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On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

blog.lawrencejones.dev

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Re: On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

#41

Post by PragmaticPulp »

egypturnash wrote: post #37

A friend of mine who fell for the "work hard forever" idea just wrote a lengthy post venting about what this did to her: when you spend all your free time working/studying, and constantly turn down invitations to go do stuff with friends, people stop inviting you to things. And you drift out of friend groups because of this. Your social skills atrophy, you have no idea how to try and make new friends on the rare occa…

There's a difference between working hard with balance and working hard to the point of excluding everything else in life.

> when you spend all your free time working/studying, and constantly turn down invitations to go do stuff with friends, people stop inviting you to things.

If we consider a strict 40-hour maximum workweek on one end of the spectrum and what your friend is describing (100-120 hour workweek that leaves zero time for anything else), there's still a huge middle ground.

We don't have to choose between working so hard that our entire lives fall apart or not ever doing hard work at all. Many of us do work longer weeks when necessary, balanced with a healthy dose of social activity and things we enjoy. If someone is working so much that they lose all of their friends and even their social skills, something else is going on. Burning yourself out and withdrawing from society isn't what people mean when they say "hard work".

Like the author said, balance is important. Your friend's struggle wasn't necessarily with hard work, but with a complete lack of balance.

Re: On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

#42

Post by cweill »

cherryturnover wrote: post #15

I learned that working hard isn't the ticket to wealth. It's knowing people and putting on a good show that you work hard. I used to work hard and never really got "respect" for it (like promotions or whatnot). While I got shit done, it didn't give me what I wanted. Eventually I started coasting and chatting with coworkers more. I didn't sweat making mistakes either. It was literally the moment in Office Space where…

Exactly. One of the biggest things I keep in mind these days is that most people, myself included, are bad at knowing what's most important to get done. It may seems that more code is more work is good, but the banter with colleagues improves communication and cohesion which can have a much higher impact than writing that additional code. If a higher up tells you to do something, you can be pretty sure it's important (at least to your report chain), otherwise it can be tough to identify relative importance of work activities.

Re: On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

#45

Post by piva00 »

maccard wrote: post #3

I found myself nodding along to almost everything in this article; Two comments: > The problems pulled me in, and I’d get so involved I’d be unable to sleep until I solved a problem, sometimes escaping into my dreams if I hadn’t found a natural pause point. I can relate to this, so much. It's an incrediblely productive time period when my brain is like this at 7/8/9pm, but inevitably I lose out on a day or two follow…

> Nobody ever told me to work late, but nobody ever told me to _stop_ working. If my boss/bosses boss/ came up to me a once or twice and told me "hey, you shouldn't work past PM", particularly in my first few days, _and most importantly_ they left too, that would have set an excellent example on how to have a work-life balance.

When I moved to Sweden my first manager did exactly that. I was on my 3rd day and working until 18:00, he came to me and asked why I was still at my desk, I should've left an hour ago. He always enjoyed his time off and allowed us to be flexible whenever needed, it was an amazing example to set right at the beginning.

Re: On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

#46

Post by Scarblac »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #41
egypturnash wrote: post #37

A friend of mine who fell for the "work hard forever" idea just wrote a lengthy post venting about what this did to her: when you spend all your free time working/studying, and constantly turn down invitations to go do stuff with friends, people stop inviting you to things. And you drift out of friend groups because of this. Your social skills atrophy, you have no idea how to try and make new friends on the rare occa…

There's a difference between working hard with balance and working hard to the point of excluding everything else in life. > when you spend all your free time working/studying, and constantly turn down invitations to go do stuff with friends, people stop inviting you to things. If we consider a strict 40-hour maximum workweek on one end of the spectrum and what your friend is describing (100-120 hour workweek that le…

I work a strict 40 hour work week, but I hardly know anybody else who works that much in my social group in the Netherlands. 32 is far more common; I think only about 4 of the 80 people in the company I work for work the full 40. I only work this much because my wife is jobless.

So it's strange to see it described as the low end of the scale. I'd pick 24 hours per week.

Re: On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

#47

Post by joehandzik »

lawrjone wrote: post #39
joehandzik wrote: post #29

This is great, and covers aspects of work balance/integration/whatever-you-want-to-call-it that I haven't seen talked about as much. A big problem I see on an ongoing basis is the confusion between time spent working and work produced. After ~10 years in this field, I feel like a pitcher who loses their fastball sometimes, and have learned when to sense that and pull myself from the game (stop working). I feel for pe…

Author of the post here: what you say about pulling yourself away and recovering really resonates with me. What I'm working on is absolutely a factor in my interest, and how much energy I'm able to give- equally, how much the work pulls me in. But I've noticed I increasingly work in ebbs and flows, probably as I become more aware of my energy levels and how I want to commit my time. It doesn't help that my calendar h…

I consider that ebb and flow a totally acceptable part of human reality - as long as you find yourself not self-destructively procrastinating in the lower energy times, it seems sustainable to go at 75% (making up a number) sometimes and 125% later when the time or energy is available to you! I like feeling like it's my choice to go at 125% though - personal agency has always been key to keeping myself invested too.

The behavior modeling you describe in your post most resonated with me at the present moment - as I become more of a senior employee, I feel pressure to perform from management, but also pressure to model sustainable behaviors. The Netflix culture book covered some of this with respect to time off. Top-down is important for culture setting.

I am holding up well, thank you! But ~6 months at the new company, I wasn't holding up great and needed to seriously rethink my time management (hence a lot of this being fresh in my brain). I'm fortunate to have been able to fix this to the best of my ability before my son arrived - but at a company with a pride for startupiness (read: at times a total lack of planning), the balance I have needs pretty regular maintenance.

Re: On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

#49

Post by baby »

maccard wrote: post #3

I found myself nodding along to almost everything in this article; Two comments: > The problems pulled me in, and I’d get so involved I’d be unable to sleep until I solved a problem, sometimes escaping into my dreams if I hadn’t found a natural pause point. I can relate to this, so much. It's an incrediblely productive time period when my brain is like this at 7/8/9pm, but inevitably I lose out on a day or two follow…

One of my previous coworkers who was senior said one day “I try to leave around 5pm. It sends a message that people don’t need to stick around.”

Re: On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others

#50

Post by luffapi »

hshkdkkajdjdm wrote: post #48

I think it makes sense to work 60 to 120 hours a week when you work for your dreams. There is no sense working that many hours to fulfill someone else's dream.

It makes sense to work ~40 hours a week (or less) on something you love, because to work more means degrading your performance especially in software development, especially over time. If what you are working on is growing that fast to suck up that much of your time, hire and learn to delegate. That’s also good leadership.
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