[D9u]

John Carmack used to put in marathon sessions coding asm for DOOM... As with many other successful people, sometimes the work just flows and you forget about things such as time.

Could it be that those failing are failing because their ideas are just not as great as they had imagined?

[konstruktor]

Source, please. I have something more recent from him: Worked late last night, got insufficient sleep. Probably a net loss due to reduced efficiency today. https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/436349946732621825

[hengheng]

I have found flow-states very important for implementation, but disastrous for creativity.

I can do PCB routing, design and layout till 5am in the morning, but the day after I need to sleep well to do more conceptual work, or else I'll forget what I'm working at.

[TeMPOraL]

I strongly agree. I found for myself that when I have a clear goal and a path toward it already figured out, I can just sit down and code like crazy for long hours[0], even if I'm tired or start sleeping less. But if I need to do conceptual work (or just didn't think enough about the problem), trying to do anything when not being well-rested (7+h of sleep) is a waste of time.

[0] - as long as it's not Work. I'm a sad case of extreme intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation issues; my best well-rested extrisincly motivated hours are about 25% as productive as sleep-deprived intrisinc-motivated ones. I have no clue how to fix this.

[jey]

The key difference is internal vs external motivation. Those highly productive long hours are unsustainable on external motivation.

[brazzy]

They are unsustainable, period. In fact, the "highly productive" aspect is usually simply delusion.

[PhasmaFelis]

Yes, and I'm sure the mountains and mountains of evidence that long hours crush productivity and health are just manufactured by a bunch of bitter failures out to oppress you Randian supermen.

John Carmack can pull insane hours and retain productivity. Also, Usain Bolt can run hella fast. If you think that anybody can run as fast as Usain Bolt if they just suck it up and try hard, you're going to be very disappointed.

[mbesto]

We're gonna go in circles on this. Work more hours or less? What's the answer? If we continue to focus on one metric, we're going to continue looking at the problem through one lens.

The root of all of this (IMHO) is that our managers are currently incompetent. Good managers, motivate people, get their people to deliver on-time, and adapt the environment to make all of this happen. There is a difference between managing an organization ("You can't manage anything you can't measure") and managing people. The latter, I believe, is the problem.

[USNetizen]

That was a primary motivation for me writing this. More hours is not the metric we want to use to measure output or who's working "harder" or better.

It all comes down to the managers, who, unfortunately, are often influenced by this "longer hours must be better" mentality which is simply not true.

[w_t_payne]

I too have put in marathon coding sessions ... some of my best work has been done in such circumstances ... but try as I might, I just cannot turn "flow-state" on like a tap. Indeed, the more I try to push myself at work, the harder and harder it seems to be to get into flow-state. I wish I had a systematic way of encouraging that particular state of consciousness.

[mentos]

I find the flow state comes at the beginning of a project when theres a ton of marginal utility per line of code.

But as a project wears on new code more often than not is to repair broken aspects and not so much to build the new and exciting features. Constantly switching gears between different parts of the code base can be hard to maintain that beloved flow.

[USNetizen]

Having worked as a coder, I know what you mean. But those marathon sessions, however good the "flow" or "zone" is, are untenable in the long term and bad for productivity. The longer you work, whether you realize it or not, the more mistakes you'll make - which is lost productivity.

[watwut]

There is difference between short term and long term. You achieve more today by working today more hours, especially if you are in the flow. The catch is that flow has an end and the productivity drops after that end.

People are tired and start making more and more mistakes or less then optimal decisions. Or they spend more time chatting with colleges or staring into screen without doing much or do longer meetings cause they are only option for socialization.

[burntroots]

I see this assumption a lot in regards to Carmack's early work at ID. How do you know those marathon coding sessions didn't go like most do, where after 4-8 hours you start making more mistakes that you have to fix later? He seems to be able to churn out just as much code of similar quality now, when he only works a normal work day, as he did back then when he worked around the clock.

[USNetizen]

That is definitely one cause, absolutely. However, one cannot ignore the impact that working to the point of developing physiological issues is not good for business. It is definitely another contributing factor.

[Dewie]

Is it just me, or has John Carmack become a collective programming idol around here to the point of absurdity (absurd for any one person)? Or maybe it's just because of all of the VR controversy as of late. ´John Carmack does/did it´, well... I guess that settles it, then.