4 ms·

Working hard cannot exist with living well

by biggio 11y ago

tempodox 11y ago
I'd refine that to “working too hard...”.
prof_hobart 11y ago
Why not?
- biggio 11y ago
  Because "hard" here is defined by amount of time required. Living well requires certain amount of time too. So deducing from that we can say that these two cannot coexist. Now, working optimally - not hard - is another story.
  - prof_hobart 11y ago
    I'm not sure it is being defined that way. If anything, I'm reading the opposite of that - that it's entirely possible to work "hard" without working for extremely long hours.
MaulingMonkey 11y ago
Define "working hard". You can spend your workday distracting yourself with Facebook, or cat gifs, making awkward water-cooler small talk with other people who, like yourself, are counting the hours until you go home. This is terribly unfulfilling. On the other hand, you can spend your workday - the same amount of time, or even less - focused and productive, getting things done, effecting meaningful change. Too busy to agonize over the clock, you're pleasantly surprised by the end of the workday. You feel you've done things worth doing - that you haven't simply wasted your day on pointless drivel. I would call the latter "working hard". Taking this definition of "Working hard", I wonder if it's not a prerequisite of living well.
- dasboth 11y ago
  I completely agree. I'm a lot more drained on days where I'm jumping between small tasks, getting distracted every few minutes and generally being unproductive than I am after a day of full concentration working on a project.
- jo909 11y ago
  I agree, the best days are when time flies and you are just challenged at the right level - not to hard to frustrate you, not too easy/repetitive to bore you. But for me this is not the norm, most days are a mix of too hard and too easy, so motivation is sometimes a struggle and/or I'm exhausted and glad if I can go home and recharge for the next day. Even if work is good and fun, sometimes I'm just so much more exited about something not work related (at home, with friends, cool new tech), that I'm also eager to leave or am just distracted while at work. For me it is "hard" to simply give 100% with no distractions to my fullest potential for 8 hours. I can't even do that for 8 hours most days, so why expect me to do it for 12 or even longer, there would quickly be a negative ROI like the article suggest. I think most people experience work most of the time more or less like that. On the other hand on days where everything is just right (also on the weekend with non work related tasks I'm exited about) and I'm in the flow, hours do not matter much, and I'm pretty sure I get a positive return from more hours. At least in the short term, I never had the honour to have such a perfect job to experience that daily for months to know about the long term. That is to say that I could see that for somebody a) with a different personality to shut out distractions, has naturally better motivation or more energy etc or b) with a "perfect" job, it could be or at least feel different. It might be/feel so easy to work fully concentrated for 8 or more hours that "working hard" has to be something even more for them.
  - MaulingMonkey 11y ago
    > But for me this is not the norm, most days are a mix of too hard and too easy, so motivation is sometimes a struggle and/or I'm exhausted and glad if I can go home and recharge for the next day. Even if work is good and fun, sometimes I'm just so much more exited about something not work related (at home, with friends, cool new tech), that I'm also eager to leave or am just distracted while at work. > For me it is "hard" to simply give 100% with no distractions to my fullest potential for 8 hours. Working hard's not easy, and something I continue to try and figure out how to optimize further. I use small wagers (e.g. coffee) with coworkers to help with motivation, noise canceling headphones and asynchronous communication (IRC, email) to help minimize flow disruptions, website blocks to break idle browsing habits, task lists and breakdowns to help eliminate "uhh... what next?" indecision, single-tasking as much as possible... Friends and new tech I can sometimes integrate into work, but yeah, not always. > I can't even do that for 8 hours most days, so why expect me to do it for 12 or even longer, there would quickly be a negative ROI like the article suggest. At this point, I'll push back hard on management that asks me for more than 8 hours, and it's a serious consideration when job hunting. I'm willing to, on occasion, put more than that in - if I'm convinced the occasion warrants sacrificing long term productivity for some very short term gains - but I'm not willing to let it become a pattern. Even then, at 12 hours, I'm typically a mindless zombie suitable for little more than manual input fuzzing (read: mindlessly spamming inputs), running build scripts that were prepared and debugged earlier, and uploading build artifacts. I'm not even productive short term for most work tasks anymore. Even bug fixes may do more harm than good. I've even managed to frame it as an ethics issue to myself: Allowing my employer to repeatedly sacrifice my long term productivity for extremely short term gains is doing wrong by myself, and doing wrong by my employer. Worst case scenario, if (respectfully) standing up to management gets me fired, or turns the work environment toxic, I have another opportunity to find a job that appreciates my work instead of my self-flagellation.

Working hard cannot exist with living well

by biggio 11y ago

Working hard cannot exist with living well

tempodox 11y ago

I'd refine that to “working too hard...”.

prof_hobart 11y ago

Why not?

biggio 11y ago
Because "hard" here is defined by amount of time required. Living well requires certain amount of time too. So deducing from that we can say that these two cannot coexist. Now, working optimally - not hard - is another story.
- prof_hobart 11y ago
  I'm not sure it is being defined that way. If anything, I'm reading the opposite of that - that it's entirely possible to work "hard" without working for extremely long hours.

MaulingMonkey 11y ago

Define "working hard". You can spend your workday distracting yourself with Facebook, or cat gifs, making awkward water-cooler small talk with other people who, like yourself, are counting the hours until you go home. This is terribly unfulfilling. On the other hand, you can spend your workday - the same amount of time, or even less - focused and productive, getting things done, effecting meaningful change. Too busy to agonize over the clock, you're pleasantly surprised by the end of the workday. You feel you've done things worth doing - that you haven't simply wasted your day on pointless drivel. I would call the latter "working hard". Taking this definition of "Working hard", I wonder if it's not a prerequisite of living well.

dasboth 11y ago
I completely agree. I'm a lot more drained on days where I'm jumping between small tasks, getting distracted every few minutes and generally being unproductive than I am after a day of full concentration working on a project.
jo909 11y ago
I agree, the best days are when time flies and you are just challenged at the right level - not to hard to frustrate you, not too easy/repetitive to bore you. But for me this is not the norm, most days are a mix of too hard and too easy, so motivation is sometimes a struggle and/or I'm exhausted and glad if I can go home and recharge for the next day. Even if work is good and fun, sometimes I'm just so much more exited about something not work related (at home, with friends, cool new tech), that I'm also eager to leave or am just distracted while at work. For me it is "hard" to simply give 100% with no distractions to my fullest potential for 8 hours. I can't even do that for 8 hours most days, so why expect me to do it for 12 or even longer, there would quickly be a negative ROI like the article suggest. I think most people experience work most of the time more or less like that. On the other hand on days where everything is just right (also on the weekend with non work related tasks I'm exited about) and I'm in the flow, hours do not matter much, and I'm pretty sure I get a positive return from more hours. At least in the short term, I never had the honour to have such a perfect job to experience that daily for months to know about the long term. That is to say that I could see that for somebody a) with a different personality to shut out distractions, has naturally better motivation or more energy etc or b) with a "perfect" job, it could be or at least feel different. It might be/feel so easy to work fully concentrated for 8 or more hours that "working hard" has to be something even more for them.
- MaulingMonkey 11y ago
  > But for me this is not the norm, most days are a mix of too hard and too easy, so motivation is sometimes a struggle and/or I'm exhausted and glad if I can go home and recharge for the next day. Even if work is good and fun, sometimes I'm just so much more exited about something not work related (at home, with friends, cool new tech), that I'm also eager to leave or am just distracted while at work. > For me it is "hard" to simply give 100% with no distractions to my fullest potential for 8 hours. Working hard's not easy, and something I continue to try and figure out how to optimize further. I use small wagers (e.g. coffee) with coworkers to help with motivation, noise canceling headphones and asynchronous communication (IRC, email) to help minimize flow disruptions, website blocks to break idle browsing habits, task lists and breakdowns to help eliminate "uhh... what next?" indecision, single-tasking as much as possible... Friends and new tech I can sometimes integrate into work, but yeah, not always. > I can't even do that for 8 hours most days, so why expect me to do it for 12 or even longer, there would quickly be a negative ROI like the article suggest. At this point, I'll push back hard on management that asks me for more than 8 hours, and it's a serious consideration when job hunting. I'm willing to, on occasion, put more than that in - if I'm convinced the occasion warrants sacrificing long term productivity for some very short term gains - but I'm not willing to let it become a pattern. Even then, at 12 hours, I'm typically a mindless zombie suitable for little more than manual input fuzzing (read: mindlessly spamming inputs), running build scripts that were prepared and debugged earlier, and uploading build artifacts. I'm not even productive short term for most work tasks anymore. Even bug fixes may do more harm than good. I've even managed to frame it as an ethics issue to myself: Allowing my employer to repeatedly sacrifice my long term productivity for extremely short term gains is doing wrong by myself, and doing wrong by my employer. Worst case scenario, if (respectfully) standing up to management gets me fired, or turns the work environment toxic, I have another opportunity to find a job that appreciates my work instead of my self-flagellation.