4 ms·

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. B

by 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.

by jo909 11y ago

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.