are a perfect example of how incentives perpetuate this problem.

[andriosr]

I feel the same! Moving between Jira, Github, E-mail, Slack, etc, all day.

Besides unproductive, these apps are extremely slow.

I started using Superhuman a few weeks ago, it's nice, but would need the same thing from Jira, Github, and other to get near something good.

[DenisM]

Take a look at Monday.com - I use it as a todo.txt with colors and built-in hierarchy: board, group of tasks, task, comments hidden on a task.

[nicolas_]

I have the same todo.txt ordered by priority with the history of everything I've done the previous weeks at the end.

Something like this:

Urgent Task to do

X Task done

==May 11-May16==

X Task done

X Task done

[stepbeek]

We switched to Basecamp really and I'm really enjoying it. Far less faffing about.

[vbtemp]

I would have a lot fewer distractions and get much more done if we could just drop the pretext of "working" full time.

The "wasted" part of my day is simply being extremely inefficient and dicking around simply because it's expected to be in the office or available online. I would get much more done if my job was to hit milestones and goals (perhaps with some designated "office hours"). And then I have the rest of my time to do what I need to. Fortunately the "dicking around" involves taking online courses, personal "stretch" projects, etc.. but still.

I don't want to sound bitter. I have flexibility when I start/end my work day. On any given day I can peace out at 1pm or show up at noon (so long as I'm not blowing anyone off). But that's on _any given day_, not _every day_. And so the repeated, iterated game that's going on between me and employer reaches a nash equilibrium where I do just "enough" that I'm advancing my career in the organization and little enough that I have enough lax time in the day to do whatever I can online for my personal life (coursework, shopping, personal tech projects/experiments, enrichment reading, etc).

[freehunter]

I used to be a security analyst which meant I spent a lot of my day waiting for a security incident to either happen or be escalated to me. Now I’m a consultant which means I spent a lot of time waiting on clients. I’ve come to appreciate semi-mindless games like Rimworld, Cities: Skylines, Factorio, The Sims, or clicker games on my phone. I can fill my waiting time with those which I find fun, but they don’t require so much of my attention that I miss a client email or Slack message come in and I can quickly switch back.

It’s still wasting time, but it’s less mentally exhausting than trying to switch to something more “productive” for a few minutes.

[Frost1x]

Contextual switches.

I work on a variety of development projects with sometimes entirely different technology stacks, goals, people, etc. Sometimes there's overlap, often there's not. It can be daunting jumping between entirely different sets of technical challenges, goals, and conceptual framing of problems.

[nicolas_]

I'm working for a big aerospace company and a lot of it (tech-wise) feels like/is a huge time waste, even more so the last four months where I've been working remotely.

1) Turn-on the computer, log in Windows, enter the overcomplicated encryption software password, launch IE6 to go to a webpage which will launch the VPN native app. (at least 5 minutes)

2) Opening Microsoft Project takes ages since the Project Server is in Europe. Then there's some kind of macro that has to run which in the end fails because I'm not on-site. You pick a plan to open it, it takes another 30 seconds, another macro/prompt/check fails. The whole process takes a good 3-5 minutes until you can actually work on it and I have 18+ plans to manage.

3) You can run reports of said Project plans and export them in Excel format but the formatting is all junky. You have unused columns, titles, hidden columns. I had to create a macro to import the exported file, import all the data, and creating a pivot table automatically instead of doing it manually X times a day.

4) We're still using Office 2010 while working a lot with Excel. The limitations of the 10 years old software is a real pain. Do you want to manage two Excel files in two separate instances of Excel? You'll have to open a separate instance first then open a file. You also can't use all the new formulas or enjoy the improvement made on the ones that already exist. I get that Office licences are not cheap and the "Fix What’s Broken, Don’t Break What’s Working " motto but the time wasted on all this by everyone working for the group worldwide must be way higher.

5) Enterprise network is slow on-site, it's even worse on a VPN. Opening up a simple Excel/PPT file takes a good five minutes.

6) We're still using Lync, it's easier to send a screenshot/file via email than using this nightmare of a software.

7) IE6 is the "default" browser for everything

8) With the COVID-19 situation, we're not allowed anymore to use conference tools while being connected on the VPN. You have to save all the files you need for the call locally, log off the VPN, join the call, and then re-upload everything on the network.

[Nextgrid]

IE6 as a default browser in 2020? How does that even work, considering I don't expect it to even be able to connect to any modern website?

[throwaway743]

Constant/Regardless Of Lockdown:

- Filling out timesheets and the stress behind the feeling of having to meet a minimum number of hours each month.

Before the lockdown:

- ~2-2.5hr daily total for commute. Includes 20min walk to and from subway, and 40-60min to and from subway ride. Add on the stress of dealing with noise, obnoxious people, putrid smells on the subway, etc and it's especially mentally/emotionally draining.

- Useless meetings that only add to the charade of an organizer trying prove their value/that they are "working". 90% of the time it's a waste of everyone's time.

- Small talk disruptions. Tend to last at a minimum 20min and throw off flow. Not always a negative, as sometimes the conversations can be fun.

- Being targeted by petty politics. FYI, I keep to myself and get my shit done. I don't like getting wrapped up in unnecessary things of the sort. Hard to quantify in terms of time waste, nonetheless it's soul sucking and results in lowering my productivity and me ruminating on ways to leave the company/become self sufficient.

- Office noise. Lowers productivity.

- Indoor air quality/"sick building". Lowers productivity/cognition/health.

- Using personal device for tethered internet access for personal laptop. Slower connection, but is clear of employer's snooping on traffic and communications. And with using my own laptop there's no dealing with sudo/admin restrictions and having to place tickets to packages everytime a package requires permissions.

- Job hunting.

Post Lockdown (much more productive, at ease, and content with work life):

- Giving attention to my overly social, going blind, much loving (though it gets overwhelming lol) street cat.

- Cooking home meals/meal prep

- Checking in on family and loved ones.

- Working on assignments/projects/research/building tools. Not a problem/time waste though. I actually enjoy the work I do and the client projects. The projects are 90% of the the time for the benefit of society. So imo, the work has meaning and it doesn't weigh in my conscience.

[canterburry]

Poorly defined and incomplete functional requirements with mare hints of the expected non functional requirement

Leads to: - Frustrated developers who thought they were done and were doing good - Frustrated QA engineers who can't certify the feature as written - Frustrated product owners who were assured the feature was "done" - Frustrated management who is told it will take longer than promised

[Ididntdothis]

“Frustrated management who is told it will take longer than promised“

I can relate. And often management behaves like bystanders instead of fixing these problems.

[youeseh]

Do you have a project manager / product owner on your team?

[nso95]

The biggest time waste for me is the distraction caused by working in a cubicle without a door.

[ludamad]

Reminds me of: https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt... I think 'do not disturb' mechanisms are vital for serious programming work. There's a huge chasm between work that you've essentially done all the parts of before, and are just combining, and brand new ground (which can be a tricky bug). We might condition people around us to believe that the stakes aren't high, which unfortunately when problems require us to load them entirely in brain cache to efficiently manipulate them, our frustration is hard to communicate

[ivansavz]

Slack semi-async back-and-forth exchanges for hours about things that could be solved in 5 mins with a sync voice call.

[dudul]

The build time for my app, if I run all the unit tests and checks is really long. In the order of 5 minutes I think. This is a real pain, so usually I try to tackle a quick TODO (like an easy code review) while the build is running, but...

... context switching is also a real pain. Slack is a killer for that because I obsessed over seeing the little dot on the icon. "What if it's really important? What if someone needs support to get unblocked now?", so I always check incoming messages. This one is probably mostly on me having some mild OCD or something.

[andriosr]

I disabled everything possible in Slack, but still feel the same. Can't go for more than 1 hour without checking it, pretty unproductive, but needed in order to help friends get things done.

[DenisM]

I follow the “ski-rental problem” rule on automation - if it takes 12 hours to automate something I will wait till I have wasted 12 hours of manual labor doing it, and the automate the beejezus out of it.

It’s not an exact rule but it removes anxiety and doubt which are a lot more damaging than the manual labor itself, freeing up the mental cycles for what really matters.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_rental_problem

[thrower123]

The biggest one is repeated meetings to go over things with people who are not capable of written communication. It's particularly egregious now, when everyone is 100% remote.

It's not that much extra work to grab a few screenshots and write a paragraph or two. Then it also becomes permanent, and not ephemeral. Bonus points if you can take the extra minute to mark up a screenshot or draw a sketch.

[andriosr]

Feel the same, it looks like people used to stop by your desk at the office can't move to async/written communication, despite it being much more helpful for the company.

I'm trying to evangelize coworkers as much as I can, sharing content on the topic, asking for things to be written, but it's something slow to change.

[MithrilTuxedo]

Next to no unit or local testing.

It's a Java monolith multiple teams work on at once and someone several steps removed from our team decided to set maven-surefire-plugin to fork for every test and not reuse forks in the POM all our projects inherit from in 2014. That causes a ~1s delay per test (even @Ignore'd ones) where they used to take less close to a millisecond, and I've tracked down the "business exception" commits in our projects that came in the months after that disabled the test phase entirely, in order to overcome the build time delay. The rest is history. Now we've got projects where 98% of the tests laying about in the repo are dysfunctional lies.

Couple that with using Spring across multiple independently built modules multiple teams commit to and you're looking at one or more hours between committing a change and finding out whether or not the latest build deployed to an environment successfully starts so you can test your change.

[tikkabhuna]

I've worked on a project that forked for each test. We were working around the abuse of static singletons. I had a very small look at a tool that could start JVMs in a pool that you use later on.

We ended up splitting our tests using annotations to only create separate JVMs for tests that needed it. You could also look at class data sharing.

Not a fun state of affairs, good luck!

[youeseh]

To limit meetings, and unnecessary, distracting conversations, one way that I've found that individual contributors (engineers, artists, writers etc.) can segment their day is by splitting it between hours where they'll work on their individual tasks, and hours where they'll assist others.

For example, in practice this would look like: If your team has a project manager, then explain the situation to them... tell them that you won't take meetings after 12pm unless it is for some kind of an major emergency. Similarly, tell your teammates that you won't go to meetings after 12pm unless they are stuck on a problem. Ask everyone to schedule time on your calendar if they want to talk to you - and it'll have to be before 12pm.

If you don't control your own time, then other people will.

[ipnon]

Fuzzy interfaces with my product team

No one can agree on the definitions for the following regarding features and bugs: in production, ready for development, ready for QA, blocked, cannot reproduce. Jira simply exacerbates this problem by giving the appearance of the opposite.

At the end of the day, progress is only made when engineers turn ideas into applications, so the buck ultimately lands with us each and every time. However, we are not experts on product development so any criticism we may have regarding the process is not only misinformed but detrimental to our team spirit ...

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

[Ididntdothis]

In work in medical devices so we have to do a lot of documentation. In order to stay “lean” we have only a few tech writers so at every project the engineers have to figure what docs to produce and then push them through various review processes. This takes a lot of time so the most senior engineers are spending way more time on the documentation process than they do thinking about technology. The tech almost feels like a side effect.

And in every project there is a ton of discussion about what regulatory process to use. Instead of figuring this out beforehand usually it holds up the whole development process for a long time. It can be really frustrating.

[DenisM]

Do you think this is wrong? I’m not jesting, I want to discuss this.

I often times find that making functionality takes me barely 30% there. Making even a short stand up status update that drives the point to the whole team is very valuable - it energizes everyone seeing that good progress is being made, it makes sales (they also do customer development) know to push new things or inquire about adjacent needs, informs support of what’s possible and worth asking about.

Then there are more detailed feature lay downs, for the same reason. Then there is the interface itself. And fumbling through often imprecise and sometimes angry customer requests. It’s all non-feature work, and it takes huge amount of time, but it seems very valuable in the end, however non-fun it seems.

So I’m wondering if I’m a regulated work like yours there is similar benefit to non-feature work?

[AgentOrange1234]

Our checkin process is abysmal. 2 hour regression that you can’t avoid. Several additional test suites that you have to run manually which, if you break them, you will hear about. Perforce version control is terrible compared to Git and makes branches difficult.

Tons of time wasted reverse engineering what the developers did, because they don’t document decisions and protocols between modules in any precise way.

Project planning is big show for management and ends up very disconnected from reality. So many status updates. Sigh.

[xiphias2]

Creating a complex, but exciting solution for a problem that doesn't exist. Sometimes I waste half year or more in a bad research direction that I shouldn't have taken.

[DenisM]

If you are struggling with distractions consider this advice from Paul Graham:

I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web.

http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html