I'm very impressed by (and jealous of) anyone who can context switch fast enough to make use of 10 or 15 minutes here and there to do a completely different task (and actually have it be coherent).
I had a friend in college who was the ultimate expression of this. If he was in a line, waiting for someone, outside a professor's office hours, etc., he was working on SOMETHING, usually getting ahead of some reading for class. I asked him later, and he gave quite a compelling account of how if you truly added it all up, it had a pretty huge effect in how long it took him to get through his work. He was incredibly bright, went onto a PhD at MIT, and was also very sociable, which I suspect was helped by this strategy of aggressively seizing on these little breaks of time.
I need a good chunk of time to settle into "productive" work, even if it is just reading. I suspect that what is needed is a little bit more discipline at first and slowly it gets easier, but I just never had the ethic to stick to it, and because of this friend I don't even have the ability to claim any doubt as to how impactful it would be.
I doubt they were doing deep work in 3 minute chunks in line at the parking ticket office. One thing I realized for me is that simply priming the pump for later had non-zero benefits. Eg, doing a Google search for something, and just reading the result snippets counts for something in those 3 minutes. Reading the Wikipedia page on something isn't full actual proper research, but reading it five times (because you keep getting interrupted in the post office), but still managing to read it, counts as progress for later. Your brain simply just needs time to stew on things, hence the solution striking during a morning shower.
I got much better at this when my kids were born, because it was the only way I could get work done on some of my (computing) side projects. I went from having hours of uninterrupted "in the zone" time during evenings and weekends to having much less time overall, and what time I did have was broken into smaller chunks.
I got much more thoughtful about how I used my time and also got better at pre-planning what I had to do so as to make the best use of it. Mostly the key was to just try to tackle smaller tasks and accept that progress would be slow.
Yes I also cannot do this. I comfort myself by believing the nature of their work allows them some sort of meditation on what they will do in those little gaps...but they may just have an enviable power that I do not have.
I'm great at this if the other task is routine. For example, if I'm cooking a dish I've made dozens of times, I can context-switch between that and difficult work. If I'm making a recipe I don't know by heart, context-switching to another task ruins my ability to think about either.
I do this. The danger is that switching out is as easy as switching in. What one needs, in addition to the ability to refocus, is some actual discipline.
I've rented pickup trucks before and I've always been so fascinated with the hanging folder rails in the center console. I have no need to work out of a truck but the fact that you could turn it into a mobile office is very cool.
It is very common. The foreman on a larger project drives a truck and uses it as an office. They need a truck for some activities so it can't be a car (often because the tools are in the back), but they are spend a significant amount of time in the truck doing paperwork. Large jobs will have mobile offices brought in for the job. Even if you are a small company (think pouring a sidewalk), you still need a place to fill out the paperwork so you can bill the customer.
There are a lot of work that a transit van can do that a mini-van cannot. There is some work a mini-van is better at. Don't make universal statements just so you can snark on someone else.
The only thing it can do better than a minivan is haul more boxes of bagged air and fit a bigger Amazon decal on the side. They're all around under-built and under powered (and high strung for the power they do make) for work vehicles (beyond light parcel delivery or passenger service) and are utterly inappropriate to be upfit into box trucks, or any other heavier work vehicle. Whether you're talking about Fiat, Mercedes or Ford they're all rife with engineering tradeoffs that are moronic unless you intend to sell into a market where government inflates the cost of fielding an older fleet and your customers will turn their fleets over rapidly (Europe) or a market where gas is expensive and labor is cheap (ME, Africa).
Want me to go over each make/model and their characteristic failures?
They're all crap that will be run circles around by a GMC Savannah in every category except fuel economy.
> I hadn’t interacted with any of the office staff, but they’d seen me.
This story would have taken a very different turn if early on he had realized that befriending the office staff would have scored him a permanent place in one of those empty unused cubicles. No need to be best friends, but just being friendly and forthcoming now and then would have avoided their attitude of "who's that weirdo let's involve the site manager to get rid of him". It fits with his lonely wolf persona though which makes it easier for him to be a hero in his story and which he seems to cultivate in purpose.
Being the weirdo frees you from a great many time consuming pleasantries. Making friends might secure a permanent place but it also means a few minutes from every break will be lost to small talk and sometimes the entire break; you see a self serving lone wolf casting himself as the hero, I see someone just trying to find a way to do what is important to him. I am fairly certain that much of the eccentric artist image is just frustration over small talk.
Indeed - and break times don't seem to be very long. "fifteen minutes for coffee and then half an hour for lunch" - no time to waste on pleasantries when that is all the break you get!
This guy is amazing - the dedication to his craft is inspiring!
Super inspiring. A lot to read between the lines. Probably fairly introverted - prefers to be by himself than joking with coworkers. But not so much so that he can’t. He’s just really driven to be creative. And found a way, even though life took him down a very different path. “Let your wallet be your guide” is a good reminder that realistically there’s probably no chance he could make a living as a writer - very few can. But he made it happen anyway. Bravo!
It makes me sad that pleasantries are viewed by some as a time-consuming chore. You can recognize that person who really cares about how you are doing or what you did on the weekend, and it makes you warm inside. You don't need to shoot the shit for 30 minutes, but human interaction is what builds community, and most of us like that; all of us need it.
Indeed, that is precisely the case for some folks - with social anxiety. Or autism. Or a number of other mental states.
Maybe they're tired to their bones and barely have energy to even have one meal a day? Maybe they lost a loved one and never quite recovered since then?
It costs nothing to be polite and assume best intentions from the other side.
In this particular case, there's someone whose most precious moments are their breaks during the day, and rather than saying "good on them for finding a way to do the thing they are most passionate about" the response is "gee they should have used that extremely limited free time to.... have the most shallow of conversations"?
Pleasantries are fine, but that was never going to be a long term solution for him. He needed a space that was always available to him, where he is always welcome. For better or worse, that's not the site office. (Even if it worked on that job, you don't stay in one place as a contractor)
Former “scummy contractor” here. So, a “contractor” being in the office is considered a mortal sin.
I don’t know why this is, but it’s always been this way. Workers don’t go into the building.
The office staff don’t want you there and if you stay too long, your fellow workers will rib you for hours about going to “the dark side”.
In my few years at the job, I had only been in the office area for 5 minutes to fill out some sort of paperwork. Most of that from when I was hired.
Seeing as he was in there on multiple occasions, he probably did establish rapport with the office staff, but left that out because it messed with the flow of the story.
I worked at a warehouse tech startup that had offices attached to our warehouse. The conference rooms looked out over the warehouse floor through big glass walls.
The warehouse workers were explicitly banned from entering the office space. I assume because the company didn’t want them enjoying the free snacks and catered lunches.
I had a friend who worked at a plant and was an author on the side. I don’t think there’s any evidence that good novelists (let alone merely promising ones) are likely to have personalities that make them likely to be bosses.
It depends on the environment - many years ago I used to have temp job in the summer working on a large industrial plant that had a nice office building where the managers and admin staff were based. There were no signs saying "temp staff keep out" - and you did occasionally have to go in there but it was pretty clear to me that you couldn't go and hang out in there - particularly as the temps got all the muckiest, smelliest jobs in all weathers.
> "(...) I’ve written stories and parts of my novels during breaks—fifteen minutes for coffee and then half an hour for lunch. (...) Most artists I know are like this. Finding time to make art while working another job, or taking care of loved ones."
Has anyone had success finding a way do this, but for drawing? I've been trying to make time for a small comic project and, while I do have plenty of fifteen-minutes breaks I could use, those breaks are usually in places where drawing is impractical (such as buses).
All I can suggest is to make it as easy and cheap as you can manage. Carry a sketchbook and just get in the habit of making quick drawings. If you're into painting, watercolor is pretty portable; oil is less so, but try a search for "pochade box" to get a few ideas.
What are the aspects of working on a bus that make it impractical? When I find myself in your position usually I end up realizing I'm self-conscious about people seeing what I'm doing more than I'm concerned about any practical downside or benefit.
In my case it's mostly the shaking - trains are mostly fine, but buses are just too unstable. They also tend to be more crowded, meaning I need to tuck my elbows in and adopt an even-less-stable position which compounds the problem.
I'm having the same question about sewing. I feel like the lead time to first stitch is quite high, but I think I could make quite significant progress on my projects if I could use the all small 15-minute breaks to make some progress.
The question is how far can you break things down. Also what your job is (if you need to wash your hands before starting that matters)
If you are sewing a ballroom dress (that is any very large project) you probably need longer stretches to get it together. However you could take an individual piece and put in a few embroidery stitches.
Still it does feel like you get 2 minutes of work for your 15 minute break
I know a good few who live versions of this particular life, feral creatives living inside the guts of our industrial complexes, working high steel, marine,etc.
The drive for this goes way back, all the way to human origins, perhaps further to progenetor species, something to do with describing our world and rearanging the bits and pieces into a pleasant form, even in the harshest environments, something right, placed, just so
the other impulse to then smash everything and have palaces and vast halls on the ruins is less explicable, inspite of the huge efforts at rationalisation, but also self evident
I'm very impressed by (and jealous of) anyone who can context switch fast enough to make use of 10 or 15 minutes here and there to do a completely different task (and actually have it be coherent).
I had a friend in college who was the ultimate expression of this. If he was in a line, waiting for someone, outside a professor's office hours, etc., he was working on SOMETHING, usually getting ahead of some reading for class. I asked him later, and he gave quite a compelling account of how if you truly added it all up, it had a pretty huge effect in how long it took him to get through his work. He was incredibly bright, went onto a PhD at MIT, and was also very sociable, which I suspect was helped by this strategy of aggressively seizing on these little breaks of time.
I need a good chunk of time to settle into "productive" work, even if it is just reading. I suspect that what is needed is a little bit more discipline at first and slowly it gets easier, but I just never had the ethic to stick to it, and because of this friend I don't even have the ability to claim any doubt as to how impactful it would be.
I doubt they were doing deep work in 3 minute chunks in line at the parking ticket office. One thing I realized for me is that simply priming the pump for later had non-zero benefits. Eg, doing a Google search for something, and just reading the result snippets counts for something in those 3 minutes. Reading the Wikipedia page on something isn't full actual proper research, but reading it five times (because you keep getting interrupted in the post office), but still managing to read it, counts as progress for later. Your brain simply just needs time to stew on things, hence the solution striking during a morning shower.
Genetics also plays a significant role here. For example, one of the major symptoms of ADHD is inability to quickly shift into productive mindset.
I got much better at this when my kids were born, because it was the only way I could get work done on some of my (computing) side projects. I went from having hours of uninterrupted "in the zone" time during evenings and weekends to having much less time overall, and what time I did have was broken into smaller chunks.
I got much more thoughtful about how I used my time and also got better at pre-planning what I had to do so as to make the best use of it. Mostly the key was to just try to tackle smaller tasks and accept that progress would be slow.
Yes I also cannot do this. I comfort myself by believing the nature of their work allows them some sort of meditation on what they will do in those little gaps...but they may just have an enviable power that I do not have.
I'm great at this if the other task is routine. For example, if I'm cooking a dish I've made dozens of times, I can context-switch between that and difficult work. If I'm making a recipe I don't know by heart, context-switching to another task ruins my ability to think about either.
I do this. The danger is that switching out is as easy as switching in. What one needs, in addition to the ability to refocus, is some actual discipline.
Working on the road has become so prevalent for many field folks that Ford's F-150 has a "Center Console Work Surface" (at least as an option):
* https://www.ford.ca/support/how-tos/more-vehicle-topics/f-se...
* https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-the-for...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GyZgeM7JM0
Reminds me of the ad I saw for the Ford transit van - whose steering wheel can be converted into a 'desk'/laptop table:
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a45497067/ford-transit-ste...
For better or worse, "steering wheel lap desk" is what you've looking for, no Ford Transit van required.
I've rented pickup trucks before and I've always been so fascinated with the hanging folder rails in the center console. I have no need to work out of a truck but the fact that you could turn it into a mobile office is very cool.
It is very common. The foreman on a larger project drives a truck and uses it as an office. They need a truck for some activities so it can't be a car (often because the tools are in the back), but they are spend a significant amount of time in the truck doing paperwork. Large jobs will have mobile offices brought in for the job. Even if you are a small company (think pouring a sidewalk), you still need a place to fill out the paperwork so you can bill the customer.
It looks like a great steering wheel that won’t fly out the window while driving.
That continent will do anything to avoid producing a work van that can outwork a mini-van.
There are a lot of work that a transit van can do that a mini-van cannot. There is some work a mini-van is better at. Don't make universal statements just so you can snark on someone else.
The only thing it can do better than a minivan is haul more boxes of bagged air and fit a bigger Amazon decal on the side. They're all around under-built and under powered (and high strung for the power they do make) for work vehicles (beyond light parcel delivery or passenger service) and are utterly inappropriate to be upfit into box trucks, or any other heavier work vehicle. Whether you're talking about Fiat, Mercedes or Ford they're all rife with engineering tradeoffs that are moronic unless you intend to sell into a market where government inflates the cost of fielding an older fleet and your customers will turn their fleets over rapidly (Europe) or a market where gas is expensive and labor is cheap (ME, Africa).
Want me to go over each make/model and their characteristic failures?
They're all crap that will be run circles around by a GMC Savannah in every category except fuel economy.
A GMC Savannah is not a mini-van.
We've got a lot of space.
Roald Dahl approved.
https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/literarytourist/?p=351
Seems much better than a lap desk, as it probably gets air flow.
Lovely essay, tone reminds me this book which has a similar vibe.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/truck-on-rebuilding-a-worn-out...
I think there may be an issue with your link, it's just taking me to the thrift books home page.
I also really enjoyed the writing style.
I suspect it is this book.
https://www.booktopia.com.au/truck-john-jerome/book/97808745...
> I hadn’t interacted with any of the office staff, but they’d seen me.
This story would have taken a very different turn if early on he had realized that befriending the office staff would have scored him a permanent place in one of those empty unused cubicles. No need to be best friends, but just being friendly and forthcoming now and then would have avoided their attitude of "who's that weirdo let's involve the site manager to get rid of him". It fits with his lonely wolf persona though which makes it easier for him to be a hero in his story and which he seems to cultivate in purpose.
Being the weirdo frees you from a great many time consuming pleasantries. Making friends might secure a permanent place but it also means a few minutes from every break will be lost to small talk and sometimes the entire break; you see a self serving lone wolf casting himself as the hero, I see someone just trying to find a way to do what is important to him. I am fairly certain that much of the eccentric artist image is just frustration over small talk.
Indeed - and break times don't seem to be very long. "fifteen minutes for coffee and then half an hour for lunch" - no time to waste on pleasantries when that is all the break you get!
This guy is amazing - the dedication to his craft is inspiring!
Super inspiring. A lot to read between the lines. Probably fairly introverted - prefers to be by himself than joking with coworkers. But not so much so that he can’t. He’s just really driven to be creative. And found a way, even though life took him down a very different path. “Let your wallet be your guide” is a good reminder that realistically there’s probably no chance he could make a living as a writer - very few can. But he made it happen anyway. Bravo!
People doing exclusively what's important to them is fine until they need a network/community.
Isn't the point of this essay that he doesn't? I'm so confused by these responses
It's a great piece of writing. We don't have enough contractors with truck desks writing or programming or making art.
>> a great many time consuming pleasantries.
It makes me sad that pleasantries are viewed by some as a time-consuming chore. You can recognize that person who really cares about how you are doing or what you did on the weekend, and it makes you warm inside. You don't need to shoot the shit for 30 minutes, but human interaction is what builds community, and most of us like that; all of us need it.
a great many time consuming pleasantries
Oh the horror!
> a great many time consuming pleasantries
> Oh the horror!
Indeed, that is precisely the case for some folks - with social anxiety. Or autism. Or a number of other mental states.
Maybe they're tired to their bones and barely have energy to even have one meal a day? Maybe they lost a loved one and never quite recovered since then?
It costs nothing to be polite and assume best intentions from the other side.
In this particular case, there's someone whose most precious moments are their breaks during the day, and rather than saying "good on them for finding a way to do the thing they are most passionate about" the response is "gee they should have used that extremely limited free time to.... have the most shallow of conversations"?
Pleasantries are fine, but that was never going to be a long term solution for him. He needed a space that was always available to him, where he is always welcome. For better or worse, that's not the site office. (Even if it worked on that job, you don't stay in one place as a contractor)
https://xkcd.com/1332/
Former “scummy contractor” here. So, a “contractor” being in the office is considered a mortal sin.
I don’t know why this is, but it’s always been this way. Workers don’t go into the building.
The office staff don’t want you there and if you stay too long, your fellow workers will rib you for hours about going to “the dark side”.
In my few years at the job, I had only been in the office area for 5 minutes to fill out some sort of paperwork. Most of that from when I was hired.
Seeing as he was in there on multiple occasions, he probably did establish rapport with the office staff, but left that out because it messed with the flow of the story.
I worked at a warehouse tech startup that had offices attached to our warehouse. The conference rooms looked out over the warehouse floor through big glass walls.
The warehouse workers were explicitly banned from entering the office space. I assume because the company didn’t want them enjoying the free snacks and catered lunches.
Someone who can write for the Paris Review and play politics would end up the site managers boss before he could stop it.
I had a friend who worked at a plant and was an author on the side. I don’t think there’s any evidence that good novelists (let alone merely promising ones) are likely to have personalities that make them likely to be bosses.
" if early on he had realized that befriending the office staff would have scored him a permanent place"
I feel like you don't have any first hand experience with the kind of classist horseshit that is endemic to these kinds of work environments.
I do, thus my comment.
The key is to use this to your advantage.
It depends on the environment - many years ago I used to have temp job in the summer working on a large industrial plant that had a nice office building where the managers and admin staff were based. There were no signs saying "temp staff keep out" - and you did occasionally have to go in there but it was pretty clear to me that you couldn't go and hang out in there - particularly as the temps got all the muckiest, smelliest jobs in all weathers.
In my experience, it isn't necessarily classist horseshit that divides office and shop (or field) workers.
> They’d followed my oily bootprints down the hallway and begun to leer. Who is this diesel-stinking contractor?
That's probably the real reason. Being a welder is messy, stinky work and office workers don't want that in their space.
From the title I had imagined that someone had turned the cab of a truck into a dedicated computer workspace. Hmm...
yeah, I feel like the missing desk could be resolved with a trip to Home Depot and a jig saw.
Lovely. I kind of wanted to hear this guy reading this out aloud
> "(...) I’ve written stories and parts of my novels during breaks—fifteen minutes for coffee and then half an hour for lunch. (...) Most artists I know are like this. Finding time to make art while working another job, or taking care of loved ones."
Has anyone had success finding a way do this, but for drawing? I've been trying to make time for a small comic project and, while I do have plenty of fifteen-minutes breaks I could use, those breaks are usually in places where drawing is impractical (such as buses).
All I can suggest is to make it as easy and cheap as you can manage. Carry a sketchbook and just get in the habit of making quick drawings. If you're into painting, watercolor is pretty portable; oil is less so, but try a search for "pochade box" to get a few ideas.
What are the aspects of working on a bus that make it impractical? When I find myself in your position usually I end up realizing I'm self-conscious about people seeing what I'm doing more than I'm concerned about any practical downside or benefit.
In my case it's mostly the shaking - trains are mostly fine, but buses are just too unstable. They also tend to be more crowded, meaning I need to tuck my elbows in and adopt an even-less-stable position which compounds the problem.
I'm having the same question about sewing. I feel like the lead time to first stitch is quite high, but I think I could make quite significant progress on my projects if I could use the all small 15-minute breaks to make some progress.
The question is how far can you break things down. Also what your job is (if you need to wash your hands before starting that matters)
If you are sewing a ballroom dress (that is any very large project) you probably need longer stretches to get it together. However you could take an individual piece and put in a few embroidery stitches.
Still it does feel like you get 2 minutes of work for your 15 minute break
I use this:
https://imgur.com/a/X8tBXUg
https://www.amazon.com/JUSTTOP-Steering-Multifunctional-Port...
Phase 2: replace makeup mirror with 27" lcd
Victor Papanek approves.
Awesome story. Sometimes over enough time a little is enough.
I know a good few who live versions of this particular life, feral creatives living inside the guts of our industrial complexes, working high steel, marine,etc. The drive for this goes way back, all the way to human origins, perhaps further to progenetor species, something to do with describing our world and rearanging the bits and pieces into a pleasant form, even in the harshest environments, something right, placed, just so the other impulse to then smash everything and have palaces and vast halls on the ruins is less explicable, inspite of the huge efforts at rationalisation, but also self evident