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Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

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41–50 of 157 posts

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#41
post #36

There is no work-life balance in tech. You can deceive yourself but the balance died out something like 7-8 years ago. When the wave after wave of tech changes happening and new tools coming into existence, the only lifestyle you can have to stay gainfully employed is: work, work, work until some other commitment (sleep, wife, kids) eat up remainder of your time. Personally, I think in next 5-10 years, IT workforce w…

There is work life balance. In SF, in particular, some companies treat their tech work force like newborn puppies. Other areas of the country as well treat their engineers like they are unicorns.

If there is a move towards outsourcing it's that the effort of US programmers is lower than abroad and the costs are much higher (I'm not talking about quality, obv)

If you're being mistreated at work, I recommend looking for another employment. Last I checked there was a surplus of 80K programming jobs in the US per year.

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#42
If you can consistently wake up at 430AM in a standard workday and just carve out 5 hours of freetime in addition to the time others have you're either a savant, an inhuman monster who doesn't need sleep, or your job probably doesn't require you to do that much. Either way I'm not going to take your advice too seriously when it comes to universality.

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#43

Could we just stop using medium altogether? I just get a pop up asking me to pay $5/mo. Not going to happen.

One day, my grand parents told me a secret to access Medium without hassle.

I can't tell you in details since it's a secret but it really works, believe me. It's incredible. It has something to do with herbs, mindfulness and blocking JavaScript. Medium is so great when you do that.

On Android, IceCat Mobile blocks non free JavaScript and on Medium, it's a feature beyond the expectations.

I would call this graceful enhancement, or progressive degradation.

You start with a sane and nice baseline, and then add crap to that for supported browsers and configurations.

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#44
Does anyone else here find that the idea of a slow morning could have anything to do with the decline of quality, youth playtime, or time parents spend with kids. I found a fantastic article about this here a few months back that reminds me of what Hanock does here. Definitely worthy of a try. (https://houseoflawandorder.com/the-alarming-decline-of-quali...)

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#45
post #29
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids go to bed at 6pm.

What age are they? My 10yr old daughter is at soccer practice at 6pm... My 7yr old is reading books until about 8pm.

3 years and 9 months. Not a very representative sample, I'll admit.

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#46

If you can consistently wake up at 430AM in a standard workday and just carve out 5 hours of freetime in addition to the time others have you're either a savant, an inhuman monster who doesn't need sleep, or your job probably doesn't require you to do that much. Either way I'm not going to take your advice too seriously when it comes to universality.

Also could we maybe get an example of a person with a real job doing this? "Employee engagement" isn't exactly the kind of thing that requires, you know, faculties.

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#47

If you can consistently wake up at 430AM in a standard workday and just carve out 5 hours of freetime in addition to the time others have you're either a savant, an inhuman monster who doesn't need sleep, or your job probably doesn't require you to do that much. Either way I'm not going to take your advice too seriously when it comes to universality.

And you probably don't have young children.

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#48
post #38
post #25

I think it depends a lot on what you do with your phone/laptop in the morning. If the first thing you do is hop on email or social media, then yes, I can see how that could be psychologically draining. But if you start with news(ish) type things, that's just another way of "reading the morning paper". I personally start by checking HN and Reddit, and then curated news like the Associated Press app.

I think it's useful to point out that your Reddit and HN are curated too. I found Reddit's /r/all and logged out experience draining. The defaults on Reddit seem similar to other social media now. I found the frequency and filter quality of stories on HN to be better during weekdays and working hours. I think HN has better curation with more active users. It feels less like a News source during downtime.

That's fair to point out. They are curated, just curated differently.

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#49
post #5

Alternative: slow afternoons? I mean, my routine usually has me start with tech/work at 6am, but I wrap up around 2:30 and put some hours outdoors or in my other hobbies. I think the important part is just not spending ALL DAY doing any one thing. My grandma has a saying - "Everything in moderation, including moderation"

I have always heard the saying attributed to Oscar Wilde.

Re: Slow Mornings May Be a Secret to Tech-Life Balance

#50

If you can consistently wake up at 430AM in a standard workday and just carve out 5 hours of freetime in addition to the time others have you're either a savant, an inhuman monster who doesn't need sleep, or your job probably doesn't require you to do that much. Either way I'm not going to take your advice too seriously when it comes to universality.

And you probably don't have young children.

I have young children and waking up at 5am every morning is a life saver for me. By the time I finish the bedtime routine at night I'm usually too drained to do much that's productive, but by waking up at least 90 minutes before the rest of the house it gives me valuable quiet time to after a decent night's sleep to get things done.
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