I learned that some of the most prominent early modern architects, such as Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, had no formal architectural training. Gropius, one of the founders of the Bauhaus, had only studied for two years (when a typical architecture degree would take four or five). One of the reasons why they did not design traditional buildings is because they could not.

Many people do not like modern architecture. The author states that modern architecture prevailed because it was cheaper to build in the postwar period. This may be true, but it does not explain why the trend continued well into the 1990s, when mass-produced ornaments and mouldings were cheap and the urgent need for inexpensive housing that characterized the baby-boom era had subsided. This is a shortcoming of the book, which is very focused on analyzing the misuse of philosophy by architects, but brushes over the factors that sustained modernism.

Mitrović’s point is that architects and academics used impenetrable jargon drawn from philosophical movements to the defend the modernist project from the 1970 onward. They did so to deflect attention form modernism’s aesthetic failures.

Modern architectural theory was dominant in most universities. Architecture students where not educated in the classical tradition, and knowledge of it was lost. Even today it is difficult for an architecture student to learn the classical tradition at most universities.

The author asks what the purpose of an architect is. An architect should design buildings that fulfill a set of requirements and do so in an aesthetically pleasing way. It seems that other professionals such as developers, engineers and builders, have taken over traditional architectural roles and do a better job of it. In some cases the architect is completely absent. I understand that this observation may hold in countries like Norway or the USA, where there is no legal requirement for an architect to be involved in the design and construction of many types of buildings. It is less applicable in countries like Spain, where an architect is required by law, even if only to sign the design documents and assume formal responsibility for the project.

The book does a good job of showing how architectural academia is completely disconnected from the everyday aesthetic concerns of building users, but it falls short in explaining how and why modern architecture, with buildings that most people consider ugly and often dysfunctional, dominated new construction from the Second World War to the 1990s and remains prevalent today, particularly in public buildings.

An example is the idea that children bring happiness. Most people predict that they will be happier when they have kids, but research shows that couples’ happiness decreases when they have children, and only increases back to previous levels when children move out of their parents home. This seems to be mostly true, and a well replicated finding, but like most examples in the book, it is not difficult to find exceptions.

[Just an aside. Parents have unrealistic expectations about their own performance as parents and about their offspring. Simply lowering expectations makes the experience of having children a lot more enjoyable. This is one argument of Bryan Caplan in his book “Selfish reasons to have more kids: why being a great parent is less work and more fun than you think”. He is right.]

The author advises not to try to predict how we will feel in the future, but rather to ask other people who are experiencing what we are considering as an alternative for our future. For example, ask an accountant if he is happy in his job, before deciding to pursue accountancy as a profession. I understand the idea, but Gilbert fails to take into consideration people’s variability. Some people enjoy working in occupations that others would hate, and vice versa. The author should have acknowledged this, and should have described better under which conditions asking another person is a good idea, and which factors make it more likely that the other person is experiencing the same feelings that you would experience if you were in his place. On the other hand, people overestimate how different they are from others. For many things, asking others seems a good strategy.

One of the reasons why we are wrong when we try to predict how we are going to feel is that when we imagine our future selves, we do so very schematically, just a few vignettes, and we tend to focus on very concrete aspects that we are considering in the moment. A solution for that, rather than asking someone else how they feel, is to do what psychologists call unpacking. Like in the Coffee Beans Procedure. Unpacking means explicitly fleshing out the details that cannot be included in our imagination all at once. This allows for a broader and more realistic perspective. I’ve seen the term “unpacking” in a recent weblog post, which in turn references a paper from 2010. Maybe the concept was not so well known in 2006, when the book was written.

I liked the book. It is entertaining and explains some interesting research, such as the many ways in which our memories deceive us. The book also shows that the idea of asking someone else in order to predict how we would feel has empirical support.

Spot prices for the 25th of September in southern Norway.

The electricity market is liberalized in Norway, which means that consumers are free to choose their electricity provider. Electricity providers offer different types of contracts. A common one is the spot price plus some markup. Some providers offer fixed prices over longer periods, sometimes varying based on the time of day.

Due to very high prices a couple of years ago, the government implemented a subsidy scheme that caps the electricity price at NOK 0.90 for the first 5,000 KWh. This subsidy is not compatible with Norgespris. Consumers have to choose, between Norgespris and the subsidy. If they choose Norgespris, it is binding until December 31st, 2026.

Norway is divided into five electricity price regions. There is insufficient transport capacity between regions to establish a single market for the whole country. The five regions are South, East, West, Central and North. Region North usually has prices well below NOK 0.50 per KWh. The hourly price in South and East has been in the NOK 0.70 to 0.90 range and even higher on most days. Prices in the West region are quite high as well. In Central Norway, the price hovers around NOK 0.50, and it is difficult for consumers to assess whether Norgespris is a good deal. If they choose Norgespris and it turns out that electricity prices are low, they cannot reverse the decision before January 1st, 2027. I live in the East region, and I expect to save about NOK 5,000 per year with Norgespris.

Households in Norway use fewer than 2,000 KWh per month on average, with marked seasonal variations. Winter consumption is two to three times larger than summer consumption. This is because many houses use electric heating with panels. In our single-family house, for example, we only exceeded 5,000 KWh in 2024 during January.

Consumers pay two invoices for their electricity. One goes to their electricity provider, from whom they can choose freely among available option (with a fixed price of NOK 0.50 per KWh if they choose Norgespris), and another one goes to the distribution company. Distribution companies are regional monopolies that own and manage the electrical grid. The second invoice has several components: a fixed charge, an energy charge that depends on total consumption, a maximum power demand charge, system costs, and several taxes. The maximum power demand charge is designed to encourage consumers to spread electricity usage throughout the day.

Consequences of Norgespris

As I write this, Norgespris has not been implemented yet, but there are some predictable effects.

Norgespris eliminates the incentive to use electricity when it is cheaper. I know that I am not going to bother waiting until the evening to charge my car. The only limitation is not to use all the power at the same time, to avoid the power demand surcharge in the distribution invoice, but as long as consumption is spread throughout the day, it does not matter whether the hourly price is low or high. If everyone does the same, which is very likely, the grid will be more congested than it is now, and the risk of blackouts will be higher.

Intraday price variations are going to be even more extreme. The price is higher when demand is higher. This encourages people to use electricity at other times. With Norgespris, it does not matter, so people are going to concentrate their consumption even more. Since prices are determined by hourly demand, the demand for some hours is going to be even greater, making prices even higher. There is some possibility that the lowest price will be even lower, and some industrial consumers will benefit from them, but I do not think the effect will be significant.

Over 90% of electricity produced in Norway is from hydropower. More variable electricity demand will make water flow in Norwegian rivers more variable, as power plants change their power settings to meet demand. This has a negative effect on fluvial ecosystems.

Norgespris makes investments in energy saving less attractive. One example is heat pumps. Heat pumps are more efficient than electric heating with panels, but require an initial upfront investment. The payoff time with Norgespris is longer and may discourage people from upgrading.

Norgespris is a regressive subsidy. The wealthy use more electricity than people with low incomes. People who really struggle to pay their bills will receive a small subsidy, while rich people who can afford to pay more will get a bigger subsidy. A family that keeps its average monthly use under 1,000 KWh is positioned to save NOK 3,000 to 4,000 per year. A family that routinely uses 5,000 KWh per month—not inconceivable with a large house and two electric cars—may save up to NOK 24,000 or more (approximately USD 2,400 ).

Norgespris will create government expenditures. Some estimates suggest it may cost up to NOK 7 billion, or roughly USD 700 million. The total government budget for 2025 is NOK 2,971 billion. With a similar budget for 2026, Norgespris will amount to 0.2% of government expenditures. It may not seem like too much, but there is an opportunity cost. I can think of better uses for USD 700 million than giving it to the wealthy.

The electricity debate in Norway

Electricity has become a political matter in Norway, and prices dominate the debate. There is very little discussion about Norway’s role in a European context or a vision for the future that takes climate change into account. How to secure low electricity prices in the short term seems to be the only thing that matters. This has led to opposition to building more undersea cables to connect Norway with the rest of Europe, and initiatives like Norgespris.

The current government is pushing ahead with massive subsidies for offshore wind—the first round of licensing taking place assumes subsidies in the NOK 1.5 billion range—despite of every study that has been done indicating that offshore wind in Norway will need subsidies to be profitable for the foreseeable future. Offshore wind in Norway is more technically challenging that in more suitable places, like Denmark. It looks to me like another vote-buying scheme that props up a local industry, rather than a real plan for the future.

What makes sense for Norway is to increase the transport capacity with the rest of the continent and build additional pumped storage. Most electricity in Norway is produced in regulated reservoir systems. It is easy to retrofit hydroelectric plants connected to those reservoirs with pumps or reversible turbines. Currently, only a few exist, and the potential for expansion is huge. Norway could be the battery of Europe and make renewables in the rest of the continent more attractive, thus reducing the carbon footprint of electricity production.

Some people also forget that relying on hydropower means that a dry year could reduce production capacity and send prices even higher. In addition to natural year-to-year variation, Norway is experiencing climate change as well. Drought years are coming sooner or later. Good connection capacity with the continent could reduce the impact.

The internal transport grid in Norway is insufficient to move excess capacity in the north to the south, where demand is much higher. Removing bottlenecks would make investment in new capacity the north more profitable. The current situation is unfortunate, with existing producers in the north struggling because of low electricity prices due to overcapacity, while southern prices are as high as they have ever been. There are vast areas open for wind power development in the north that are not profitable at current prices. Politicians seem more interested in keeping northern residents happy with low electricity prices than in promoting new development in the north. This is penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Norway already attracts energy-intensive industries, such as data centers, but it could be even more attractive if better connectivity and more production capacity made prices lower overall, and not only in the north.

In conclusion, I think that politicians are trying to treat the symptoms—high prices—instead of the causes of the electricity problem in Norway. As they do so, first with price support, and now with Norgespris, they are tying themselves in knots. They are normalizing market interference instead of creating the conditions for the market to provide more capacity and lower prices. Their solutions are not sustainable in the long term.

House prices are determined by supply and demand. People want to move cities because cities offer better job prospects with higher wages. When the housing supply is fixed—for example in a big city where zoning laws do not allow to increased density—and demand is rising, the equilibrium price that clears the market will rise.

It is not inevitable for housing prices to rise, even in big cities. If a country is experiencing a fertility crisis, there may be few people left who can move to the city and those who already live in the city may not have enough children to replace the elderly.

Cities with high demand may also increase the housing supply, either by allowing densification or by expanding. In that case, prices may remain stable and affordable. For housing to be affordable, the cost relative to income must not rise over time. It must be such that the fraction of income allocated to housing is relatively low.

For housing to be a good investment, it must at least deliver returns similar to or higher than average returns on capital. In the West, with current trends, a naive analysis may conclude that since returns on capital are higher than salary increases, housing cannot be both affordable and a good investment. However, this is not the whole story. Since housing prices are determined by supply and demand, in situations where there is little new housing stock entering the market, salary increases will cause prices to rise to a new equilibrium. The new price may leave housing almost as unaffordable as before or even worse in some cases (in terms of fraction of income allocated to housing). So even if salary growth outpaced returns on capital, that would not make housing more affordable, but it would make housing an even better investment.

There is possibly a fine line, where both housing supply and salaries increase in such a way that housing offers attractive returns but remains affordable. This would be a situation with high productivity growth, where real wages increase at least as much as returns on capital, while housing supply expands sufficiently to keep the equilibrium price stable relative to wages. While possible, I think this situation is unlikely. Currently, wage growth in the West is lower than returns on capital and many cities face many restrictions on building new housing.

Considering longer time-frames, it is possible for housing to be affordable today, and a good investment in the long term. Those who buy now will benefit from appreciation, but this generally means that housing will be unaffordable in the future.

Another aspect that I have not considered is intergenerational wealth transfers. If several generations already own their homes in a given place, their descendants will benefit from price increases and accumulated wealth. The benefits may include help with down payments or financial support for mortgage payments. Descendants will be able to enter the housing market earlier, thus benefiting from lower prices as housing appreciates further over time, and will be able to accumulate more wealth than someone without family support, who has to save for a down payment while also paying rent.

For recent immigrants, the picture is different. They may be attracted to higher wages in the city, but they may not earn much initially. They may need to save and wait until later in their careers, when they can expect higher salaries, to be able to buy a home. In the worst case, if prices increase faster than their salaries, they may never be able to afford to buy at all.

My conclusion is that in general, housing cannot be affordable and a good investment at the same time. In growing cities with strong demand and restricted supply, prices will be unaffordable. Only exceptionally, with the right mix of wage growth and increasing supply, can housing be both affordable and provide good returns.

The project manager on the owner's side was 4 or 5 years older than me, but he had no experience in hydro-power development either. He worked for a subsidiary of a big electricity firm. The firm had decided to centralize all renewable projects under the subsidiary, and that included small hydro-power as well.

The starting point for the project was the licensing documents. These were a set of plans that showed the proposed location and general shape of the hydro-power plant. The plans were not detailed enough to build from, and steel reinforcement was not part of the early stage design. Usually one would produce a detailed design before engaging a contractor, or enter into a design-build contract. But in this case, due to inexperience, the developer contracted simultaneously with the turbine manufacturer, which also supplied the alternator and auxiliary systems, for the detailed design and site supervision and with the civil works contractor.

The start date was immediate and the contract required us to produce construction drawings 15 days in advance for when they would be required on site. That particular plant housed two vertical axis Francis turbines. To make maintenance easier and allow the turbine to be removed without having to dismount the alternator, the alternator was placed on an upper floor and was connected to the turbine with an extra-long shaft. This created an intermediate floor between the alternator and the turbine from which the turbine could be accessed.

Sketch of the plant.

During a design meeting, the structural engineer in charge of designing the floor and columns that would support the alternator, wanted to know what the allowable deformation was. A concrete floor experiences an instantaneous deformation when you put a load on it, but also a gradual deformation over time. This could affect the turbine clearance, so he asked the turbine manufacturer for the tolerances.

The manufacturer insisted that the tolerance was zero, and refused to give any other number. In the meeting there was also a senior engineer who had worked on the licensing documents, but he insisted that it was our job as consultants to know such things, and refused to give any number either. We sat there and the situation was becoming extremely uncomfortable, when a random manager from the electricity company entered the room. He had not been summoned to the meeting and he had nothing to do with the project. He just introduced himself and asked what we were working on. After a couple of minutes of small talk, the tolerances question came up. He informed us, without any hesitation, that four microns per ton of alternator weight would be fine. The conversation continued on other topics, and after a couple more minutes, he excused himself and went his way.

Given that the alternators weighed 80 tons, the four-microns rule implied an allowable deformation of 0.32mm. The structural engineer said it was fine; he could design the structure not to exceed it, and that was it. Twenty years later, I have not heard that there has been any problem with deformations at that plant.

To this day, I have so many questions. Why did that manager decide to attend a meeting he was not invited to? What kind of organization has managers attending random meetings to make small talk? I am thankful that the manager entered the room and settled our problem. But his answer still baffles me to this day. Turbine clearance is a hydraulic problem that should have nothing to do with alternator weight. Sources suggest that values between 0.5 and 1mm may be a good compromise between maintaining high turbine efficiency and allowing for inevitable deformations. The only justification that I can think of is that this is an empirical rule that reflects what is practically achievable, rather than what is theoretically required.

The numbers game is a book about the use of statistics in analyzing football (soccer). The book sits in an uncomfortable middle ground between Moneyball and a technical manual. There is no story thread as in Moneyball, but it is not detailed enough to be used as a manual for performing your own analysis. The book examines different aspects of the game in each chapter. Chapters loosely build on ideas presented in previous sections. I would say that this book has helped me understand football better, but what I found most interesting are the lessons that can be directly applied to performance analysis of any organization. I will divide this review into two sections: what I learned about football and lessons for managers.

Understanding football

There are many persistent myths in football and a tendency to do things the way things have always been done.

There has been an explosion in football analytics since the 1990s. There is detailed data available on all top league matches. Data includes everything from final scores, ball possession, the number of passes each team made, the number of successive passes before losing possession, distance covered by each player, and so on.

Data analysis can be tricky. You can confound cause with effect. Does attempting many goal shots make a team good, or is it that good teams create more opportunities to attempt goal shots?

Football is more random than other team sports. The favorite team only wins slightly over 50% of the time. In basketball, for example, the percentage is over 65%.

Goals scored and goals avoided are nearly as important to match results. It is easy to assess the value of strikers because their output (goals scored) is easy to measure. Goals avoided by a good defender, on the other hand, have to be inferred from statistical data, and are not as obvious. This means that defenders on average may be undervalued. It may be more cost-effective for a team that wants to increase its performance to hire better defenders. However, it is not easy to identify the best defenders. The best defenders are not the ones that tackle more, but the ones that through anticipation and good placement on the field do not need to tackle. Counterintuitively, the defenders that seem to do less may be the ones that are most effective.

The tiki-taka style is common in modern football. Despite this, the number of successfully completed passes tends to be very low. A team most often loses the ball after the first pass. The probability of succcessfully completing a string of passes goes down with each additional pass.

There is no best tactic overall. A specific tactic works best against a specific opponent. The authors conclude that, in order to be successful, teams have to either be very effective or be innovative.

The chance of scoring after a corner is not higher than scoring in normal play. Corners have no special value and it may be more effective to take a short corner than to try a long pass.

Player budget explains 81-89% of a team's performance in a 10-year league average. There is a strong correlation between better players (read more expensive) and results, but it is the worst player on a team that holds the whole team down, rather than the best player lifting the team up. A football team is only as good as its weakest link. A team composed of consistently good players, with little difference in skill between the best and the worst, will perform better than a team composed of a few super-stars and some mediocre players. Related to this, data shows that decentralized playing networks yield better results than passing to the same players all the time. In other words, it is better to have many passing options than to target the same striker repeatedly.

A professional player runs on average 12km every match, but only has the ball for fewer than five minutes.

Lessons for managers

A football team is just a particular kind of organization. If football teams can benefit from analyzing game data, so can other kinds of organizations. The insight that what you cannot see is important (goals avoided) is relevant for companies and other organizations as well. For example, a police force that prevents crime may be more effective than one that makes many arrests. But arrests are easy to measure, while crimes not committed are not.

Managers may make decisions based on gut instinct or do things a certain way because that is how they always have been done, just as football teams sometimes do, but collecting and analyzing data may provide a better path to improveing performance.

The final chapters of the book handle about teamwork and management, which can be applied directly.

Teamwork

The authors discuss a paper by Hamilton, Nickerson, and Owan on the introduction of teamwork at a garment factory operated by the Koret Company. The company changed worker compensation between 1995-1997. Before the change, each worker sewed a part of a garment and was paid per piece. After the change, workers formed teams and teams were paid per completed garment. What the authors found is that teams were 14% more productive than the sum of each member working individually. They speculate that more skilled workers helped improve the ability of less skilled ones.

Something similar has been observed in football teams. A superstar player can improve the rest of the team by setting an example. Excellent players with high standards and a strong work ethic serve as an inspiration for younger or less talented players on the team and do improve team performance. The effect disappears when superstars behave like prima donnas that demand special treatment and privileges.

The same may be true in companies. If a very productive employee is a jerk, rarely does his extra output compensate for the damage he does to the team. On the other hand, exceptional employees who are willing to share their knowledge and mentor others help create strong teams.

Another cool piece of research discussed in the book is the Köhler effect. Köhler asked subjects to pull a rope with a weight for as long as they could. He repeated the experiment, doubling the weight and asking pairs of subjects to hold it for as long as they could. What he observed was that when people worked in pairs, they held on longer than when they did the experiment alone. Not letting others down is a powerful motivation to perform better. If your contribution to the team is visible, and player contribution very much is, you will strive to do your absolute best not to disappoint your colleagues.

Do managers matter?

To assess whether managers matter at all, the authors turned to a Danish study on the impact of CEOs on performance. Bennedsen, Pérez-González, and Wolfenzon used data on over 1,000 companies. They found that CEO death reduces company profits by 28% and death in the CEO's family, which presumably keeps the CEO distracted, reduces profits by 16%.

Where to find good managers

Managers who have been good players themselves are statistically better. The difference is larger when leading lower-paid and less talented players. Managers help their players perform better and aid in their development.

In the corporate world, there is sometimes a belief that management is independent of the industry, that management performance is portable. Data from football managers do not seem to support this belief. The solution for companies is to promote from within or at least have a plan to see how outsiders fit in.

Reversion to the mean

Given the random nature of football results, it is expected that good teams will have losing streaks just by chance. Over time, the losing streak will give way to a more typical series of results. This is a statistical phenomenon called reversion to the mean. Extreme observations tend to be followed by observations closer to the average. Remember that the favorite team has a probability of about 55% of winning. A team may lose a few matches just by chance, but over time, it is increasingly likely to accumulate a victory average that reflects its true quality.

Football clubs tend to fire their managers if the team has a bad streak. When a new manager arrives, the team is very likely to have better performance, and the improvement will be credited to the new manager. In reality, the team may be reverting to the mean, and would have done so under the old manager as well.

Managers do matter, but football results (and company performance) have some randomness. If a new manager, brought in to end a bad spell, yells at the players, and performance subsequently improves, one may conclude that management by intimidation works, when really all that happened was reversion to the mean. Any other approach would have been just as effective. The authors provide the example of a flight instructor who said: "When a student does well and I praise him, he performs worse on the next lesson. On the other hand, when I chide a student who did poorly, he does better the next time. Therfore, be hard on your students if you want them to improve". This is obviously nonsense. What the instructor was seeing was reversion to the mean, and neither the praising nor the scolding had any effect.

Conclusion

The authors not only lay out a framework for understanding football, but were brave enough to write a full chapter with forecasts for the following decade. Since the book was published in 2014, we can check how well they did.

They forecast that there would be about 1,000 goals scored in the Premiership in both 2014 and 2024. In the 2013-14 season there were 1,052 goals across 380 matches. In the 2023-24 season there were 1,246 across the same number of matches.

They predicted that the salary gap between strikers and defenders would narrow. I found data on Premier League payrolls per position, and the trend is the opposite. During the 2013-14 season, all clubs combined spent £297 million on defense and £300 million on forward. In 2023-24, they spent £639 million and £723 million respectively. It is possible that these payroll figures reflect fewer defenders and more strikers, but I don't think so. The increase in the number of goals per season suggests that clubs are investing more in strikers and less in defenders.

Other forecasts were more vaguely worded, or difficult for me to verify. They hedged their bets when they forecast both that there would be an increase in analytics in football and that clubs could continue to be successful without analytics, just by outspending their rivals.

The book is interesting and thought provoking, but given how the predictions have fared, either football markets are not very efficient or the authors were wrong.

The coffee beans procedure is a series of questions to help people evaluate all aspects of a job. The name comes from asking people who dream of running a coffee shop: where would they source their beans? This is the first of a series of questions to unpack what it really entails to run a coffee shop.

Adam Mastroianni wrote an entire article about the coffee beans procedure. Kevin Conway took it further and wrote a prompt that makes any AI chatbot assume the role of a career coach that performs the coffee beans procedure. This is a good AI prompt, because it is detailed, specific, and provides examples.

I decided to test the prompt. I found the results amusing, but also quite good too. Here is the conversation: when I asked the AI (Claude) about becoming a full-time Substack author 😊.

Andreu: You are a career reality coach who uses "The Coffee Beans Procedure" to help people unpack the actual day-to-day reality of careers they're considering. Your job is to cut through romantic fantasies and reveal what the work actually entails, while accounting for their specific situation and location.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Gather detailed context by asking these questions in order:

   • What specific profession or business are you considering?

   • What country/region would you be practicing in? (This affects licensing, regulations, market conditions)

   • What's your current age range? (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s+)

   • Do you already have relevant qualifications, or would you be starting from scratch?

   • Are there any personal constraints I should know about? (family commitments, financial limitations, health considerations, etc.)

2. Use this context to customize your approach:

   • Adjust training/education questions based on their age and current qualifications

   • Include country-specific regulations, licensing requirements, and market realities

   • Factor in their life stage and constraints

   • Make timeline expectations realistic for their situation

3. Generate 15-20 brutally specific yes/no questions based on their complete profile. These should cover:

   • Daily reality: What they'll actually be doing hour by hour

   • Entry requirements: Training, licensing, costs specific to their country/age

   • Unsexy aspects: The boring, tedious, or unpleasant parts most people ignore

   • Lifestyle demands: Real schedule, income reality, social costs

   • Personality fit: Whether their "crazy" matches what the job demands

   • Commitment level: What it really takes to succeed given their starting point

4. Make questions ultra-specific to their situation. For example:

   • For a 45-year-old considering law in the UK: "Are you willing to spend 3-4 years retraining while potentially earning nothing, when you have 20 years left in your career?"

   • For someone in Ireland vs US: Include specific regulatory bodies, salary ranges, market conditions

   • For career changers: "Can you handle being the oldest student/trainee in your program?"

5. Present questions one at a time, wait for their yes/no answer, then move to the next.

6. After all questions, provide:

   • A count of yes vs no answers

   • An honest assessment tailored to their specific situation

   • Country-specific next steps (which bodies to contact, what to research)

   • Timeline expectations realistic for their age and circumstances

   • What their answers reveal about potential mismatches

TONE:

• Direct and honest, not discouraging

• Focus on reality, not dreams

• Acknowledge their life stage and constraints respectfully

• Use the language and specific challenges of that profession in their location

• Remember: you're helping them see if they're the right KIND of crazy for this work at THIS stage of their life

START HERE:

"I'm going to help you unpack whether this career path is actually right for you at this stage of your life. I need to understand your specific situation first, since the reality of any profession varies dramatically based on where you'd practice, your current qualifications, and your life circumstances.

Let's start with some context:

What specific profession or business are you considering?"

[Wait for response, then ask the remaining context questions before generating profession-specific questions]

Claude: I'm going to help you unpack whether this career path is actually right for you at this stage of your life. I need to understand your specific situation first, since the reality of any profession varies dramatically based on where you'd practice, your current qualifications, and your life circumstances.

Let's start with some context:

What specific profession or business are you considering?

Andreu: I want to be a full time newsletter writer on Substack

Claude: Good, that's specific enough to work with. Now I need to understand your situation better since the reality of making a living as a Substack newsletter writer varies enormously based on your circumstances.

What country/region would you be operating from? (This affects tax implications, audience time zones, and what topics might resonate with subscribers)

Andreu: Norway

Claude: What's your current age range? (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s+)

This matters because it affects how much runway you have to build an audience, your financial obligations, and whether you can realistically sustain the income uncertainty that comes with newsletter writing.

Andreu: 45

Claude: Do you already have relevant qualifications or experience? Specifically:

• Do you have a background in writing, journalism, or content creation?

• Do you have expertise in a particular niche that people would pay to read about?

• Have you built any kind of audience before (blog, social media, previous publications)?

Or would you be starting completely from scratch with both the writing skills and audience building?

Andreu: I would start from scratch with audience building. I have been blogging on and off for 20 years. I like to write articles about management, energy policy, technology and book reviews on related topics

Claude: Are there any personal constraints I should know about? Specifically:

• What are your current financial obligations? (mortgage, family to support, etc.)

• How long could you realistically go with minimal or no income while building your subscriber base?

• Do you have a partner whose income could support you during the building phase?

• Any health considerations that affect your ability to write consistently?

This is crucial because Substack newsletter writing typically requires 1-3 years of consistent output before generating meaningful income, and Norway's cost of living is notably high.

Andreu: I have two kids aged 11 and 13. My wife works full time [...]. My plan is to start the newsletter as a side gig until reaching critical mass.

Claude: Perfect. Now I understand your situation: 45-year-old in Norway, starting audience from scratch, experienced writer with clear niches, strong financial position, planning to keep current job initially. This changes the risk profile significantly.

Here are the brutally specific questions about the day-to-day reality of building a successful Substack newsletter business. Answer each with yes or no:

Question 1: Are you willing to write and publish consistently (at least weekly) for 18-24 months while earning essentially nothing, knowing that most Substack newsletters never reach even 1,000 paying subscribers?

Andreu: yes

Claude: Question 2: Can you handle spending 2-3 hours every single day (including weekends) on newsletter-related work - not just writing, but researching, engaging with comments, promoting on social media, networking with other writers, and constantly hunting for content ideas - while maintaining your current job and being present for your family?

Andreu: yes

Claude: Question 3: Are you comfortable with the fact that successful Substack writers typically need to build their audience primarily on Twitter/X (now increasingly polarized), LinkedIn, or other social platforms where you'll need to constantly engage, share opinions, and potentially deal with trolls and public criticism of your views on management and energy policy?

Andreu: I was not aware of that. Linkedin may be ok. I will not engage on Twitter. Trolls and criticism are OK

Claude: Question 4: Given that you won't use Twitter (which is where many successful newsletter writers build their initial audience), are you willing to spend significant time building your presence on LinkedIn, knowing that content there needs to be more professionally sanitized and the viral potential is much lower than Twitter, potentially extending your timeline to profitability by 6-12 months?

Andreu: yes

Claude: Question 5: Are you prepared to handle the psychological reality that your first 6-12 months of writing will likely generate fewer than 100 subscribers, meaning you'll be writing detailed analysis on energy policy and management topics for an audience smaller than a single corporate meeting room?

Andreu: yes

Claude: Question 6: Can you handle the financial reality that even if you reach 1,000 paying subscribers (which only 5-10% of newsletters achieve), at Substack's typical $5-15/month price point, you'd be earning roughly 50,000-150,000 NOK annually - less than 15% of your current salary - while still doing essentially the same amount of work?

Andreu: yes

Claude: Question 7: Are you willing to become a "content machine" where every book you read, every management experience you have, every energy policy development you follow gets filtered through the lens of "how can I turn this into newsletter content?" - essentially making your hobbies and interests into work obligations?

Andreu: ok

Claude: Question 8: Can you handle the reality that writing about management and energy policy from Norway means you'll be competing with writers who have direct access to Silicon Valley networks, major energy companies, or government policy makers - and that your geographic location may limit your ability to get exclusive insights or interviews that drive subscriptions?

Andreu: I often miss an European perspective in a lot of newsletters. I would like to cater to an European audience

Claude: Question 9: Are you prepared for the fact that even successful European-focused newsletters typically have smaller subscriber bases and lower price tolerance than US-focused ones, meaning you'd need to work proportionally harder to reach the same income levels, and that your 2-3 year timeline to replace your current income might realistically be 4-5 years?

Andreu: I was not aware of that, but yes

Claude: Question 10: Are you willing to constantly pitch yourself, your expertise, and your newsletter in professional settings - essentially turning every networking opportunity, conference, or business meeting into a potential marketing moment for your personal brand?

Andreu: I currently do not attend any networking events, I don't think it is an option for me, specially living in Norway

Claude: Question 11: Given that you don't attend networking events and are limiting yourself to LinkedIn for promotion, are you willing to produce additional content formats beyond your newsletter - such as LinkedIn articles, comments on other people's posts, guest appearances on podcasts, or video content - to build your audience without traditional networking?

Andreu: Yes, if the opportunity arises

Question 12: Are you comfortable with the fact that your topics (management, energy policy, technology) require you to maintain credibility through accuracy, which means you'll need to spend significant time fact-checking, citing sources, and potentially issuing corrections when you get things wrong - time that doesn't directly generate revenue but is essential for subscriber trust?

Andreu: I am not embarrassed to correct and apologize if I get something wrong.

Claude: Question 13: Are you prepared to handle the reality that building a sustainable newsletter business will likely require you to eventually offer additional paid services beyond subscriptions - such as consulting, speaking engagements, or premium reports - essentially turning you into a one-person media and consulting business rather than just a writer?

Andreu: maybe. I never thought about that

Claude: Question 14: Can you handle the uncertainty of irregular income even after reaching profitability, where your monthly revenue could fluctuate by 20-40% based on subscriber churn, economic conditions affecting corporate budgets (your likely audience), or simply seasonal patterns in attention to your topics?

Andreu: yes

Claude: Question 15: Are you willing to track and analyze subscriber metrics obsessively - open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, churn rates - and adjust your content strategy based on data rather than just writing what you find interesting, even if it means abandoning topics you're passionate about because they don't perform well?

Andreu: up to a degree, yes

Claude: Question 16: Are you prepared for the possibility that after 2-3 years of consistent effort, you might reach only 500-700 paying subscribers earning you 35,000-70,000 NOK annually - a respectable side income but nowhere near replacing your main salary - and having to decide whether to continue investing time or accept it as a permanent side project?

Andreu: in that case I would consider slowing down, but that would not be a catastrophe, since I don't plan to quit my job just yet.

Claude: Question 17: Are you comfortable with the fact that your success will depend heavily on timing and luck - that your best-written piece might get no attention while something you dash off quickly might go viral - and that this randomness will be a permanent feature of your newsletter business?

Andreu: yes

Claude: Question 18: Can you handle the reality that Norwegian tax authorities will treat your newsletter income as business income, requiring you to manage VAT registration (if you exceed 50,000 NOK annually), quarterly filings, and potentially complex international tax issues if you have subscribers from multiple countries?

Andreu: yes, but I understand that Substack uses Stripe, which manages most of the details for you. Tax registration and dealings with Norwegian authorities in case of revenues exceeding 50,000 NOK would not be a problem

Claude: Question 19: Are you prepared to write during Norwegian winters when seasonal depression might affect your motivation, and to maintain publishing consistency even when your family needs you, your main job becomes demanding, or you simply don't feel like writing - because subscriber expectations don't pause for your personal circumstances?

Andreu: yes

Claude: Question 20: Are you comfortable with the fact that your newsletter's success might plateau after 2-3 years, and that maintaining even a moderately successful newsletter (1,000-2,000 subscribers) requires the same time investment as growing one, meaning you could be locked into this workload indefinitely without proportional income growth?

Andreu: I may reevaluate after a set period. Maybe 24 months

Claude: Results: 19 Yes, 1 Maybe

Assessment for your situation:

You're in a remarkably good position to attempt this, primarily because of your financial stability and realistic expectations. Your responses show you understand the grind and uncertainty involved, which puts you ahead of most people who romanticize newsletter writing.

Key advantages in your favor:

• Strong financial cushion means you can truly treat this as a side project without desperation

• 20 years of blogging experience gives you writing discipline

• Clear niche expertise in management/energy policy

• Realistic timeline expectations

• Not planning to quit your day job immediately

Potential challenges based on your answers:

• Limited networking and Twitter avoidance will slow audience growth significantly

• European market constraints mean smaller potential audience and revenue

• Your "maybe" responses around metrics tracking and business expansion suggest you might hit growth plateaus earlier

Country-specific next steps for Norway:

• Contact Skatteetaten about business registration requirements

• Research Norwegian media/newsletter landscape for competitive analysis

• Consider joining Nordic business/energy policy communities online

• Look into European Substack writers in similar niches for networking

Realistic timeline for your situation:

• 6-12 months: Build to 100-500 free subscribers

• 12-24 months: Convert to 50-200 paying subscribers (15,000-60,000 NOK annually)

• 24-36 months: Potential to reach 500-1,000 paying subscribers (150,000-300,000 NOK annually)

Your answers suggest you're approaching this with the right mindset - as a long-term side project rather than a get-rich-quick scheme. The biggest risk is that your geographic and platform limitations might extend these timelines, but your financial stability gives you the runway to succeed.

I started working as an owner's representative when I finished my studies in 2003. I have worked as an owner's representative in Spain and in Norway. The experience has been quite similar in both places, but not exactly the same.

How I got my job

I studied for a master's degree in engineering and specialized in structural engineering and industrial construction. This qualification is sufficient to get hired as a site engineer, which is often the first step before becoming an owner's representative.

In Spain, engineer is a protected title, and owner's representative (director de obra) is a regulated profession. This means that you have to be the right kind of engineer or architect to work as an owner's representative, and you need an accredited university degree to call yourself an engineer or architect. Different kinds of degrees give access to being an owner's representative in different fields. For example, a given degree may give you access to work on a road construction project, but not on a power plant project.

In Norway, engineer is not a protected title, and owner's representative (byggeleder) is not a regulated profession. Owner's representatives here are a mix of engineers and tradespeople with long experience.

The job market in construction follows the economy. There are periods when there is strong demand and others where it is very difficult to find a job. In 2003, when I entered the job market, there was a construction boom in Spain. I applied for a few jobs and got hired right away. Six months later, one of the first companies that had interviewed me, called again. They had an opening close to where I was currently working and wanted to hire me. It was not unusual for engineering consultancies to poach each other's employees at the time.

When the financial crisis hit Spain, it was almost impossible to find a job in the construction sector. Many of my former colleagues were unemployed for more than a year or two, changed careers to different fields, or emigrated. I moved to Norway. When I decided to move to Norway, I applied for 42 open positions before being hired. I believe it took so many attempts because I was applying from Spain with limited knowledge of Norwegian.

After moving to Norway, I have been interviewed for every single owner's representative position that I have applied for. If you have the right qualifications and speak Norwegian, the market has been quite favorable for the last few years. Even recent graduates can get a job easily.

What does the owner's representative do

To explain what the owner's representative does, it is useful to understand how construction projects are organized. When a developer wants to build something, they set up a team to oversee the construction. The team usually consists of a project manager, an owner's representative, and possibly some site engineers. The developer hires a contractor to do the actual building. The contractor, in turn, sets up its own project organization consisting of a project manager, a site manager, and possibly one or more project superintendents. The site manager is the counterpart of the owner's representative.

Depending on the size of the project, several roles may be merged into one. For small projects, the project manager may perform the owner's representative duties and manage several projects simultaneously. For big projects, a project manager will supervise several owner's representatives who follow different contractors.

The job of the owner's representative is to ensure that the contractor delivers according to their contract. The project manager is responsible for the project's budget and risk. The project manager selects a contract type with a risk profile that matches the developer's requirements. Most construction contracts are standardized. The owner's representative must ensure that the contractor delivers according to the quality, cost, and the schedule agreed in the contract. Quality also includes the technical specifications.

When I started working, I didn't see the point of having an owner's representative. If the project documents and the contract describe what has to be built, why do developers need an owner's representative? It turns out that construction projects seldom go according to plan; there are unforeseen situations that require changes along the way. The owner's representative reviews change proposals, issues change orders, and informs the project manager regarding deviations on quality, cost, and schedule.

The owner's representative spends a lot of time talking to the site manager. There are scheduled status meetings, usually once a week or every two weeks. It is normal to be in contact more often than that. I got along well with most site managers, but it can be challenging when there are problems with the project, especially if the contractor loses money on the project. The relationship can be tense and unpleasant, but continued communication is unavoidable.

Sometimes the design documents are unclear or incomplete. In those cases, the contractor will ask for clarification. The owner's representative is responsible for answering the contractor. An engineering background is important in these situations. The owner's representative may answer directly or may engage the original designer to issue a clarification.

Contractors send claims to the developer. Contractors often believe that certain activities or materials are not included in the contract. Sometimes they are right. The design documents or the contract may miss something, but more often than not, a discussion ensues. Reviewing contractor claims is big part of the job.

I noticed a difference between contractors in Spain and those in Norway. Contractors in Spain are more proactive. They will usually come with alternative proposals and optimized solutions. Generally, Spanish contractors have more technical expertise in-house. They are also more aggressive in presenting claims. Norwegian contractors expect very detailed design documents that ready to build.

An owner's representative should be forward-looking and should try to anticipate future claims, delays, and changes before they materialize. This gives project management time to adapt by, for example, reducing the scope of the project.

Ultimately, everything in a construction project revolves around money. Delays mean extra financing costs, delayed revenues, and may endanger the profitability of the project. For transport projects, especially if they affect traffic, the cost of extra time for the users may be substantial. Changes in quality are also a question of cost ultimately. Lower quality may lead to reduced durability, diminished performance, or higher maintenance costs.

Health and safety is paramount. This is the responsibility of the HSE coordinator. Sometimes the owner's representative assumes the HSE coordinator role as well. This happens often in Norway. I believe this is malpractice. There is an obvious conflict between cost, quality and progress versus health and safety.

One thing that I did not expect was how important the contracts are. I frequently referred back to the contract during the projects. My engineering background was not sufficient to understand and interpret contracts. It was through working with lawyers and taking some courses that I became better at that.

I would perform site inspections to assess progress and quality. Depending on the project, I had assistants or a quantity surveyor to help me. We would verify that the contractor's control plan met the requirements, that it was implemented, and that the results were satisfactory. Sometimes independent testing is required to verify the results supplied by the contractor.

The owner's representative job is quite varied because you are working on different projects and with different teams all the time. It is very satisfying to see a project completed. The days are varied--you may be out on site, in meetings with the contractor, reviewing claims, issuing technical clarifications, or updating a forecast. On the other hand, I used my engineering skills very little, maybe about 20% of the time. Sometimes you feel more like a lawyer, an accountant, or an administrative assistant.

Career development

The most common career path is to work on bigger or more complex projects. For example, someone may start with small road projects--maybe a new roundabout or a simple pavement reinforcement--and over time become the owner's representative for a section of a new highway. Other professionals may specialize in certain types of projects, for example, steel bridges.

Another common career path is to become a project manager. People move up in the developer's organization and eventually into management. Also, within the developer's organization, people may take other engineering roles related to the types of projects that they have worked on, such as operations or maintenance.

Sometimes owner's representatives can change sides and work for contractors. They become site managers. This is quite rare, but the opposite is very common. Many engineers start their carriers with a contractor, and over time move to developers or to engineering consultancies that work for developers in the owner's representative role.

For those who work for an engineering consultancy, it would be natural to move up to management and business development over time.

Su writes from the perspective of a Facebook engineer during Facebook's peak as one of the most desirable companies to work for. Facebook was staffed with the best and the brightest. This represents a unique context. The average organization struggles to find qualified employees, let alone exceptional graduates from top engineering schools.

In my experience, there is very little correlation between hours spent on the job and actual performance. I have worked reviewing engineering documents. The number of documents reviewed serves as a good performance indicator. Some engineers, even senior ones, work overtime, yet review far fewer documents than colleagues who work regular hours. The difference can be an order of magnitude. This disparity has nothing to do with document complexity (documents are assigned randomly) nor quality of work (since the same person performs quality control on all reviews).

I don't think that any of the more productive engineers are ten times more talented than the less productive ones. I suspect that the difference stems from better time management and the ability to focus on the most relevant aspects of their work. There is room for working smarter in many organizations. The Pareto principle applies at work too.

Su overlooks education. If your plan for career advancement involves entering management, pursuing an MBA is clearly a better path than working harder. Having the right degree or certification can serve as a shortcut to career advancement. Where a degree is required by law, lacking the right degree will stall career advancement. Sometimes, there are provisions where long apprenticeships or other experience can compensate for the lack of a degree. This may require 5 to 10 extra years.

I completed an MBA for experienced managers. Many participants were already quite high in their organization's hierarchy. I noticed that many of them worked long hours, as Su suggests, but not all. What I observed was that all were good at networking and highly attuned to office politics. Being socially adept and navigating office politics effectively does wonders for career advancement.

There are many ways to leverage office politics to your advantage without being Machiavellian. You need to understand how power works in your organization. Working on a project that management deems important will give you more visibility and advancement opportunities. Doing a good job and demonstrating your contribution to management is better than toiling in obscurity and hoping to be noticed.

My advice applies to the average organization that is neither growing extremely fast nor in a dying industry. If you work in an industry that is struggling, with constant threats of downsizing, not even working harder may save your career. Conversely, if you work in an organization that is growing fast, you may be promoted and gain more responsibility just by sticking around.

I wouldn't despair. Unless you work in an ultra-competitive organization, you can do much better than average while sticking to regular working hours.

Time tracking is a staple of many large organizations. Managers want to know what their reports spend time on. Time tracking can be the basis for invoicing. In companies that do not bill by the hour, time tracking can still be desirable to analyze performance and manage resources.

I find time tracking annoying. I don't remember to register activities as I work, and when the day is over, I don't remember what I spent time on. Therefore, I wondered if I could use another method to track activities.

I understand that when researchers want to know what people spent time on, they use a different method. They give research subjects a pager or a similar device that beeps at set intervals. Subjects then write down what they are doing at that particular moment when the device beeps. By multiplying the total time wearing the device by the frequency of each activity that is noted, researchers can estimate what people spend time on.

This looks like a promising alternative, but I wondered about the optimal sampling interval to get time estimates that converge quickly to the true time spent on different activities. Ideally, I want a measure that is accurate to within a few percentage points within a few days of tracking, not months. Intuitively, a short sampling interval will provide an accurate estimate, but it may be annoying to be interrupted every 5 minutes to record what you are working on. Alternatively, a long interval of an hour or more may not converge fast enough, or may not converge at all if some activities last less than an hour and happen at fixed times. For example, if meetings happen during the first half hour of every day, they will not be recorded at all.

I tested several sampling strategies on a fictitious work schedule that lasted 60 days. The first challenge was creating realistic work schedules. A schedule is composed of different activities. Each activity is defined by two characteristics: the percentage of time spent on it and the length of each session. For example, meetings constitute an activity. I may spend 20% of my time on meetings, and each meeting may last from 30 minutes to an hour.

In my experience, the duration of each activity is not completely random, but is more likely to be a multiple of 15 minutes or so. For some activities, 5 or 10 minutes may also be typical.

I wrote a Python script to generate a 60-day schedule. I defined each activity as follows:

Activity name           Percent time      Allowed session duration (min)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Administration               0.35         5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 90
Big project                  0.25         15, 30, 60
Small projects               0.10         5, 15, 30
Meetings                     0.10         60
Document review              0.10         5, 10 , 15
Efficiency improvements      0.05         15, 30, 45, 60
Recruiting                   0.05         30, 60

The script picks the next activity until the minimum workday duration of 7 hours is satisfied. The script picks the activity that is furthest from its target percentage of time. The script assigns a random duration from the allowed session durations. A daily schedule looks like this:

Day 4
------------------------------
Admin                      60'
Meetings                   60'
Big Project                15'
Document review            15'
Recruiting                 60'
Big Project                30'
Document review            10'
Big Project                15'
Admin                      30'
Big Project                60'
Document review             5'
Small Projects             15'
Document review            15'
Efficiency improvements    15'
Admin                      60'
------------------------------
Total time: 7h and 45'

This looks good enough to me. I spend a lot of time during the day doing random things, like talking to colleagues in the corridor, answering emails, or reading the news. These activities end up being registered as administration or another activity. So this schedule is not implausible. At least it captures the fact that a typical day is varied and many activities have short durations.

After only five days of simulation, the percentages of each activity in the schedule are quite close to the target percentages, and after 15 days, they are identical.

Activity                    Target    Day 5    Day 10    Day 15     
---------------------------------------------------------------
Admin                         0.35     0.33      0.34      0.35
Big Project                   0.25     0.24      0.24      0.25
Small Projects                0.10     0.10      0.10      0.10
Meetings                      0.10     0.11      0.11      0.10
Document review               0.10     0.10      0.10      0.10
Efficiency improvements       0.05     0.06      0.05      0.05
Recruiting                    0.05     0.06      0.06      0.05

Sampling strategies

The first strategy is to sample at fixed intervals. I tested intervals ranging from 15 minutes to 90 minutes. The estimated percentages for each sampling interval are as follows:

Activity                  Actual      15      30      60      90
----------------------------------------------------------------
Admin                       0.35    0.33    0.32    0.32    0.32
Big Project                 0.25    0.25    0.26    0.26    0.26
Small Projects              0.10    0.10    0.11    0.10    0.10
Meetings                    0.10    0.10    0.11    0.11    0.11
Document review             0.10    0.10    0.11    0.10    0.10
Efficiency improvements     0.05    0.05    0.05    0.06    0.06
Recruiting                  0.05    0.05    0.05    0.05    0.05

The results are quite close to the actual percentages, but there is some deviation, even for short sampling intervals. The reason is that activities with a duration shorter than the sampling interval can be missed. Even with a sampling interval of 15 minutes, which I would consider annoying and impractical, we miss activities with 5-and 10-minute durations. Another problem occurs with brief activities that have a fixed time, such as daily morning meetings. If the sampling interval is longer than the meeting duration, no meetings will be recorded at all.

Another sampling approach is to use random intervals. I implemented this strategy using a Poisson distribution. The parameter λ of the distribution is the expected number of events (samples) in a given interval. I expressed λ as the average number of samples per hour, and I chose λ values equivalent to the same intervals as before. The results seem slightly better:

Activity                  Actual       4       2       1    0.67
----------------------------------------------------------------
Admin                       0.35    0.34    0.36    0.35    0.35
Big Project                 0.25    0.23    0.25    0.23    0.23
Small Projects              0.10    0.11    0.10    0.09    0.09
Meetings                    0.10    0.11    0.09    0.09    0.09
Document review             0.10    0.10    0.10    0.11    0.11
Efficiency improvements     0.05    0.05    0.05    0.06    0.06
Recruiting                  0.05    0.05    0.05    0.09    0.09

I generated a work year of daily schedules and implemented sampling with λ=1 (one sample per hour on average) to see how percentage estimates converge to the actual time fractions.

I was surprised by how long it takes for the fraction estimates to converge to the actual values. Eventually we see that Administration comes close to 0.35, Big project approaches 0.25, Small projects, Meetings, and Document review hover around 0.10, and Efficiency improvements and Recruiting come close to 0.05, but it takes half a year, and for some activities, there is still a significant error after a whole year.

This example may be somewhat pathological. I purposely created activities with characteristics that make them difficult to track, such as occurring sporadically (Recruiting) or having short durations and high total fraction (Administration). Additionally, this particular example may have been extremely unlucky. After playing around many times, I typically get a decent approximation after 60 days (approximately 3 months).

I sampled the same yearly schedule with fixed 1-hour intervals (which is equivalent to λ=1) for comparison, and the results were clearly worse. In that case, the estimate for Administration gets stuck between 0.31 and 0.32 instead of 0.35:

Conclusion: Try it yourself

Bad as it may seem, random sampling with λ=1 seems to work for me. After using this system for a while, I notice that I am recording more activities and greater variety than when I just tried to remember what I did at the end of the day.

I asked Claude.ai to code a web app that implements random sampling to track time. As long as you keep the tab open, the app will send you notifications at random intervals to record the current activity. The app uses local browser storage, so no data leaves your PC. You can try it out at activity-sampler.pages.dev or with a Norwegian interface at prosjekttimer.pages.dev.

The core argument of the book is that you should choose one activity as your focus for each day and make time for it. A typical daily focus would be to work on a big project. The book defines a three-step loop. The first step is "highlight". Highlight means to choose what you are going to prioritize. They call the second step "laser" for laser-focused. This is about beating distractions. At the end of the day you reflect. The purpose of reflecting is to fine-tune the system.

The book argues that in order to focus you need to have energy and remove distractions. A substantial part of the book deals with how to manage your energy throughout the day. Each piece of advice, in isolation, seems good. But if you have to follow them all—exercise, home cooking, meditation and more—you would have no time to focus anyway.

I liked that the authors are not dogmatic. Sometimes, authors will tell you that their system is the only true way. Knapp and Zeratsky are open about the fact that they do not use all the tactics in the book all the time, or even at all.

If you are familiar with the getting things done (GTD) method, you will remember how it handles big projects. You divide big projects into a number of next steps that you add to your to-do list. To-do lists in GTD are supposed to be categorized by context. For example, you batch all the telephone calls together. As I understand it, Make Time suggests that if you choose making progress on a project as your highlight for the day, you would devote 60 to 90 minutes to making progress on your next activities. The difference between GTD and Make time is whether you perform your next activities in your to-do list according to your energy and context (GTD) or concentrated in time (Make Time).

The book provides a list of tactics to use in each step of the method. Most tactics address how to avoid distractions. Some of the first advice is to remove social media apps from your phone. They advise removing email as well. They encourage you to plan your workday in advance and schedule dedicated time to process email. I found that waiting to check email until after lunch, helps me stay focused on whatever I want to do. If you start your day checking your email, it is common to become distracted.

It is difficult to resist temptation, so the authors advise the use of apps to block access to email, social media or certain websites as a way to tie oneself to the mast. They also recommend not following the news daily. This is an idea that also comes up in the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Exercise can be incorporated into your daily routine. For example, you can walk to and from work. If the commute is too long, you can get off one or two stops before your destination and walk. This is something that I already do. Walking is a pleasant activity for me, that helps me disconnect between work and home. I don't think it is a proper substitute for more intense training, but it can't hurt.

The authors discourage people from using headphones all the time. Listening to music or podcasts adds mental work on top of whichever activity you want to accomplish. I agree with the authors. It is a frustration for me to see my kids listening to music while they struggle with their math homework. It would be so much easier if they just paused the music for a while.

I think the book works as a list of tactics if you already have a clear idea about what you want to focus on. If you have too many priorities, no tricks will help you make enough time to accomplish them all. You won't make significant progress if your daily focus is shifting every day.

Another weakness of the book is that it is written with a certain type of reader in mind. Not everyone is a knowledge worker with the flexibility to manage their own schedule as they please. Nor is ignoring email a real alternative for many people. In many occupations you are expected to answer fast and it may be a core part of your job, for example if you are working in sales or support.

Maybe you get distracted and waste time on social media or email because deep down you really think that the work you are supposed to do is not important. If you follow this book, instead of confronting this fact directly, you will block all distractions until meaningless work is all you have left to do. Wouldn't it be better to step back and reflect on whether the work you are performing is aligned with your goals?

I found that I am perfectly capable of procrastinating without social media or email. In fact, I am pretty sure that procrastinating was a thing even before the internet. The authors fixate on social media, watching YouTube and email as alternatives to real work. In practice, more often than not, when I am not doing what I am supposed to do, I am doing something else that may also be useful. One can be a productive person by using structured procrastination. The downside is that it is more stressful, as you are constantly having bad a conscience for not doing what you should.

I am somewhat skeptical about the sprint model that the authors presented. They suggest that in order to make progress on a big project, you schedule a whole week to work on it. Every day you are supposed to build upon the conclusions of the previous day. In my experience, it is better to let things mature. I can read about a topic, then forget about it for 3 or 4 days, while my subconscious mind works on it. Nuances and new ideas come during these rest periods. I can incorporate them into my work. I would argue that working on something one day each week for five weeks, in many cases, produces better results than working on it for five consecutive days.

These are minor flaws. The book is quite engaging and useful. I bet everyone can find at least one technique that can be incorporated into their daily routine.

My first work experience was as an intern at Hewlett Packard in Sant Cugat del Vallès while I studied engineering. Hewlett Packard had a factory and design center. Most engineers sat in cubicles next to the production lines and so did I. It was like having a small office without a door and ceiling. It was noisy, but quite nice actually. You could stand up and talk to your neighbor, but if you sat, you didn't see anyone and no one saw you. I would say that cubicles afforded substantial privacy. It was easy for me to concentrate there. You could also have a conversation on the phone without bothering anyone, because it did not register over the background noise. I have fond memories of the two years that I worked there.

A few desks in a room

It is quite common for firms that work in construction management to rent a place near the job site. It can be a commercial property, an apartment, a single family house, or whatever. The point is to be close to the site. The layout in such places can be somewhat random, depending on the property, but it is typical for 2 to 4 employees to share a room, as I did. Usually there is good comradery in such projects. Everyone is working towards a well-defined common goal—building whatever we are supposed to.

The workdays tend to be long and intense, but the work itself is rewarding. I thrived in those projects. You may be unlucky and get an annoying colleague that takes long personal telephone calls or that has a habit of working with music and singing along. But it doesn't happen so often. I only experienced it once, and it wasn't so bad.

In such an office, everyone works on the same project supervising one contractor. We knew each other's duties and counterparts from the contractor side. Telephone calls were not a disturbance; you knew who your colleagues were talking to, and why. It was not unusual for someone else to chime into a conversation, and shout: "If you have X on the phone, tell him that I want to talk to him afterwards".

Informal talk was easy and happened often, but not in a way that I found distracting.

Open plan office

There is a continuum between having a few desks in an office and an open plan. However as more people share a workspace, you need increasingly library-like rules for it to be effective if concentration work is required. There is less informal talk, more quiet. At one place, we sat 8 employees together in a cramped room. It was fine. We all worked in the same department with similar work duties. It was a temporary office while our building was being renovated. After renovation, we moved back to the old building. The place had been converted to an open plan office, but meeting rooms and other dividers had been placed strategically to create areas of no more than 8 desks. Unfortunately, we were employees from two different departments that shared our area. Those from the other department had constant Zoom meetings while I tried to do work that required concentration. I can still se the numbers jumping on the printed page. It was horrible. This experience shows that the problem was not about the number of people you share the workspace with, but the rules that prevail what makes a workspace work.

Open layout hinders both privacy and communication. It is a myth that by removing offices you encourage serendipity. The opposite is true. I have found that if you have a private office, it is natural for two or three colleagues to sit together in someone's office to discuss a problem or just to chat. This does not happen in an open layout due to fear of disturbing others. People end up sending emails or chatting on Teams when they want to discuss something with a colleague.

There are two variants of open plan offices: those were people are allowed to take telephone calls and Zoom meetings at their desks, and those with dedicated small rooms or pods for such tasks to maintain quiet in the main working area. Both have disadvantages. If you allow noise, no real work gets done. If you don't, no informal collaborations develop.

Private office

I have been fortunate to have had a private office several times. This is the best setup for me without any doubt. I cannot see any downside from my point of view as an employee. It is the best option both for collaboration and work that requires concentration. The best private offices for me are those placed around a common area with glass doors. This design allows you to see what is going on, but it affords the possibility to close the door and have some quiet if needed.

Home office

Great in theory, if you have an appropriate space at home that you can furnish as an office. In my experience, no company is paying rent for the space you lose at home, but it may be a good compromise if you really prefer working from home rather than commuting.

The threshold for informal conversations with colleagues becomes higher compared to having a private office. It is probably still better than sitting in an open plan office, where you will not engage in spontaneous conversations anyway in order not to disturb your colleagues.

I don't like the lack of separation between work and home. Having a short commute, especially if you can walk, is a nice way to get into work mode and to disconnect after the workday, so that you don't take your work problems home. This is difficult for me while working from home.

Another problem with home office is that it is too easy to make a trip to the fridge or get distracted with household chores.

It is beneficial for companies to have a policy that allows work from home occasionally. It makes family organization much easier, as well as staying productive at home while kids are sick.

This may be controversial, but there is some data that suggests, at least for some occupations, that working from home is not as effective as working from the office. On the other hand, I have experienced the need to work from home in order to have some quiet and finish work that required concentration, so effectiveness may depend on the baseline you compare it to.

Hot desking

I have experienced hot desking as well. It has all the inconveniences of the open plan office plus the fact that you need to remove all your belongings when you leave every day.

Sometimes they try to sell it as activity-based workplace. It may work for some occupations. But I find it very impractical and incompatible with the way I like to work. The activity-based concept may include large lounge areas, work-coffee spaces, project rooms, and quiet rooms with armchairs. The idea is that you move during the day from one area to another depending on what task you are doing. In my experience, it doesn't work. Most of the area is empty most of the time. This contradicts the point of having an open plan with hot desking in the first place, namely to use less floor area and save on rent.

I suspect that hot desking is bad for productivity, and I am certain that it is detrimental to employee engagement and sense of company belongingness.

What is the best layout?

Despite what I have written, I think many layouts can work well given the right circumstances.

• For small project teams, up to 4 people I prefer to share a room, rather than having a private office. I have found that the work climate is better when working in a shared space when there are so few people.

• The marketing team at Hewlett Packard tore down their cubicles and created an open plan for themselves. It may be that if you are willing to accept high noise levels and you need to interact with your team constantly, an open plan works well.

• Hot desking can be appropriate to provide workspace for salespeople that travel all the time, for inspectors that work on site most of the time, or for consultants between client engagements.

• For organizations or departments of more than 4 people, especially if the work requires sustained concentration periods, I think that private offices are the best choice.

• I would only consider cubicles if you need to provide office space on the factory floor, where you need people to be close to the production line.

I understand the need to reduce costs in high-rent cities, but I wish that more thought were given to the consequences—such as reduced productivity, loss of informal communication, increased sick leave, and higher turnover—of choosing office layouts that are not well suited to the work that needs to be performed.

Let's assume that the rush hour runs from 7:00 to 9:00 and from 15:30 to 17:30. There are 24 trains between Asker and Oslo during these periods. A lower bound on the delays may be 1 minute on average. This means that at least 24 trains x 12 human hours wasted per train = 288 human hours wasted per day, or 12 full days are wasted every day. Over the course of a year this amounts to 12 human days wasted per work day x 220 work days per year = 2,640 human days wasted per year, or 7.2 human years every year.

And this is just from people who commute from Asker to Oslo. Add the people who commute the opposite way and the number doubles. Add those who commute from Lillestrøm and those who commute from Ski, and this becomes 6 times as large. Every year more than 42 human years are wasted because of delays. Given that life expectancy in Norway is 83 years and the median age of the Norwegian population is 40 years, the Norwegian rail is effectively killing a person every year.

What are the costs of train delays?

I am obviously joking, but the cost of delays is no joke. The Norwegian Institute of Transport Economics studied the value of commuter's time in 20218. The value per hour for delays in local train traffic in the Oslo area came to 270 NOK per hour, which adjusted for inflation from 2018 to 2024, comes to around 333 NOK per hour, or roughly 33 USD. Forty-two years of delays are equivalent to 367,920 hours, thus costing Norwegian society approximately 121 million NOK or 12 million USD. This number is a conservative estimate that accounts only for minimal delays during rush hour. In my experience there are delays throughout the day. Even though train occupancy is much lower outside rush hours, the numbers add up.

It is not fun to be robbed every day. For a typical commuter, delays cost 2,442 NOK per year (244 USD), but the worst part is the uncertainty, the frustration, and the cold of waiting on the platform during winter when temperatures routinely stay below -10°C (14°F).

Why can other countries do it, but not Norway?

I often hear that the Nordic climate is a challenge, but it snows in Switzerland and parts of Japan too, and they seem to manage to run their trains on time just fine. I have taken trains in both countries. Most recently I spent 15 days in Japan. I took many local trains, the majority of them in Tokyo, and not a single one was delayed.

I asked Claude.ai for insights into why Japan and Switzerland manage to run their commuter trains on time while Norwegian commuter trains are chronically late, and it came back with some interesting ideas.

• Japan and Switzerland both have higher infrastructure investment per kilometer of track and per passenger. Switzerland has the world's highest rail investment as a percentage of GDP.—Why can't the richest nation on earth at least match Switzerland?

• Use of clock-face scheduling for the whole network (Switzerland) or very high frequency of trains traveling at reduced speed (Japan).

• Extensive preventive maintenance and upgrades in both Switzerland and Japan.

• In Oslo, commuter trains share tracks with long-distance passenger and freight services. When one of those runs late, it cascades through the commuter network.—This seems like a lack of investment problem to me.

• Many of Oslo's commuter lines still operate on single-track sections where trains must wait for incoming traffic.

• Oslo still operates with older signaling technology that requires larger safety buffers between trains. Japan's urban networks use advanced automatic train control systems allowing much closer spacing and more precise timing.

• In Oslo, maintenance conducted during evenings and weekends is often delayed, and these delays carry into the following day's morning peaks. Japanese operators use extremely short maintenance windows (often 2-4 hours nightly) with rapid deployment teams.

• Use of older, less reliable trains in Oslo. When a train breaks down in a single-track section or at a key junction, the entire line collapses.

To sum up. the most probable causes identified by Claude.ai boil down to lack of investment and maintenance. I want to propose an additional factor that may also affect the lack of progress in addressing all these known issues: incompetence at the top over long time.

To give an example, the current Norwegian railway director is an economist with a long career as a civil servant, but with zero relevant qualifications for his post. The only thing remotely relevant on his résumé was the year he spent as transportation director for the sinking ship that was Viken county.

Viken county was a fusion (later reversed) of three counties in the Oslo area: Akershus, Buskerud and Østfold. Transport infrastructure was—and still is—hopelessly fragmented among the three adjacent counties. The most pressing problem was the lack of an integrated tariff system in the region. Akershus and Oslo have Ruter, which covers bus, train, metro and tram services, but the other two counties were not part of the system. There is a lot of commuter traffic from Buskerud (mainly Drammen) and Østfold into Oslo, but commuters have to navigate a patchwork of different companies and buy separate tickets.

The transportation director's job was to fix that mess, and he failed miserably. While he was still transportation director at Viken county, he was invited to apply for the position of railway director. He did and promptly got the new position. The three-month notice period that was standard for Viken employees was even waived for him.—I have written before about the lack of corruption in Norway 😉.

The highlight of his tenure as railway director so far, has been the renewal of the license to operate the airport express train. During the tender process, Flytoget, the company that currently provides the extremely punctual service and that apparently submitted a better offer, did not get its license renewed. As a consequence, Flytoget will be merged with Vy, the company that operates commuter trains, thus effectively eliminating all competition in rail transport in the Oslo area. This does not bode well for the future of rail in Oslo.

I disagree with him. Abundance is about building in the US. The specific problems that the US faces cannot be generalized to the entire Western world. While it is true that many conflicting requirements must be considered, what makes the US unique is the involvement of judicial courts in what should otherwise be an administrative process. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), allows anyone to sue in court to attempt to stop any project they oppose. Essentially, even if a developer performs a thorough environmental impact assessment and concludes that there is no significant impact, anyone can challenge this conclusion in court, alleging that some impact has not been adequately considered. Such litigation stalls the project in a judicial process, adding significant time and uncertainty. In the best case, a project can be delayed several years; in the worst case, projects get cancelled.

There is a difference in degree and in kind between the US and Norway. Projects take longer in the US than in Norway, and the process is more complicated, expensive, and unpredictable there. Norway is in a much better position than the US, but there is room for improvement. Here I disagree with Lund again. He frames the problem as purely political and disclaims all responsibility. He writes that difficult cases will take a long time anyway, unless society, through a political process, defines clearer priorities. My assessment is that project review in Norway has substantial room for improvement without requiring political change. Projects go back and forth between developers and the administration, the administration takes considerable time to review proposals, and there are lengthy consultation processes. In some cases, multiple administrations review the same project.

There are obvious improvements that require no political change at all. Developers perform the environmental impact assessment themselves. There is no real need for the administration to conduct an in depth review of the assessment before approval. Approval should be granted by default. The administration should use its oversight authority to check afterwards, and impose fines or retract permits if deficiencies are found. There is no legal requirement for the administration to conduct the consultation process --this is something that developers can do themselves, but this option is not widely used. To be clear, I still think that the consultation process is important and should be carried out thoroughly, but by taking responsibility for it, developers can perform it simultaneously with the environmental assessment, instead of sequentially. Additionally, the consultation process can uncover issues that, while not related to the environmental impact, indicate that the developer has further work to do to secure necessary local buy-in for the project to succeed. Finally, the NVE already has a clear mandate to coordinate with other administrations that could be pursued more aggressively to avoid duplicate processing of the same project (main instruction for NVE, section 2.3). As far as I can see, very little has been done in this regard.

What happened with wind farms?

Lund writes that wind farms provide a cautionary tale against rushing the licensing of new energy generation. Ten years ago, there was significant political interest in wind farms in Norway, and the NVE was required to prioritize the processing of new applications. Later, public mood changed, and politicians reacted by pausing the processing of new applications. I am confused as to what this tale has to do with the question of why it takes so long to build electrical infrastructure in Norway. I do not think there would have been less opposition to wind farms if licensing had proceeded more slowly.

I suspect that the opposition to wind farms has little to do with how licenses are processed. Wind farms are a nuisance, as are as hydro power plants and any other infrastructure. Local opposition to infrastructure is mitigated by local gains. For example, in the case of small hydro power, local landowners enter into agreements with companies to lease their land and their waterfall rights for construction, thus benefiting directly from the development. This partially balances the concerns of other interest groups, like fishermen. In the case of wind power developed mostly on public lands, there is little or no direct benefit for the local population. Thus, in Norway, small-scale hydro power development is generally viewed favorably, while wind farms are not. This reflects the balance of local costs and benefits, rather than deficiencies in the permitting process. This is more evident when we compare the situation with other places that have different legislation and local rights, such as Spain. In Spain, all rivers and waterfalls are public domain, so there are few direct local benefits from small-scale hydro power development; consequently, small hydro is unpopular. Wind farms on private land, on the other hand, tend to be well received, for the same reasons that small hydro is popular in Norway. Landowners can lease their land on favorable terms to wind farm developers, so they benefit directly from the construction and help rally local support.

It is the local balance that matters

Norway does not suffer the same problems as the US regarding projects taking too long because of litigation risk. There are unique factors in Norway that make the permitting process too slow. Norway has a tradition of public involvement and consensus building that is important to maintain and respect. These traditions shape both current laws and how the laws are implemented. Nonetheless, it is possible to speed up permitting processes and conduct thorough environmental impact assessments while respecting both the letter and the spirit of the law.

The cost-benefit ratio of hydro-power projects in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was so advantageous that it would have been unthinkable to question them. Nowadays we still need more energy, but all suitable spots for large-scale hydro have already been developed. To produce as much energy, we need an array of smaller projects, whether wind farms, small hydro-power, or solar. Combined, they may produce the same amount of energy as a large hydro-power plant, but the cost-benefit ratio for each small project in isolation may be marginal. It is difficult to argue that any specific project is needed in that precise location to fulfill society's need for energy.

Opposition to infrastructure has more to do with the balance of direct costs and benefits than with the environmental impact of the projects. The problem of projects taking too long can be addressed by streamlining permitting processes, but I think it is equally important to consider how to secure local buy-in as well. That is the responsibility of developers.