My favorite work-life balance commentary comes from Darren Aronofsky's film Pi : Sol Robeson You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks. Insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife... s…
It's funny: I'd mostly forgotten that particular scene, but the movie is strongly associated with questions of work/life balance in my mind.
Sometimes when I wonder whether I'm getting too carried away with intellectual work, an image comes to mind of Max Cohen standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a drill in hand.
Yeah, I'd like to see some actual data. Some kind of scientific study, anything. I don't say this because I'm a proponent of work-at-any-cost culture -- I'm not. I work about 45 hours a week, no weekends or nights outside of rare emergencies. That's certainly good for my mood and my relationship with my family and so forth. But I see all these articles in which they suggest that after 40 hours a week, your productivi…
It's comments like this that really make me sad about the state of labor solidarity among tech professionals. Like, please, stop torpedoing our negotiation position, especially on a public forum that many technical employers and managers read. On the object level, I have a suspicion that being productive past 40 hr/wk or so has reverse causation for me. It's bad for me to work over 40 hours a week, so that magically…
Do you realize that you're basically saying: "shut up with your facts, we've got a way of [easy hipster] living to protect"?
Yeah, I'd like to see some actual data. Some kind of scientific study, anything. I don't say this because I'm a proponent of work-at-any-cost culture -- I'm not. I work about 45 hours a week, no weekends or nights outside of rare emergencies. That's certainly good for my mood and my relationship with my family and so forth. But I see all these articles in which they suggest that after 40 hours a week, your productivi…
I think the real problem is that most of us spend the first 40 hours of a week on dull stuff and politics and don't learn anything. I think we should fix that first before doing more work in the evening.
It's comments like this that really make me sad about the state of labor solidarity among tech professionals. Like, please, stop torpedoing our negotiation position, especially on a public forum that many technical employers and managers read. On the object level, I have a suspicion that being productive past 40 hr/wk or so has reverse causation for me. It's bad for me to work over 40 hours a week, so that magically…
Do you realize that you're basically saying: "shut up with your facts, we've got a way of [easy hipster] living to protect"?
No, he is saying, you need to pace yourself. Don't burn out in your twenties. Most of you won't make your life better by working 80 hrs/week but you make life worse for a lot of people.
My favorite work-life balance commentary comes from Darren Aronofsky's film Pi : Sol Robeson You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he's received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks. Insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife... s…
This is the first time that I hear the claim that Archimedes was married. Wikipedia: "It is unknown, for instance, whether he ever married or had children."
It's a parable, not a claim. Since it's unknown whether he was married, just suppose he does. Then you can tell a story where the moral depends on him being married.
Yeah, I'd like to see some actual data. Some kind of scientific study, anything. I don't say this because I'm a proponent of work-at-any-cost culture -- I'm not. I work about 45 hours a week, no weekends or nights outside of rare emergencies. That's certainly good for my mood and my relationship with my family and so forth. But I see all these articles in which they suggest that after 40 hours a week, your productivi…
Here's some data & has a bunch of references to more data. http://lunar.lostgarden.com/Rules%20of%20Productivity.pdf The claim is not that 40 is some kind of hard threshold, and if you work any more than that you'll be instantly less productive. The claim is that a steady-state of, say, 60 hours per week is less productive long term. It's actually more productive for a little while, like a month, but then people get…
But even if 80 weeks ends up with only a 50 hour per worker per week extra benefit, because everyone is paid salary and it doesn't cost the corporation an extra penny to make people work 80 hour weeks, there's not any incentive for them not to push for it, unless people quit, but when you're working 80 hour weeks it can be hard to find the energy to hunt for a new job (and people start feeling like they have to do it, because whatever bullshit reasons have been provided), so people don't punish the employer by quitting anywhere near as much as they should.
It's anecdotally untrue. The most successful people I know work a lot of hours. I don't advocate it because I don't think it's healthy on a personal level but it's certainly an effective strategy to gain an advantage in the workplace and generally just get more stuff done.
>> The most successful people I know work a lot of hours. That's also anecdotally untrue.
Sure. I was pretty clear that this is my anecdote.
How many people out there really keep working on the weekends voluntarily as the author seems to suggest? I'm pretty clear with my coworkers/boss that the only time I'm going to work after-hours or weekends is in case of rare, extreme emergency. There's no expectation that I work weekends, so I'm definitely not going to do it voluntarily. I like programming and like learning new things so I often do work on a side-pr…
I have worked a few weekends in a row for a few hours. I opted to not work one weekend and my PM went to my manager to raise concern about getting deliverables out in time for a client.
It's anecdotally untrue. The most successful people I know work a lot of hours. I don't advocate it because I don't think it's healthy on a personal level but it's certainly an effective strategy to gain an advantage in the workplace and generally just get more stuff done.
Then the issue is with your definition of successful. If you only main for professional success, indeed, working more hours will put you at advantage. But having been with already some people on their last days of life, I don't remember any of them regretting of not having spend more time working, but always of having had more time with family and friends.
Clearly the definition here is success at work. Working long hours is unlikely to improve anyone's home situation unless they're impoverished and earning hourly wages or have a home environment so horrible that being at work is preferable.
You know what makes me the most productive? Working when I have the motivation to do so, I don't mean "I only want to work when I want".. But sometimes it'll be midnight, and you'll get that brainpower flowing for some reason (I tend to be a night owl)... Thankfully my position is flexible enough to then take the associated breaks the following day if I need to, or just go home if I'm not super productive (meetings p…
that's how Ive been doing it. During the day sometimes Im just goofing off...and then I make up the time at night. Ends up in a wash, but way more fun :)