Easy. Once I have to do pretrain 30min before training in the gym. Nothing except exceptional routine change (a short trip) or emergencies would get in the middle of that.
Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
101–110 of 123 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#102I know this is not bery popular point of view on HN but: Burn out? You are in your mid 20ies, if you can’t put in long hours and hard work now you won’t be able to do it later in life trust me. It really comes down to how industrious and conscientious you are rather then how smart and happy you are. If you’re a hard worker and know your job well you will make it on any job, even the ones with shitty management. If th…
Like i said, not very popular:) Question is why is everyone so obsessed with work life balance? I come from 3rd world country and I never heard of that concept before I moved to some European countries. I used to work anywhere from 6-16 hours a day and even night, I never complained and always did my job as best as I could, so not sure why is that viewed as horrible, and I feel the only reason people think about this…
No need to be sorry. I don't think many here will be envious of your point of view.
As for why work life balance is seen as something to be strived for, there might be several reasons.
Most workers here are thought workers, which means productivity is incredibly hard to measure. Along with this, the general consensus seems to be that we have limited number of hours of true productivity per day with this sort of work. (Idk if the science is there to back it up, but it is the consensus). So by this logic working 70 hour weeks has a cost.
Another reason is that an hour at work takes an hour from society as a whole. Another hour at work is an hour not being a husband, not raising kids, not spending money at bars with friends, not shopping (to the benfit of the economy) not cooking or other hobbies which develop well rounded citizens.
Also maybe to the larger point, why? Why give your life (50hpw+ consistently) to an employer if it's not needed and you don't love it? There is a whole world out there and you already give an majority size chunk of you life to work and sleep, what are you going to do with the rest?
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#103You're a junior SE and working remote? Yikes. I'd want others around that can help me out. So simply fixing bugs and adding features is a junior dev kind of task. Prioritization, understanding the business need - that's how you differentiate yourself at this point. It's not about hours worked but about identifying what is and what isn't as important.
Junior at big-co has a say in prioritisation and business need?
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#104How I handle juniors and beginners: It is ok to stay longer It is ok to stay longer especially as a beginner. You are in a learning phase. But still need to do your stuff. It is also ok to screw up or ask questions. Never ever go every week over 50 hours. I have a junior right now which works longer because he sees us working long hours. I will tell him soon to suck it up and go home on time.
To be honest (not always fair), if someone is working too many extra hours "to learn how it works", then that says something about the capacity and capability of the person.
Or the support/documentation/culture of the 'team' or organisation...
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#105I try to end my work day right in the middle of "Flow"; especially when I know _exactly_ what my next move will be.
This has two functions:
1. Gives me something to jump-start my next day with; I'll be eager to finish my work, instead of dallying on Slack/email/GitHub.
2. Keeps me from overworking. It's easy to think you're "being productive" by pushing lots of code late at night, but at least for me, this is when my lowest quality work happens as my brain has started winding down. Save it for later!
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest (not always fair), if someone is working too many extra hours "to learn how it works", then that says something about the capacity and capability of the person.
Or the support/documentation/culture of the 'team' or organisation...
Also true.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not that you asked, but this sounds like a totally dumb time for this meeting. It creates a reliable interruption, such that if it happens you're likely to be distracted enough that it isn't even worth trying to get back into serious work for 45 minutes before you need to go home. It's also late in the day, so any tasks that come up must pass a high bar to be actually remembered and resolved. A task must either be so…
I haven't found an actually good time to have these kinds of standup meetings. First thing in the morning is not good, because it requires people get in in time, and so it becomes a gate on starting work if you are on time until the latest person arrives. Also kind of useless to do until the morning email triage is completed. Midday doesn't work, I've found, because it is impossible to carve out a consistent time to…
What you're describing is a workplace with a generally broken approach to meetings. The best thing you can do with standup in this environment may be to eliminate it, or minimize it as you've described. But there is often a place for a standup meeting in many work environments, and barring the other stuff I'd suggest before lunch is a good time - anchored to another interruption that would happen anyway, and provides an incentive to finish quickly without making it a hard stop.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest (not always fair), if someone is working too many extra hours "to learn how it works", then that says something about the capacity and capability of the person.
Or the support/documentation/culture of the 'team' or organisation...
I work in consulting and in that it is about api platforms.
There is no documentation. Everything is new and unique :)
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#109> I want to do enough work to feel good about myself, without burning out.
Two things about this:
- I think you should be careful of linking your work ethic to your self worth
- It would probably help if you had a more clearly defined goal.
Common healthy goals are:
- I want to be Tech Lead in X years
- I want to retire early at X
- I want to learn about technology X and work primarily with it, here or elsewhere
- I believe in what my company is doing and I want it to succeed
From that standpoint, you can start to tie your behavior to whether or not it helps you achieve your goals.
> I have very little supervision from management, my coworkers seem to respect and like me, and I am generally productive.
I think you should also examine this. Don't let others set your priorities for you. If your manager or company want you to work more than you're comfortable doing, find another job. If your coworkers don't respect you based upon how much or little you work, find another job. If you find yourself not being productive for reasons like "this is boring", "I don't believe in this", etc., find another job. Dealing with situations like that -- while not always avoidable -- is a short road to burnout.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#110I think your approach of 8 hour day is fine.
Add to that anything you feel passionate about-- things you'd learn for 'fun' and you should be fine. (For me, there are tasks that I'd do even if I weren't employed at the time. Those are the 'after hours' items.)