Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Leave Work at Work

hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 60 posts

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#11

Post by momokoko »

politelemon wrote: post #3

To help with the 'defining' bit, I've been making a conscious effort to separate work from home over the past few months in a few ways. Even though I'm at home and nobody sees me most of the time, I get into "work clothes", even if it's just a T-Shirt or polo, and trousers. At 5-6PM, I'll shutdown the laptop and put it away, out of sight, and get back into "home clothes". The acts, despite its placebo effect, helps i…

For people new to working from home, having work clothes is one of the most beneficial things I do personally. I would say over the last 15 years of working remotely this is the most impactful intentional thing I do for my productivity and work life balance.

Plus, it’s a super easy thing to try for a few weeks to see if it works for you.

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#12

Post by itronitron »

mjlee wrote: post #9

Personally, the biggest win was to learn how to leave tasks unfinished. This pays off in two ways - firstly I finish work when I planned to instead of "just five more minutes", which inevitably spins off into a series of open ended diversions. Secondly, it means I can start the next day with something I can sink in to, avoiding the feeling of procrastination and guilt that comes along with that, ultimately resulting…

I found that stopping 20 minutes before I intend to leave and making a list of things to do (and their current state) allowed me to start the next day a lot more easily. And it also produces a log of things done which is additionally useful.

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#13

Post by leghifla »

_dwt wrote: post #7
dijit wrote: post #4

Tangentially related question for the hackernews audience: When you learn, do you do so on company time or personal time? I often feel like if I'm not "working" (IE; actually producing something) then I'm somehow cheating the company. This doesn't apply for the simple "trial-and-error" stuff that kind of comes as a part of the job, but sitting down to read a book or watch some tutorials etc; I could never imagine doi…

Have you ever been able to solve a problem at work that nobody else could, or solve it faster, or cleaner, or more robustly, by virtue of having learned previously about some random topic which you had no idea would one day be applicable to your work? I think most programmers have, and I'd hope that a good boss at a good organization would understand that - as long as you're accomplishing everything that's required o…

I once "solved" a tricky issue with a random bug in an FPGA processing data from DDR. The issue was hardware "malfunction": DDR can flip some bits if accessed in some ways.

No one on the team did know about that, no one believed my fix could work (a one line for a bug we investigated on and off for months). It did. I had read a computer security article about how row hammer can be used to gain privilege or something and made the connection.

During my yearly evaluation, I mentionned it as the most impact that year. I was nearly laughed at. This bug precluded the product from functioning more than a few minutes, and we targeted at least several hours without any glitch. No one noticed that without me in the team, the product was dead for a few more month at least.

I left a year later. The company is dead now.

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#14

Post by foobiekr »

wildrhythms wrote: post #2

tl;dr Step 1: Define “After Hours” Step 2: Have Mental Clarity Step 3: Communicate with Your Colleagues Step 4: Get Work Done at Work And I will add my own personal experience: Step 5: Realize you (probably) work a B.S. job[1]. I realized I was dedicating my precious life to the pursuit of profit for people at the very top to the detriment of my own well being. If my job disappeared tomorrow, would society be negativ…

That's a pretty good summary, but .. I think it depends.

IMHO for many tech companies, "After Hours" has come to not exist for many employees, especially in engineering. I work with teams in India and Europe; since Covid there's been a serious expansion of meetings with these teams, so 7am, 6:30 am meetings, 9pm meetings, and so on.

For a little while, it was fine, I am a helpful person by nature. But after two months or so, I decided this was not being treated as temporary, so started simply declining. It is not without political cost to do so. Being able to decline is a privileged position, and definitely there are many people in the company who don't think they have that option. Obviously that's wrong, but it has been so easy for many companies to impose this on their exempt workforce that I think turning back the dial will be a struggle.

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#15

Post by thecrumb »

wildrhythms wrote: post #2

tl;dr Step 1: Define “After Hours” Step 2: Have Mental Clarity Step 3: Communicate with Your Colleagues Step 4: Get Work Done at Work And I will add my own personal experience: Step 5: Realize you (probably) work a B.S. job[1]. I realized I was dedicating my precious life to the pursuit of profit for people at the very top to the detriment of my own well being. If my job disappeared tomorrow, would society be negativ…

#5. Amen. My blue collar friend has a saying - "8 and gate". I used to spend lots of time at work trying to get something finished. Or started. Or whatever. But at the end of the day I'm not getting paid for that, or praised for that. And if it doesn't get done today, or tomorrow - the world won't end. And I could be doing something more productive like exercising, spending time with my kids, etc. etc.

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#16

Post by klenwell »

mjlee wrote: post #9

Personally, the biggest win was to learn how to leave tasks unfinished. This pays off in two ways - firstly I finish work when I planned to instead of "just five more minutes", which inevitably spins off into a series of open ended diversions. Secondly, it means I can start the next day with something I can sink in to, avoiding the feeling of procrastination and guilt that comes along with that, ultimately resulting…

I was going to suggest a variation of this idea that I learned about here on Hacker News and have applied successfully since:

Try to stop on a bug or error.

Same reasoning you cited with a bonus: when you come back in the morning, you'll have an error message to help you quickly pick up where you left off.

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#17

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

wildrhythms wrote: post #2

tl;dr Step 1: Define “After Hours” Step 2: Have Mental Clarity Step 3: Communicate with Your Colleagues Step 4: Get Work Done at Work And I will add my own personal experience: Step 5: Realize you (probably) work a B.S. job[1]. I realized I was dedicating my precious life to the pursuit of profit for people at the very top to the detriment of my own well being. If my job disappeared tomorrow, would society be negativ…

What if you have a BS job, but want to raise your income? You need to put in the effort to get those promotions.

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#18

Post by paulryanrogers »

RyJones wrote: post #10

I’ve found partitions helpful. Slack is work, Discord is personal. Email is personal, Twitter is work.

This helps on mobile the most IMO. While Android can have separate profiles it's just so convenient to switch apps instead. At least for those who don't already have a separate work phone

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#19

Post by afarrell »

politelemon wrote: post #3

To help with the 'defining' bit, I've been making a conscious effort to separate work from home over the past few months in a few ways. Even though I'm at home and nobody sees me most of the time, I get into "work clothes", even if it's just a T-Shirt or polo, and trousers. At 5-6PM, I'll shutdown the laptop and put it away, out of sight, and get back into "home clothes". The acts, despite its placebo effect, helps i…

> placebo effect

If you want to keep your balance in life, it is helpful to adhere to certain regular routines and habits. There is in fact a musical about this, and the challenges of doing so:

- In a world with other people.

- While also allowing yourself and others the life-autonomy to pursue their happiness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw

Re: How to Leave Work at Work

#20

Post by bitwise-and »

klenwell wrote: post #16
mjlee wrote: post #9

Personally, the biggest win was to learn how to leave tasks unfinished. This pays off in two ways - firstly I finish work when I planned to instead of "just five more minutes", which inevitably spins off into a series of open ended diversions. Secondly, it means I can start the next day with something I can sink in to, avoiding the feeling of procrastination and guilt that comes along with that, ultimately resulting…

I was going to suggest a variation of this idea that I learned about here on Hacker News and have applied successfully since: Try to stop on a bug or error. Same reasoning you cited with a bonus: when you come back in the morning, you'll have an error message to help you quickly pick up where you left off.

In combination, this sounds great. You get a fresh start the next day and have context through the notes you wrote.
Post reply on HN