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Relax. You'll be more productive

nytimes.com

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Re: Relax. You'll be more productive

#11

Post by stephth »

In the 1950s, the researchers William Dement and Nathaniel Kleitman discovered that we sleep in cycles of roughly 90 minutes, moving from light to deep sleep and back out again. They named this pattern the Basic-Rest Activity Cycle or BRAC. A decade later, Professor Kleitman discovered that this cycle recapitulates itself during our waking lives.

...

In each of these fields, Dr. Ericsson found that the best performers typically practice in uninterrupted sessions that last no more than 90 minutes.

Uninterrupted work sessions of 90 minutes are not a cycle, since they don't include a rest phase. It may be that 90 minutes is an optimal number for uninterrupted work, but I don't understand how it relates to a "Basic-Rest Activity Cycle" of 90 minutes.

Re: Relax. You'll be more productive

#12

Post by jiggy2011 »

giamgiam wrote: post #8
jiggy2011 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think societal pressures would prevent a 4 hour workday even if it was more productive for many classes of worker. A great many jobs are not fundamentally about productivity, for example a store checkout worker, a hotel receptionist and some IT operations work. In such cases the work is more about being available to cover certain hours and respond to various situations. For such jobs it would become a hassle to swa…

A huge amount of those service jobs you listed, especially minimum wage, rely on specifically the 4 hour work day, or between 4 and 5. I just got out of food service and the 4-5 hour shift was especially common. Their reasoning is they're getting your best hours, so they cycle a lot of people working short shifts.

Working times/practices will vary across industries. So things like part time shifts, split shifts etc will seem normal to people working in food service in the same way that weird irregular hours might not seem strange to people working in startups.

I think though that once a particular industry has an expectation around certain working hours they will tend to try and apply that across the board in order to seem fair.

I worked in IT for a bank, for example which had a very strict 9-5 culture. Things like taking breaks for coffee/lunch etc were to very strict times and taking 30 seconds longer than allowed was a serious business.

I think they had these rules in place for the callcenter employees, where they needed to ensure adequate levels of availability throughout the day. In order to seem fair they made this a rule across all departments.

When I work on my own , if I have a hard problem I will sometimes prefer to go and walk for an hour rather than sit in front of the computer as this can help me think more clearly. However a bank employee would never be able to do this.

Re: Relax. You'll be more productive

#13

Post by jey »

begurken wrote: post #5

This message is very well known and understood. The interesting question is 'why do foolish managers continue to treat their employers in poor ways that are known to decrease productivity?' In terms of productivity, it's a total lose-lose situation. I'm 37, and I'm pretty sure that I have worked out the answer. Most corporations are run by people (the managerial class) who are more interested in power than results. T…

It's partly a problem of optimizing metrics that are easy to measure, like ass-in-chair time.

Re: Relax. You'll be more productive

#14

Post by crazygringo »

jey wrote: post #13
begurken wrote: post #5

This message is very well known and understood. The interesting question is 'why do foolish managers continue to treat their employers in poor ways that are known to decrease productivity?' In terms of productivity, it's a total lose-lose situation. I'm 37, and I'm pretty sure that I have worked out the answer. Most corporations are run by people (the managerial class) who are more interested in power than results. T…

It's partly a problem of optimizing metrics that are easy to measure, like ass-in-chair time.

I couldn't agree more. There is absolutely NO way to effectively measure programmer productivity.

If there actually were an objetive way, then it would be a different story. But in the absence of it, a team has to "look" productive at least, and that means people in the office looking like they're working. Even if it means less real work getting done (because again, how do you measure that objetively? can't be done).

Re: Relax. You'll be more productive

#15

Post by anuy »

crazygringo wrote: post #14
jey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's partly a problem of optimizing metrics that are easy to measure, like ass-in-chair time.

I couldn't agree more. There is absolutely NO way to effectively measure programmer productivity. If there actually were an objetive way, then it would be a different story. But in the absence of it, a team has to "look" productive at least, and that means people in the office looking like they're working. Even if it means less real work getting done (because again, how do you measure that objetively? can't be done).

i agree that working with breaks and socializing with colleagues for a coffee/a walk/ a fresh breath of air is good for productivity. however i do not agree with some posters who say that there are no metrics to measure productivity. there are ways to measure programmer productivity. not talking about lines added or features added. in general we can get a sense of how involved is a feature addition by looking at the list of data structures needed, algorithms to process the data, algorithms to list/display the output. more formal methods--http://secse08.cs.ua.edu/Papers/Danis.pdf

Re: Relax. You'll be more productive

#16

Post by viscanti »

crazygringo wrote: post #14
jey wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's partly a problem of optimizing metrics that are easy to measure, like ass-in-chair time.

I couldn't agree more. There is absolutely NO way to effectively measure programmer productivity. If there actually were an objetive way, then it would be a different story. But in the absence of it, a team has to "look" productive at least, and that means people in the office looking like they're working. Even if it means less real work getting done (because again, how do you measure that objetively? can't be done).

> There is absolutely NO way to effectively measure programmer productivity.

One of the big reasons programmer productivity is so difficult to measure, is that you need to also see future productivity of everyone else who works on the code. If a programmer takes an extra week to build something more maintainable and that improved design saves months of future work, it's likely a productive use of time, but that's not always obvious until those months are saved (or not saved). That's not easily measured until the full lifecycle of the software is complete.

Re: Relax. You'll be more productive

#18

Post by ihsw »

matdrewin wrote: post #6

Nice in theory but hard to put in practice in the more traditional 9-5 corporate environments.

Relaxation isn't a theory, it's a way of life. When you step outside of the insane and stressful mentality of having to kill yourself to make a good living in life then your life will improve immensely.

There should be no reason at all for you to not take it easy for at least ten minutes a day.

Re: Relax. You'll be more productive

#19

Post by johnjlocke »

giamgiam wrote: post #8
jiggy2011 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think societal pressures would prevent a 4 hour workday even if it was more productive for many classes of worker. A great many jobs are not fundamentally about productivity, for example a store checkout worker, a hotel receptionist and some IT operations work. In such cases the work is more about being available to cover certain hours and respond to various situations. For such jobs it would become a hassle to swa…

A huge amount of those service jobs you listed, especially minimum wage, rely on specifically the 4 hour work day, or between 4 and 5. I just got out of food service and the 4-5 hour shift was especially common. Their reasoning is they're getting your best hours, so they cycle a lot of people working short shifts.

I worked for many years in blue collar service industries. The sort shifts have more to do with ensuring that the workers don't get full health benefits, thereby driving the cost of each worker down for the company.

Re: Relax. You'll be more productive

#20

Post by johnjlocke »

begurken wrote: post #5

This message is very well known and understood. The interesting question is 'why do foolish managers continue to treat their employers in poor ways that are known to decrease productivity?' In terms of productivity, it's a total lose-lose situation. I'm 37, and I'm pretty sure that I have worked out the answer. Most corporations are run by people (the managerial class) who are more interested in power than results. T…

Addiction to stress is kind of a real thing. It takes a complete stripping away of the mentality that most people have to see it for what it is. The managerial class is also put through the paces in Corporate America. I've seen this first hand. Unless you are a C-level executive, there is always someone using the veiled threat of job loss to keep you in line.

The tech world has some problems, but compared to the work environments that the rest of the country is experiencing, it's Shangri-La.

I wish that all of the country (world, really) would be able to exercise control over their destinies as easily as we can. The mindset and the skills together are a great gift. Never cease to be grateful.

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