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

40 Hour Work Weeks Suck

blog.regehr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–66 of 66 posts

Re: 40 Hour Work Weeks Suck

#61

Post by quanticle »

cryptoz wrote: post #11
wccrawford wrote: post #3

"People who hate their jobs often work 40 hours weeks, why be one of them?" Working 40 hours doesn't make you one of them. It's not even a symptom of the real problem. I work 40 hours weeks, and love my job. And I loved my last job. And I liked all the jobs before that. That's because I have pride in doing my job well, I've worked for people who appreciate it (even if that sometimes means the customer, and not my bos…

> I work 40 hours weeks, and love my job. Do you work exactly 40 hours? As in, start and 9am, leave at 5pm and never arrive early or leave late? Never a week of 41 hours? Because if I worked at a job I absolutely loved - as you describe - I would probably choose to work 50 or 60 hours. I think that the assumption here is that if you work 40 hours, you're probably doing it because that's what is expected of you and yo…

>Do you work exactly 40 hours? As in, start and 9am, leave at 5pm and never arrive early or leave late? Never a week of 41 hours? Because if I worked at a job I absolutely loved - as you describe - I would probably choose to work 50 or 60 hours. I think that the assumption here is that if you work 40 hours, you're probably doing it because that's what is expected of you and you're not willing to put in more.

Either that or you've put in anywhere between 50 and 80 hours in the past, burned out, and learned your lesson. Sometimes, I have to force myself to stop and go home after eight hours. In the moment, it feels horrible, as if I'm "quitting" or "giving up". I have to remind myself that I'm not quitting, but instead am forcing myself into a sustainable pace.

The marathoners learned this ages ago. If you allow yourself to take a fast pace right away, you'll burn out towards the end and won't have enough energy to finish. Debugging a subtle bug or implementing major new functionality is like a marathon. Even after you've accomplished the main effort, there are lots of little things that need to be done in order to go from "done" to "usable". Forcing a 40 hour work week ensures that you save some of your energy for the polishing and don't flame out after building the skeleton of the solution.

Re: 40 Hour Work Weeks Suck

#62

Post by hugh3 »

lionhearted wrote: post #60
hugh3 wrote: post #12

I work 40 hour weeks. Nine to five. I got into the habit when I started my PhD, because I knew that if I didn't force myself to work to a certain schedule, I'd probably slack off. If I only worked when I felt like it, on what I felt like working on, I would never have finished my thesis because, heck , who wants to do proofreading when you could be at the beach? And if I ate whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like…

Have you ever tried going earlier? If you want to do eight hours, try out 4:30AM to 12:30PM sometime. It's hard to stick on it (you've got to be disciplined about going to bed early), but it's great for getting things done while it's still super quiet and peaceful out, and it's awesome having completed the workday at lunchtime.

Yeah, I periodically try to shift it a bit earlier -- 8 'til 4 is nice.

Not sure I could cope with quite that early though. For one thing, it would destroy my morning go-get-coffee ritual if there were no cafes open when I get up.

Re: 40 Hour Work Weeks Suck

#63

Post by rhizome »

lionhearted wrote: post #60
hugh3 wrote: post #12

I work 40 hour weeks. Nine to five. I got into the habit when I started my PhD, because I knew that if I didn't force myself to work to a certain schedule, I'd probably slack off. If I only worked when I felt like it, on what I felt like working on, I would never have finished my thesis because, heck , who wants to do proofreading when you could be at the beach? And if I ate whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like…

Have you ever tried going earlier? If you want to do eight hours, try out 4:30AM to 12:30PM sometime. It's hard to stick on it (you've got to be disciplined about going to bed early), but it's great for getting things done while it's still super quiet and peaceful out, and it's awesome having completed the workday at lunchtime.

That's a good schedule for someone who doesn't really want to do things when other people do them. I think it would be like if there was a such thing as being a time-vegan.

Re: 40 Hour Work Weeks Suck

#64

Post by Jach »

tmh88j wrote: post #29

I feel like these types of articles where the author attempts a deft explanation as to why work isn't work when you enoy it, are just annoying. Surely as engineers, hackers, tech-minded people, we all know what the definition of work is. Nowhere in the definition of work does emotion come into play (unless your job description is to achieve a specific emotion). This reminds me of a high school teacher of mine who use…

I'd imagine most high-school level physics teachers make those kind of jokes, I know mine did. I never really liked them, or things like this: http://xkcd.com/123/ Regarding the jocks, they're still struggling with the fact that words don't have meanings, as properties of the words themselves; let alone the secondary problem of the same word having drastically different meanings.

Re: 40 Hour Work Weeks Suck

#65

Post by da02 »

lionhearted wrote: post #60
hugh3 wrote: post #12

I work 40 hour weeks. Nine to five. I got into the habit when I started my PhD, because I knew that if I didn't force myself to work to a certain schedule, I'd probably slack off. If I only worked when I felt like it, on what I felt like working on, I would never have finished my thesis because, heck , who wants to do proofreading when you could be at the beach? And if I ate whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like…

Have you ever tried going earlier? If you want to do eight hours, try out 4:30AM to 12:30PM sometime. It's hard to stick on it (you've got to be disciplined about going to bed early), but it's great for getting things done while it's still super quiet and peaceful out, and it's awesome having completed the workday at lunchtime.

That was the same schedule of Alan Kay around his time at XEROX PARC.

How did you come up with that idea? I also hate doing anything outside of those hours.

Re: 40 Hour Work Weeks Suck

#66

Post by johnnyjustice »

jandevos wrote: post #40
cryptoz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I work 40 hours weeks, and love my job. Do you work exactly 40 hours? As in, start and 9am, leave at 5pm and never arrive early or leave late? Never a week of 41 hours? Because if I worked at a job I absolutely loved - as you describe - I would probably choose to work 50 or 60 hours. I think that the assumption here is that if you work 40 hours, you're probably doing it because that's what is expected of you and yo…

I really love my job, and when I am working on 'the good parts' of it, I find it very hard to stop at 40 hours (ok, honestly, usually it's a little bit more like 45). I do force myself to stop, in large part because I have a family at home who deserve to know me. But I've also found that when I not working, filling my time with some other things than work really does enrich my life, and I feel that my performance at…

What is it that you do for a living?
Post reply on HN