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Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

reuters.com

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Re: Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

#41

Post by parthdesai »

assblaster wrote: post #10
AltruisticGap wrote: post #3

Monday morning off sounds like an awful idea. First off, even when I lack sleep, I'll function better in the morning if I force myself out of bed, and I'll have a big slump in the afternoon. If I sleep in instead to supposedly catch up sleep, I'll do OK.. but I won't feel any better in the afternoon.. I'll be a little off because of getting up late. Secondly, afternoons are more depressing. I'd rather get out of bed,…

I function by trying to work 7 days a week, without taking time off for vacation. What I've found is that I'm in general much happier having to wake up at a specific time every day with specific work goals. I feel like I'm in a sweet equilibrium with fewer disruptions from going on and off vacation. I make more money, I'm happier at home and work, and I feel better all around.

Don't take this the wrong way, but do you have like doing other things apart from programming? I couldn't imagine going in to work 7 days a week for the entire year which would mean i won't be able to go ski, travel, play soccer league, go camping, hiking etc..

Re: Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

#42

Post by beat »

badpun wrote: post #37
alexashka wrote: post #6

It'd help to avoid lumping all jobs into a single pile and proceeding to suggest a planet-wide remedy. A software developer has different needs from a convenience store employee. I hope that's obvious. I don't understand why this is even on HackerNews, because this article contains no news at all. It's just pandering to those who feel that working fewer hours is a good idea for them, nothing more. ps. if you're in a…

> if you're in a job that involves using your brain, you're not working more than 3-4 hours/day max. There are stream online of people doing mental work for 10 hours (with 5 min bathroom/snack breaks). I don't know if it's genetics or training, but some people can do it.

When I had the freedom to set my own schedule, I found my max productivity came by doing 2-3 days of 14-16 hours grinding, followed by 1-3 days of break where I didn't "work" at all. This corresponded to just how complex an idea I could fit in my mind at a sufficiently fine-grained level of detail to do real work on it.

Cal Newport's "Deep Work" is another approach to this, turning maximum productivity into a daily, scheduled system. I've also been influenced by "Four Disciplines of Execution", specifically the first discipline - pick no more than three Wildly Important Goals, and do not work on anything else. If it's not a Wildly Important Goal (and it's not an actual emergency), it deserves zero attention.

I've been lucky at my current gig to be able to speak this language, to talk about the cost of interruption. When you have one job, you can focus 100%. When you have two, you don't get 50/50, but more like 40/40, with the remaining 20 lost to context switching. And the more often you context switch (or "multitask", hahaha), the more focus and momentum you lose. I'm sure a lot of knowledge workers lose north of 50% of their available productivity to the thermal losses of context switching.

Re: Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

#43

Post by alexashka »

badpun wrote: post #37
alexashka wrote: post #6

It'd help to avoid lumping all jobs into a single pile and proceeding to suggest a planet-wide remedy. A software developer has different needs from a convenience store employee. I hope that's obvious. I don't understand why this is even on HackerNews, because this article contains no news at all. It's just pandering to those who feel that working fewer hours is a good idea for them, nothing more. ps. if you're in a…

> if you're in a job that involves using your brain, you're not working more than 3-4 hours/day max. There are stream online of people doing mental work for 10 hours (with 5 min bathroom/snack breaks). I don't know if it's genetics or training, but some people can do it.

Whatever they do for 10 hours, will be automated in 10 years, by people who work 4 hours or less.

My opinion of course :)

Re: Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

#44

Post by twblalock »

cpuguy83 wrote: post #18

It's not the number of days but the constant fire drills, everything is always top priority, notifications coming at all hours... and at least with software dev very rarely is it a priority to fix poor quality things thereby making even more fire drills.

If fire drills are the norm rather than the exception, you should find another job because you are working at a poorly run company.

There is always a tension between delivering features and delivering quality, but that's no excuse for constant fire drills and notifications. It's possible to handle the tradeoff better than that.

Re: Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

#46

Post by badpun »

alexashka wrote: post #43
badpun wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you're in a job that involves using your brain, you're not working more than 3-4 hours/day max. There are stream online of people doing mental work for 10 hours (with 5 min bathroom/snack breaks). I don't know if it's genetics or training, but some people can do it.

Whatever they do for 10 hours, will be automated in 10 years, by people who work 4 hours or less. My opinion of course :)

Isn't John Carmack able to code for 10+ hours straight? Will he be automated too? :) My point - as much as this forum seems to hate this notion (I usually get downvoted when I point it out), there's variance in human aptitude and stamina.

Re: Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

#47

Post by ehickox »

assblaster wrote: post #10
AltruisticGap wrote: post #3

Monday morning off sounds like an awful idea. First off, even when I lack sleep, I'll function better in the morning if I force myself out of bed, and I'll have a big slump in the afternoon. If I sleep in instead to supposedly catch up sleep, I'll do OK.. but I won't feel any better in the afternoon.. I'll be a little off because of getting up late. Secondly, afternoons are more depressing. I'd rather get out of bed,…

I function by trying to work 7 days a week, without taking time off for vacation. What I've found is that I'm in general much happier having to wake up at a specific time every day with specific work goals. I feel like I'm in a sweet equilibrium with fewer disruptions from going on and off vacation. I make more money, I'm happier at home and work, and I feel better all around.

I'm sorry what? To me, and probably most people, that sounds like workaholism. No vacation? How do you maintain your sanity? Don't you feel the need to disconnect every once in a while?

Re: Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

#48

Post by mark_l_watson »

For decades, I almost always worked four days a week, 32 hours/week total. Since I was working for mostly large companies, I didn’t make any sort of special deal to do this, I simply took a 20% pay cut. Well worth it. Looking back over the last 35 years, I don’t regret working less at all, with the extra time off spent with friends and family, and giving me time to write several books.

Re: Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

#49

Post by rewgs »

assblaster wrote: post #10
AltruisticGap wrote: post #3

Monday morning off sounds like an awful idea. First off, even when I lack sleep, I'll function better in the morning if I force myself out of bed, and I'll have a big slump in the afternoon. If I sleep in instead to supposedly catch up sleep, I'll do OK.. but I won't feel any better in the afternoon.. I'll be a little off because of getting up late. Secondly, afternoons are more depressing. I'd rather get out of bed,…

I function by trying to work 7 days a week, without taking time off for vacation. What I've found is that I'm in general much happier having to wake up at a specific time every day with specific work goals. I feel like I'm in a sweet equilibrium with fewer disruptions from going on and off vacation. I make more money, I'm happier at home and work, and I feel better all around.

Weirdly enough, I prefer the same (as a freelancer). 6 or 7 days a week with gently sloping down hours each day (long Monday, shorter Tuesday, even shorter Wednesday, etc) feels awesome. I get the hard work out of the way early in the week and arrive into the weekend relaxed, while still staying disciplined with my sleep schedule over the weekend (get up, do a couple hours of work, then go have fun).

Plus, vacations feel less necessary.

Re: Burnout, stress lead more companies to try a four-day work week

#50

Post by Retric »

beat wrote: post #39
Retric wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devops makes this worse. When the cycle between issue discovery and new code deployment shortens enough everything becomes an emergency. If it’s possible for a minor change to go into production within 24 hours, everything needs to be this fast. http://www.cc.com/video-clips/1myllo/the-miracle-of-flight

Prioritization problems exist independently from release cycle problems. "Everything becomes an emergency" is a symptom of broken priorities, not fast releases. If you're in the habit of doing 24 hour turnarounds, then a 24 hour turnaround is no longer an "emergency", it's just normal process. No reason to panic, or to act panicked. Emergencies are only emergencies if they interrupt work-in-progress.

The problem is not releasing 24 hours after you start working on something. That you can plan for.

The problem is when you discover something to work on and want it released in 24 hours then you are throwing away any existing schedule as you can’t plan for what you don’t know about.

Call it an emergency or just day to day operations, but the only way to work like that is to give up on the idea of a schedule of any kind.

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