May I suggest a purely rational, evidence based take?
The trap is your belief in a linear relationship between effort and
outcome. Working harder and longer produces more productivity, right?
That's false.
As you say so yourself, your memory goes to shit. It's not just a law
of diminishing returns. For coders, past a certain point, exhaustion
leads you to start undoing your work. You are into negative
productivity.
I've pushed through all-nighters where I poured out a few thousand LOC
only to find the next day that I had broken everything and introduced
more bugs than I had time to fix. I just had to revert. An exhausted
hacker is worse than no hacker at all. You're a liability to yourself
and the project.
So, like driving when tired, realise that the urge to continue is
completely irrational, and probably based in the emotional drives of
fear or pride. It would be completely irrational for any manager to
want you to code in that state, and anyone who pushes you to is also
the idiot.
There was a time a dozen years ago when I was working alone on my (over-elaborate, uncontrollably sprawling) graphics software product. One time I wrote a multi-thousand-line refactoring of existing code into a new class and felt very happy about getting it done. The next day I discovered that I had already done the exact same work the previous week, just as a slightly differently named class.
That wasn’t an isolated memory loss experience in those days. I ordered lunch, sat down, then five minutes later just stood up and left, assuming I’d already eaten. An hour later I realized what happened.
Long-term productivity is impossible without proper rest, including regular vacations where you’re truly out of work mode preferably for a week at the minimum.
But it's not strictly false! Not without qualification.
Outcome is a sort of quadratic function of effort, so with very little effort you improve outcome a lot. Then as you go on and put more effort in, you continue to improve outcome. As you put a lot of effort in, the size of the improvement declines, but the outcome is still improved.
Then at some level of effort there's a plateau, after which additional effort really does make things worse. But that plateau is a surprising amount of effort away! When researchers talk about declining productivity with increasing effort, they mean this first derivative of outcome, not declining outcome itself.
And, to get to my point, a line is an excellent approximation of this quadratic function for most of the range of it we see normally. So it's no surprise people try to extrapolate using it.
I think you have to acknowledge the complexity of the problem to help people understand the mistake!
I am not sure about that. There are always tasks that can be done without having to think too much about it. The more time you put into them, the more of those small tasks you can complete. I wouldn't start building new features or change important parts of the code base after a 10hr day for sure, but there is a lot more that can't "break everything".
The all-nighter that results from not-wanting to stop the creative process is not the all-nighter of the deadline death march.
Deltas between effort and outcome aren't negative in the flow-state. The are positive and non-linear..that's what flow-state is.
And the hard part is that grinding out metaphorical-all-nighters might be the best way to practice achieving and maintaining flow-state. At least to the degree learning to achieve flow state directly correlates to butt-in-the-seat time.
> Working harder and longer produces more productivity, right?
> That's false.
Indeed it is, but don't mix up productivity and product (how ever you measure it). Productivity is like speed. Product is like distance travelled. Of course a sprinter will go faster, a marathonian however will go further. Now let's try to take a purely business-oriented view on the matter. Product doesn't matter per se, only the income it can bring does, and it varies according to productivity. Just hire more people and make them work less ? Of course this never really happens as you will hit the Mythical Month-Man wall very fast.
I agree with what you're saying but as you said "evidence based", did you mean research-based evidence or anecdotal evidence? If you meant research-based evidence, can you provide it?
We are fundamentaly biurnal, you wake up, (in whatever state you prefer), and then do your thing with a limited (daily provided) resources that are awailable to you.
I like the idea and sentiment of your comment. but it doesn’t line up with my experience. Sometimes I stay up really late, I make a sacrifice and I get a lot done.
Generally, if I have to pull a massive effort (an all-nighter), which only happens a few times a year, I start with writing some tests that will keep the bug introduction problem to a minimum.
It works, though the frustration level is high. But better catch the bugs early than late.
I've heard people say this for years and have never experienced it, and I've done plenty of development while tired.
Certainly the next day, with a clearer head, I can see the mistakes I couldn't before, but I've never been so off-the-rails-wrong that I literally just trashed it all and started over.
I would be interested in a poll to see if this is a common thing for people. Do I have a super power in being able to work reasonably well in less than perfect circumstances?
I don't think most people that are like this rationalize it like this and make a conscious decision to act that way. It's more of a psychological compulsive thing, reinforced by becoming a habbit.
I agree with everything except the example. Driving is probably one of the most linear progressions you could have used as an example, assuming we're going point A to point B.
> small hurdles spike my anxiety, my anger flares at the slightest confrontation, I notice fewer jokes, fewer attempts on my part to make people laugh. My memory goes to all hell too and I can’t seem to concentrate on prolonged amounts of anything. Books fall off my radar, I stop listening to music. My phone is in my hand at all times, scrolly-anxiety-inducing apps become impossible to avoid.
This describes me perfectly. Unfortunately I can’t take a break because it’s entirely due to being the parent of young children.
I wish I'd understood the degree to which small children destroy you. The amount of focus time you get falls by 90%+, you sleep horribly every night without fail, and you spend every quiet moment waiting for one of them to start screaming because they found some new and ingenious way to hurt themself.
Maybe a lot of that was having a 1-3 and 3-5 year old wfh during covid, but I feel like I'm broken ever since.
Yeah, same, minus the phone bit. I absolutely hate the fucking thing. I keep it around because I need an app for communication with my twins preschool and it's undeniably a better point and shoot camera than most actual point and shoot cameras.
We have 3 kids, 3 years and under. I'm honestly more regimented in my personal life today than I was when I was active duty military. Things in (all of) our lives fall apart if I fall behind or start to slip. So I've become a sort of machine. I honestly think it's just a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that I've had to abandon entire categories of my self identity. I have 2, maybe 3 hobbies today. I get between 30 and 60 minutes of actual free time a day, but I like / want to spend time with my wife. I can't find time to maintain any relationships outside of my immediate family. I can't even really be more than 30 minutes from the house at any given moment, because my wife is still in recovery from the birth of our last child.
It's just very, very hard. We have little help, and most of the help we get is neither reliable nor consistent. My parents are visiting right now, from very far away, and this morning is the first real break that I have had in over a year. I stepped away 45 minutes ago and was able to get some much-needed cleaning done in the office. I plan to give my wife a break when her and our 1 year old wake up from their nap. That'll be the first time I've been able to do that on a weekend in longer than I can remember.
My one year old is relatively easy compared to other kids. She’s generally not fussy unless teething, very happy and playful, can play by herself well (if necessary), etc.
My wife was out of town for a week and I had to single parent… even an insanely “easy” baby is so exhausting. I have mad respect for single parents.
I basically had to give up work during the day until she went down for naps and for the night - which meant my sleep was awful because I’d work at least until midnight each night just to catch up.
Parenting is surprisingly hard (wouldn’t trade it for anything, though).
Even a couple hours of a quality break helps. Especially if it’s regular. Not just when things are already out of control. My wife and I will be forever grateful to my mom for providing few hours break weekly-ish.
I don't really have anything to add except that I'm grateful you brought this up because reading your comment and its replies was a nice reminder that we're not alone. One day our young kids will grow up and be more independent, which is bittersweet, but 100% necessary if I'm to have any life. Hang in there, parents.
On top of taking regular breaks, I think we should also work slower. Burnout is a scary place to be in. While the news calls it “quiet quitting”, I think many people are simply burnt out from the last few years of world conditions and add on the rubber band effect of everything going back to “normal”. It’s just too much change in a short amount of time.
I wrote a book about this topic when I was in a state of burnout. I had enough of the many different aspects of the world (overwork, the news, social media, etc) that I believe led to stress based illness.
I don’t feel bad for taking time off anymore. You got to put yourself first sometimes to be able to show up for others.
I work with a project manager who is obsessed with deadlines. "Hey do you have an update? When do you think it will be done? Hey, the deadline is really close!" They maintain a complicated Gantt chart. What happens when we miss the deadline? Nothing really, our updates aren't on a fixed timeline, and our users are very happy with our product today. Everything is artificial.
"Quiet quitting" is dumbest fucking buzzword I've ever heard -- it's just "doing what you're hired to do," i.e. the exact opposite of quitting. Our society is entirely too obsessed with conjuring new and novel terms for things that don't need them.
As a developer and a parent with young kids, it is nearly laughable at the amount of stress one deals with everyday.
Wake up at 5:30, get all things ready for kids, wake up kids, get their breakfast ready, check my (work phone - who decided work phones are a good idea).
Take kids to school, get back to work, meetings and more meetings ( countless meetings are a waste of time but they still have them)
Time for lunch, hell no time, skip lunch, I got to finish implementing this thought. Chat pops up, someone is asking for help, stop what you doing, help them, back at your thought, what thought???
Ah time to pick up kids, rush to school, look left and right for cops while you going fast. Pick the kids, go home, work with the kids homework (I am going through elementary again and again and again ….)
Time for dinner, cook dinner, kids need to get ready for sleep and finally I can get back to my unfinished thought.
Oh man, it’s late, I need to get to bed, to get ready for tomorrow.
Being single and having that level of anxiety and stress, multiply that times 10 with kids. That gives you an idea what life as a developer with little children is.
It is called the “hamster wheel syndrome”. You think you are getting where you want to get, just to find out that you are stuck in the same place where you started but a hell a lot of more stress and anxiety.
1- taking breaks is important, but can’t seem to take them
2- we don’t do it enough as we don’t feel as we have time
3- life is moving to fast (stupid Covid) to stop and do things that matter in life (family and friends)
4- If we are not here one day, I promise no one from work will miss you past one week. Family and real friends will remember you forever.
Life is short, cherish it. (Coming from a guy that never stops working)
Are you me? This is precisely what my life feels like. Honestly, one kid was actually manageable; two sort of hit the breaking point (it didn’t help that my work went to hell at the same time), but then we had twins and life now feels basically untenable with both of us working.
I love my kids profoundly, and I think in the long run I will be happier than if I’d not had them and focused on work instead (work tends not to care about you after you leave. Maybe if you’re Steve Jobs or something). But in the moment, life is pretty stressful.
I have a solution for you: be less productive. Seriously. Ramp down slowly so no one noticed, but just stop caring how much you get done. It doesn't matter. Or at least it doesn't matter nearly as much as you or your kids.
I've come to think that breaks are actually a necessity, just like sleep. Yes, you can compromise for a while but it will catch up to you. With young children you're basically trying to outlast the sleep deprivation but it cannot go on indefinitely (fortunately children grow up). I know it's easy to say, but I truly believe the vast majority of people require a breaks or will inevitably suffer extremely negative consequences.
Not that that will reduce your anxiety but if burnout hits you it's genuinely devastating.
Work life balance is a hot topic. Personally, I think it is healthier to balance daily instead of yearly. I walk 1-2h/day, work maximum 8 hours a day, but havnen't had a 'vacation' in ages. I sort of tried taking 2 weeks to sit on a beach and it really didn't work for me. Just broke my routines and made me stressed.
Friends and family tell me I am stupid but I feel pretty happy. By taking a vacation every day instead of every year, I do not 'work in order to live'.
Though on the contrary, it is still nice to disconnect from the internet for 72h sometimes and I should probably do that more often.
I have definitely been there. Once you get too tired your brain doesn't work well enough to tell you you need breaks. Your brain after a break (e.g. a week's holiday) just feels completely different.
What I do now is this: My first task after coming back from a break is to book a week's vacation ten weeks from that time. I work ten weeks, and take a week's break, that's my rule.
Even though it will be difficult to imagine I'll need a break after I've just come back from one.
Book it on the company's vacation planning tool if I'm employed, or on my calendar (and inform my customers) if I'm self-employed.
I don't worry about where to go, or what to do during it, or try to find the best time to go based on events I might be invited to (which I might not know yet), or which projects I'll be working on and when the best time for a break would be to fit in with them. A break isn't about any of that.
I firmly believe that people should take at least one day of the week to not work at all. My code is very buggy and sloppy when I'm completely exhausted, even my grammar and ability to organize ideas falls apart.
For many people it's traditionally Sunday or Saturday, but even if you don't observe a day of rest religiously, it is still very practical. If you are involved with intellectual work like coding, switching your brain to just relax and enjoy life at least one day a week will refresh your focus and drive.
Alan Perlis said to understand a program you must become both the machine and the program, and he also admits that programming is an unnatural act. Programming is essentially forcing your mind to think like a machine, and you can't do this all the time or it will burn you out.
Don't neglect your mental wellbeing, take care of yourself! If you want to be productive, this will help you in the long run. The servers will keep running if you take a bit of time off, people aren't built for 24/7 uptime.
Heck I can’t even go a full day without taking breaks every hour or two so I can move around. I am built for action, not to be sedentary like some others. So I have to find a balance - water breaks, bathroom, vape outside, go to the chiro during office hours, etc.
It really works for me. Letting my brain organize things to come or solve things in process isn’t always an active thing. I let the runtime process operate in the background while I enjoy the outdoors. Not everybody has this fortunate tool, but since I do, I use it extensively.
What really really sucks is when you're so burnt out that taking breaks doesn't even begin to help. At some point you either need a multi month long break to actually begin to recover, OR you need to address the issues at work itself so that a regular break actually works.
This is extremely privileged advice, but the only thing I managed to do to help was to have a second place to go to where I didn't work - in my case a little cabin in the woods. Going there on the weekend forces me to take breaks. If I'm at home I'm working. It doesn't help that I'm a solo founder. Work is very rewarding but it can also be all consuming. And there my piano sits untouched.
I wish employers would see that their employees need to take a break, especially in this type of work where a lot of us really enjoy creating things... At my previous job I didn't even dare asking for vacation
There is so much sense in the traditional (in various forms in various cultures, but always there) yearly cycle of holidays, periods between holidays, periods of waiting for holidays, and we suffer from having largely disconnected from it.
> small hurdles spike my anxiety, my anger flares at the slightest confrontation
This has been me for the past few months at FAANG. Basically, behaving completely disrespectfully to my boss. Anywhere else I’d been fired, but I guess if you deliver it’s fine?
We had meeting after meeting about how to work better together. I think we both knew I needed a break and I’m taking one. But I would never expect a boss to tell you to not show up to work. Even though they won’t think twice before asking you to work late or the weekend.
I think we've conflated hard work with results.
Hard work is a symptom that we're doing something incorrectly.
Either it's too challenging for us, or we're doing it the wrong way.
There seems to be too much value on hard work, and not enough on efficient progress, breaking things down into challenges that we're capable of achieving.
Hard work is never accomplished, it's only once we break them down into achievable tasks that we're ever able to tackle something initially deemed as hard.
It is more difficult to build the habits that’d allow for a smoother, less peak and valley ridden life, so we succumb to cycles of burnout and super charged recovery.
The most trivial but clear evidence of the power of breaks for me is a really tough crossword clue. I’ll be wracking my brain trying to get the answer and come up with nothing. Eventually I’ll give up and do something else, and when I pick it back up a few hours later, the answer immediately comes to me and I can’t believe I couldn’t get it before.
Super productive people usually only work a few hours a day. The rest of the time they think about how to solve the problems more efficiently with more automation and less work.
Doing the thinking part properly can make the difference between a project that takes 3 years and one that takes a few months.
[+] [-] nonrandomstring|3 years ago|reply
The trap is your belief in a linear relationship between effort and outcome. Working harder and longer produces more productivity, right?
That's false.
As you say so yourself, your memory goes to shit. It's not just a law of diminishing returns. For coders, past a certain point, exhaustion leads you to start undoing your work. You are into negative productivity.
I've pushed through all-nighters where I poured out a few thousand LOC only to find the next day that I had broken everything and introduced more bugs than I had time to fix. I just had to revert. An exhausted hacker is worse than no hacker at all. You're a liability to yourself and the project.
So, like driving when tired, realise that the urge to continue is completely irrational, and probably based in the emotional drives of fear or pride. It would be completely irrational for any manager to want you to code in that state, and anyone who pushes you to is also the idiot.
[+] [-] pavlov|3 years ago|reply
That wasn’t an isolated memory loss experience in those days. I ordered lunch, sat down, then five minutes later just stood up and left, assuming I’d already eaten. An hour later I realized what happened.
Long-term productivity is impossible without proper rest, including regular vacations where you’re truly out of work mode preferably for a week at the minimum.
[+] [-] kqr|3 years ago|reply
Outcome is a sort of quadratic function of effort, so with very little effort you improve outcome a lot. Then as you go on and put more effort in, you continue to improve outcome. As you put a lot of effort in, the size of the improvement declines, but the outcome is still improved.
Then at some level of effort there's a plateau, after which additional effort really does make things worse. But that plateau is a surprising amount of effort away! When researchers talk about declining productivity with increasing effort, they mean this first derivative of outcome, not declining outcome itself.
And, to get to my point, a line is an excellent approximation of this quadratic function for most of the range of it we see normally. So it's no surprise people try to extrapolate using it.
I think you have to acknowledge the complexity of the problem to help people understand the mistake!
[+] [-] nik736|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|3 years ago|reply
Just like avoiding meetings.
Just like achieving flow state.
The all-nighter that results from not-wanting to stop the creative process is not the all-nighter of the deadline death march.
Deltas between effort and outcome aren't negative in the flow-state. The are positive and non-linear..that's what flow-state is.
And the hard part is that grinding out metaphorical-all-nighters might be the best way to practice achieving and maintaining flow-state. At least to the degree learning to achieve flow state directly correlates to butt-in-the-seat time.
Which it does.
[+] [-] fitch321|3 years ago|reply
Indeed it is, but don't mix up productivity and product (how ever you measure it). Productivity is like speed. Product is like distance travelled. Of course a sprinter will go faster, a marathonian however will go further. Now let's try to take a purely business-oriented view on the matter. Product doesn't matter per se, only the income it can bring does, and it varies according to productivity. Just hire more people and make them work less ? Of course this never really happens as you will hit the Mythical Month-Man wall very fast.
[+] [-] depr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] novosel|3 years ago|reply
We are fundamentaly biurnal, you wake up, (in whatever state you prefer), and then do your thing with a limited (daily provided) resources that are awailable to you.
Repeat.
[+] [-] bamboozled|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zasdffaa|3 years ago|reply
- some computer bod I can't remember
[+] [-] inglor_cz|3 years ago|reply
It works, though the frustration level is high. But better catch the bugs early than late.
[+] [-] P5fRxh5kUvp2th|3 years ago|reply
I've heard people say this for years and have never experienced it, and I've done plenty of development while tired.
Certainly the next day, with a clearer head, I can see the mistakes I couldn't before, but I've never been so off-the-rails-wrong that I literally just trashed it all and started over.
I would be interested in a poll to see if this is a common thing for people. Do I have a super power in being able to work reasonably well in less than perfect circumstances?
[+] [-] nske|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nurettin|3 years ago|reply
- Am I tempted to erase types? - Am I tempted to disable unit tests? - Am I tempted to go for technical debt?
Then yes, I have to take a long walk, read a book, or do some manual work until I feel refreshed and wide perspective returns.
[+] [-] goodpoint|3 years ago|reply
More likely guilt, due to social expectations around productivity. Many senior developers experience impostor syndrome.
The amount of posts around productivity hacks and tricks on HN is telling.
[+] [-] xboxnolifes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathias|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|3 years ago|reply
Right. But I'd take it a step further and add...productive is not effective.
[+] [-] gubernation|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greymalik|3 years ago|reply
This describes me perfectly. Unfortunately I can’t take a break because it’s entirely due to being the parent of young children.
[+] [-] CalRobert|3 years ago|reply
Maybe a lot of that was having a 1-3 and 3-5 year old wfh during covid, but I feel like I'm broken ever since.
[+] [-] scruple|3 years ago|reply
We have 3 kids, 3 years and under. I'm honestly more regimented in my personal life today than I was when I was active duty military. Things in (all of) our lives fall apart if I fall behind or start to slip. So I've become a sort of machine. I honestly think it's just a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that I've had to abandon entire categories of my self identity. I have 2, maybe 3 hobbies today. I get between 30 and 60 minutes of actual free time a day, but I like / want to spend time with my wife. I can't find time to maintain any relationships outside of my immediate family. I can't even really be more than 30 minutes from the house at any given moment, because my wife is still in recovery from the birth of our last child.
It's just very, very hard. We have little help, and most of the help we get is neither reliable nor consistent. My parents are visiting right now, from very far away, and this morning is the first real break that I have had in over a year. I stepped away 45 minutes ago and was able to get some much-needed cleaning done in the office. I plan to give my wife a break when her and our 1 year old wake up from their nap. That'll be the first time I've been able to do that on a weekend in longer than I can remember.
[+] [-] Swinx43|3 years ago|reply
I refer to it as the best kept secret of parenthood. No one tells you this until you are in it.
[+] [-] ar_lan|3 years ago|reply
My wife was out of town for a week and I had to single parent… even an insanely “easy” baby is so exhausting. I have mad respect for single parents.
I basically had to give up work during the day until she went down for naps and for the night - which meant my sleep was awful because I’d work at least until midnight each night just to catch up.
Parenting is surprisingly hard (wouldn’t trade it for anything, though).
[+] [-] mantas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitsoda|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thenerdhead|3 years ago|reply
I wrote a book about this topic when I was in a state of burnout. I had enough of the many different aspects of the world (overwork, the news, social media, etc) that I believe led to stress based illness.
I don’t feel bad for taking time off anymore. You got to put yourself first sometimes to be able to show up for others.
[+] [-] wildrhythms|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rewgs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] almost_usual|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slics|3 years ago|reply
Wake up at 5:30, get all things ready for kids, wake up kids, get their breakfast ready, check my (work phone - who decided work phones are a good idea).
Take kids to school, get back to work, meetings and more meetings ( countless meetings are a waste of time but they still have them)
Time for lunch, hell no time, skip lunch, I got to finish implementing this thought. Chat pops up, someone is asking for help, stop what you doing, help them, back at your thought, what thought???
Ah time to pick up kids, rush to school, look left and right for cops while you going fast. Pick the kids, go home, work with the kids homework (I am going through elementary again and again and again ….)
Time for dinner, cook dinner, kids need to get ready for sleep and finally I can get back to my unfinished thought.
Oh man, it’s late, I need to get to bed, to get ready for tomorrow.
Being single and having that level of anxiety and stress, multiply that times 10 with kids. That gives you an idea what life as a developer with little children is.
It is called the “hamster wheel syndrome”. You think you are getting where you want to get, just to find out that you are stuck in the same place where you started but a hell a lot of more stress and anxiety.
1- taking breaks is important, but can’t seem to take them
2- we don’t do it enough as we don’t feel as we have time
3- life is moving to fast (stupid Covid) to stop and do things that matter in life (family and friends)
4- If we are not here one day, I promise no one from work will miss you past one week. Family and real friends will remember you forever.
Life is short, cherish it. (Coming from a guy that never stops working)
[+] [-] bertr4nd|3 years ago|reply
I love my kids profoundly, and I think in the long run I will be happier than if I’d not had them and focused on work instead (work tends not to care about you after you leave. Maybe if you’re Steve Jobs or something). But in the moment, life is pretty stressful.
[+] [-] eggsmediumrare|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigDinosaur|3 years ago|reply
Not that that will reduce your anxiety but if burnout hits you it's genuinely devastating.
[+] [-] sixhobbits|3 years ago|reply
Friends and family tell me I am stupid but I feel pretty happy. By taking a vacation every day instead of every year, I do not 'work in order to live'.
Though on the contrary, it is still nice to disconnect from the internet for 72h sometimes and I should probably do that more often.
[+] [-] adrianmsmith|3 years ago|reply
What I do now is this: My first task after coming back from a break is to book a week's vacation ten weeks from that time. I work ten weeks, and take a week's break, that's my rule.
Even though it will be difficult to imagine I'll need a break after I've just come back from one.
Book it on the company's vacation planning tool if I'm employed, or on my calendar (and inform my customers) if I'm self-employed.
I don't worry about where to go, or what to do during it, or try to find the best time to go based on events I might be invited to (which I might not know yet), or which projects I'll be working on and when the best time for a break would be to fit in with them. A break isn't about any of that.
[+] [-] calrain|3 years ago|reply
2 years starting a new startup
5 years after it was acquired
Total burnout...
I resigned and am 10 months into a break, it's the best thing I've ever done!
[+] [-] bdbenton|3 years ago|reply
For many people it's traditionally Sunday or Saturday, but even if you don't observe a day of rest religiously, it is still very practical. If you are involved with intellectual work like coding, switching your brain to just relax and enjoy life at least one day a week will refresh your focus and drive.
Alan Perlis said to understand a program you must become both the machine and the program, and he also admits that programming is an unnatural act. Programming is essentially forcing your mind to think like a machine, and you can't do this all the time or it will burn you out.
Don't neglect your mental wellbeing, take care of yourself! If you want to be productive, this will help you in the long run. The servers will keep running if you take a bit of time off, people aren't built for 24/7 uptime.
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|3 years ago|reply
It really works for me. Letting my brain organize things to come or solve things in process isn’t always an active thing. I let the runtime process operate in the background while I enjoy the outdoors. Not everybody has this fortunate tool, but since I do, I use it extensively.
[+] [-] Trasmatta|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tekstar|3 years ago|reply
This is extremely privileged advice, but the only thing I managed to do to help was to have a second place to go to where I didn't work - in my case a little cabin in the woods. Going there on the weekend forces me to take breaks. If I'm at home I'm working. It doesn't help that I'm a solo founder. Work is very rewarding but it can also be all consuming. And there my piano sits untouched.
[+] [-] quechimba|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idontwantthis|3 years ago|reply
I used to feel brain fog and “procrastinate” constantly. I was tired.
[+] [-] admissionsguy|3 years ago|reply
There is so much sense in the traditional (in various forms in various cultures, but always there) yearly cycle of holidays, periods between holidays, periods of waiting for holidays, and we suffer from having largely disconnected from it.
[+] [-] oldsklgdfth|3 years ago|reply
This has been me for the past few months at FAANG. Basically, behaving completely disrespectfully to my boss. Anywhere else I’d been fired, but I guess if you deliver it’s fine?
We had meeting after meeting about how to work better together. I think we both knew I needed a break and I’m taking one. But I would never expect a boss to tell you to not show up to work. Even though they won’t think twice before asking you to work late or the weekend.
How do you handle such situations?
[+] [-] w_for_wumbo|3 years ago|reply
There seems to be too much value on hard work, and not enough on efficient progress, breaking things down into challenges that we're capable of achieving.
Hard work is never accomplished, it's only once we break them down into achievable tasks that we're ever able to tackle something initially deemed as hard.
[+] [-] luxurytent|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cainxinth|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbrodersen|3 years ago|reply
Doing the thinking part properly can make the difference between a project that takes 3 years and one that takes a few months.