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Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#51

Post by jypepin »

cimmanom wrote: post #7

How strict is your employer about butt-in-seat schedule? If you have full flexibility, I’d suggest aiming to hit 40 hours on a weekly basis rather than 8 on a daily basis. That gives you the flexibility to work, say, 10 hours one day because you’re really on a roll, and to stop at 6 hours the next afternoon when you’re tired and distracted without feeling guilty. Don’t go over 40 hours on a regular basis. That’s a re…

I don't agree with that, because the number of hours you work are pretty irrelevant when not in a butts-in-seats setup. Also, burnout is not really directly related to the number of hours you work.

Work should be focused on productivity, not hours spent. Employers, clients and managers have expectations of a quantity of work being accomplished for a specific budget, and it doesn't matter to them if its done in 2hrs or 200hrs.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#53

Post by murukesh_s »

peterkelly wrote: post #37

If I'm in the flow, I just keep going. My only hard-and-fast rule is that I'll stop if it gets to about 4am, because I find it very difficult to get to sleep if there's sunlight outside. I haven't always been this disciplined and sometimes used to go right through until I dropped from exhaustion, but discovered that was unhealthy. Having said that, I almost never get started before midday, and often it's only in the…

> and others where I really just can't get into the zone to do much of anything at all

Have you checked your sleep pattern when this happens? I have noticed if I did not get enough sleep (Because I was in a flow or anything else), it will catch up with me the next day. Can't concentrate no matter what until I get some rest again.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#54

Post by papacuppa »

dnautics wrote: post #23
cimmanom wrote: post #7

How strict is your employer about butt-in-seat schedule? If you have full flexibility, I’d suggest aiming to hit 40 hours on a weekly basis rather than 8 on a daily basis. That gives you the flexibility to work, say, 10 hours one day because you’re really on a roll, and to stop at 6 hours the next afternoon when you’re tired and distracted without feeling guilty. Don’t go over 40 hours on a regular basis. That’s a re…

I'm not convinced burnout comes from merely working hard, it comes from when you work hard and expectation of reward is missed.

Agreed. It seems to me that burnout from work would only be qualified if burnout from play was a thing - because work to the fortunate among us, is play. Managing expectation is key, or more palpably perhaps - anticipation. The scientist, Robert Sapolsky, has done some interesting work on how dopamine affects behaviour. He shows that we get far more pleasure/dopamine from anticipation [future] rather than reward [present], where dopamine dries up. Our endurance is largely about our perception of the future. Good video here if anyone is interested: https://www.theguardian.com/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2...

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#55

Post by scaryclam »

If your team are not able to have at least a short term roadmap for planning your work, then think about assigning points to tickets yourself. Let's say, you think you should be able to do 5 points a day. If you knock out 5 one pointers or one 5 pointer, that's your goal achieved, so you can clock out early if you want to (or carry on if you're in the zone). If you find 5 doesn't fit well (you're working too much or too little for your hours) change the numbering until it's closer.

Keep track of your progress and you should be able to get more of a feel for your own productivity (as well as getting better at estimating tasks).

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#56

Post by bitsquirrel »

13of40 wrote: post #49
dmourati wrote: post #44

Try the pomodoro technique. https://lifehacker.com/productivity-101-a-primer-to-the-pomo... https://open.buffer.com/work-less/

I do this. I also sometimes tell myself that if I can get these - let's call it 3 - things taken care of I can consider the day a success and leave early.

This is the best way I've found to get things done, with a corollary: spend a little extra time at the end of the day deciding on what tomorrow's 3 things are.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#57

Post by hobo_mark »

I wrote an app for my old pebble watch to display on the watchface how much I work. Some days are inevitably longer than others but by Friday evening I try to leave once I clocked 45 hours for the week. Any remaining brain power at the end of each day goes into side projects.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?

#60

Post by zzaip »

person_of_color wrote: post #40

How did you get a remote job at BigCo?

Sheer random fluke. Originally I was on a normal team - then that team got shut down, and I was transferred to a new team that was partially remote. Management wanted us to go into our nearest office, but it was far and nobody on the team was there anyways, so it was pointless. Management knew we might quit if they made us trek 3 hours round trip to this empty office, and the project was behind schedule and they couldn’t afford to find new devs. That was that.

It helps that the current project is iOS and there’s a dearth of qualified iOS devs here. If it was some generic service work, we probably wouldn’t have had much leverage. Crazy way to start my career!

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