All the more reason to spend it on things that matter to you. The opportunity cost of six months spent deep in abstract CS papers is six months not spent teaching your daughter to play guitar, visiting that place you always dreamt of seeing, finally finishing that book on your nightstand, etc.
Absolutely, it's fair to say there's a cost to dedicating huge amounts of time to anything, including work and school. I'd argue that people waste more time than they appreciate with inane things like scrolling Instagram/Tiktok, commuting. Everyone need to be somewhat aware of the microeconomy of their life, and there's some sweet spot where you're making decent money, not spending too much time working, not spending too much time getting to work, spending as much time as reasonable with your kid(s) when they're young if you have them and with your partner if you have one, engaging your own interests, and ideally taking care of yourself physically. It's all quite a lot.
When it comes to that category of your own interests, I don't really think one can afford not to spend time on them, lest you hollow yourself out. Whether any one thing is worth the time over another, like grinding papers vs travel, they're not always mutually exclusive; although trying to do both in parallel might be silly, I personally like to shift my attention periodically. I'll go and spend a few months learning, and then go adventure. I don't that much, but I'm happy to meet up with friends and do that too, and it means taking time away from video games or learning, and that's important too.
You are awake for at least 16 hours of the day, you telling me you cant find 4 hours a week to read a paper? So 4/112 hours or around 3.5% of your week...
I guarantee thats more time than most people will spend teaching their kids any musical instrument.
Just spend a week mapping out what you do ans how long it takes you every week and I'm pretty sure you can find double digit hours spent somewhere, maybe even right here on HN
> you telling me you cant find 4 hours a week to read a paper?
For me, four hours a week is sufficient to stay up-to-date on an active research area but making forward progress requires at least twice that.
> You are awake for at least 16 hours of the day, you telling me you cant find 4 hours a week to read a paper? So 4/112 hours or around 3.5% of your week...
Using awake hours as the denominator is misleading because most people have other non-discretionary time commitments besides sleep. For me I'd estimate ~60h/wk sleep, ~50h/wk work/commute, ~30h/wk non-discretionary upkeep of children/relationships/home/body. Assuming 8+h/wk to make progress out of the remaining ~28h/wk of discretionary time means I can handle about three non-discretionary priorities. (Pre-kids I could handle about five.)
Therefore, when someone with a job says "I don't have time" to pick up a hobby, skill, language, outside research area, instrument, volunteer position, etc I don't interpret their statement as meaning it is physically impossible for them to rearrange their schedule to accommodate it. I (and I suspect most people) interpret the statement as them admitting that it's not one of their ~3-5 non-discretionary priorities.
I don't disagree with you. But I have also opened screentime on some of those people with "no time" and it has 15+ hours on ticktok this week...
There are legitimately busy people and then there are people who wish they could achieve X if only they had time but don't put any effort into making time for that.
HINT: if research is directly related to your job, allocate time to it during working hours, those aren't 40-45 hours of time a company gets to take from you and also get benefits from your out of work time. I'm reasonably sure your boss would happily let you allocate an hour every now and then to improving yourself as an employee and if they don't, well... The internet has their usual answer to that even though I don't always agree.
> some of those people with "no time" and it has 15+ hours on ticktok this week...
Sometimes this is the result of black-hat products hacking their dopamine cycle, in which case screentime or a friend can help. However, I've found that in some cases staying on top of the zeitgeist like this is actually in someone's 3-5 priorities. In that case saying they have "no time" for X is another way of saying that using TikTok is a higher priority than X for them. (Baffling to me, but a valid choice.) I similarly know people who spend a non-trivial amount of time on other "useless" activities like watching TV shows, playing video games, reading novels, learning esoteric languages, growing plants with no utility, commenting on online forums, etc. Who am I to judge if they find it valuable?
So as technically imprecise as "I don't have time" is, I understand why people use the expression. When someone suggests that I should volunteer for a cause, participate in an activity, go to an event, learn a skill, watch a TV show, read a particular book, learn a language, etc and I tell them that it isn't a high enough priority to displace any of my existing priorities, they sometimes get defensive and/or attempt to litigate my current priorities.
> I'm reasonably sure your boss would happily let you allocate an hour every now and then to improving yourself as an employee
Absolutely, this is a major perk that knowledge workers should take advantage of. I'm spending quite a bit more than "an hour every now and then" to learn about LLMs and accessibility because they are in the intersection of my interests and my job responsibilities. However quantum computing (or game design, solar vehicles, gardening, etc) are not in that intersection and would count against one of my discretionary priorities.
I will always try to convince people against mindless media like ticktok, well unless it's in their life goals to be an influencer but that may also be an issue...
Other cauaes though, sure I don't mind if you don't have time to volunteer etc.
That's fine - but then it's no surprise if deep skills stay out of reach. Skills that take more than a few hours of watching a YouTube video or reading a book or two to acquire. Skills that one arguably should care about if one wants a career in that field.
The time passes anyway.