Excuse me for the off-topic, but how did you find that job? Junior + remote seems a very difficult combination.
Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
81–90 of 123 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#82Using TDD (Test Driven Development) I tend to stop working when fatigue sets in and I'm tempted to skip unit tests for the sake of immediate gratification.
Unless that sweet green bar is your immediate gratification.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#83This is what works for me. 1. Start the day with a plan (15 to 30 min) 2. List things that, absolutely, need to be completed 3. List things that would be great if can be completed (bonus) 4. Have a set time when you are going to finish work. For me, 6pm. So when 3 or 4pm hits and I still have 1 or 2 things from my list #2 above, I get on it right away. That also helps me to stay on track whenever I am in meeting or u…
Starting with a plan has been absolutely essential for me.
This year I started a business which means I work full time from home (or a nearby coffee shop), because my co-founder is in a different city and timezone.
While I've worked part-time remote and on distributed teams before, the lack of structure from being your own boss has been a huge change. A blessing and a curse to be sure.
When I start the day without a plan, even if I "get lots of things done", I feel stressed all day and am almost certainly not effective.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#84How 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…
Interesting, I would advise the reverse, get into a daily routine, try to not variate too much, and avoid working the weekends.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#85When the clock hits 4pm, I have a daily standup meeting. About half the time, this meeting occurs, and I go home afterwards immediately. If it doesn't happen, a quorum of people had something better to do. If I don't have anything actually urgent or interesting, I tend to bail with the others. Otherwise, I work away until maybe 5:15, then I go home. I'm basically paid to be on-hand 9-5, so that's what I do. I don't c…
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 urgent that it is worked on immediately (and then people will resent the standup for making them stay late) or so important that it can be remembered the next day. This means a whole bunch of simple-to-fix issues are probably being ignored, either by forgetting or just not being raised in the first place.
I'm not surprised that the meeting often doesn't happen. A better time for a standup is before lunch or earlier in the morning.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#86A lot of good answers but I'll throw mine into the mix. Assuming I know what the ultimate goal is for what I'm currently working on, the day-to-day becomes working towards what I call momentum tasks for the next morning. The start of the day is when I'm at the highest risk of being derailed, so super easy tasks are paramount. So before I wrap up for the day, I'm making sure I'm stopping at a point where I know - and…
> I'm making sure I'm stopping at a point where I know - and perhaps am excited - to continue the following day. I never stop at an impasse, personally.
This is a very nice trick, and one that's less likely to happen by accident if you set your own hours.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#87How 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…
From my own experience, burnout is primarily emotional . Time spent is a side-effect. It's not how many hours you work, it's how much of your experience involves despair, frustration, and resentment. That might either be towards your employer ("stupid schedules, I'm not valued"), towards yourself ("this should be easy but I'm failing"), or towards the universe for simply not being the way it "should" be.
It’s both. You can be fine doing somehing you hate for a couple of hours. But 12h and more.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#88I 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 is cos it’s easy to find a job in this profession, I don’t see people working in Mcdonalds or stock traders talking about it.
I’m sorry if you don’t share that point of view.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#89How 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.
Spot on. When I was younger I could do 15 hour days without looking at the clock when orders were coming in and shipments were going out. Reward is a big motivator for time invested.
Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when you've done enough work for the day?
#90Feeling good about oneself is obviously very personal. From your post it seems that you're mostly satisfied with your flow. So your motivation is a key for the adjustments that you're seek.
If your motivation is about advancing in your career (getting noticed), then it's somewhat specific to your workplace.
What's it there that gets one promoted? Overwork? Yes-man? Report athletics? Plain year count?
Either way, being junior you need some feedback from your supervisor, both to show your progress and to gauge the expectations. There's probably a yearly review system in place, if not yet. So setting one own goals is a good way to prepare for a future review.
In a kind of 'conveyor' style of workflow where you just draw tasks from the stack it may be harder to see the larger project scope. But it's still there.
Your department/team may have commitments, e.g. to reduce the bug backlog, to deliver features for integration. Basically, it's business goals, larger than just a personal churn.
Once you understand how to contribute to the team value, you can decide about how much is your fair contribution.