I think that the author dramatically underestimates the difficulty of learning a foreign language, which undermines his perspective statement. I would go so far as to say that it's absolutely impossible for anyone but a savant to become conversationally fluent in a foreign language with 30 hours of work which is what his timeline suggests (and the very article he links as support seems to agree with my assessment).
With that out of the way, I find that my daily productivity isn't limited by available time so much as available willpower (which we currently believe can be exhausted in the same way that muscles are exhausted [0]). I think a more effective way to improve your productivity is to ask not how much time you're wasting, but why you're wasting that time.
Article> Obviously, things like commuting are not recoverable but certainly I can scale back my random articles, Facebook and television watching.
Commuting time is not obviously unrecoverable. You could move closer to work. Doesn't work in all cases, and doesn't happen overnight, but if you're interested in tightly managing your total time on earth, and you're commuting more than 30 minutes a day, you've got to look at that wedge of time as in play.
(Someone could argue that the 30 should be 20, or even 15. Fair enough.)
Yea you are right - another idea would be to talk to your work and setup a satellite office with some co-workers closer to home...maybe working out of there part-time...you'd obviously have to make a case with the company but its doable
There are other options. My commute to one end is 40 minutes, of which 20 minutes are walking (obviously not a waste). The other 20 minutes on a train is reading articles.
[+] [-] delluminatus|12 years ago|reply
With that out of the way, I find that my daily productivity isn't limited by available time so much as available willpower (which we currently believe can be exhausted in the same way that muscles are exhausted [0]). I think a more effective way to improve your productivity is to ask not how much time you're wasting, but why you're wasting that time.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion
[+] [-] sokoloff|12 years ago|reply
Commuting time is not obviously unrecoverable. You could move closer to work. Doesn't work in all cases, and doesn't happen overnight, but if you're interested in tightly managing your total time on earth, and you're commuting more than 30 minutes a day, you've got to look at that wedge of time as in play.
(Someone could argue that the 30 should be 20, or even 15. Fair enough.)
[+] [-] imrane|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _random_|12 years ago|reply