17 ms·

Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

• cballard 11y ago
  > So if we need to work long hours, what can we do to recover? Not work long hours? This is what unions are for (now, if we could just have one without dues/political contributions).
  • toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Dues are fine, someone needs to pay for the people who manage the union (Bernie Sanders contributions could be considered dues for those who believe in his causes, me included). I agree that political contributions should be prohibited though (as well as corporate political contributions).
    • falcolas 11y ago
      Political contributions are how the current labor laws came into being. Abuse of said political contributions are another (but important) matter.
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Lobbying and political contributions are two different things. Funding is important, as we've seen with the Sanders' campaign, but grassroots efforts equally (if not more) so. I think funding is the smaller of the problem: unions, labor, regular people need better tools to organize and hold their representatives (either government or union) accountable. EDIT: If you're looking for a problem to solve, help build these better tools. Help people be represented!
    • cballard 11y ago
      Why does the union need management? Can't we do it in a chat room/mailing list - for which there are numerous free options?
      • karambahh 11y ago
        Because when you have dozens or hundreds of union members, you need stuff to be organized, as in every organisation? Unions are very differently organized depending on the country, their political leaning (or lack of thereof), their industry... For instance, it looks like that in the US, the Organizing Model[1] is prevalent, which means that a large workforce has to be employed by the union From the media, it seems to me that unions in the US are generally less politically organized than in Europe. For instance in France, unions are almost always politicaly leaning in one way or another, from CNT ("anarchist" union), CGT (historically linked to the french Communist Party) and CFTC or FO (historically split from CGT by anti-communist organisations) and going sometimes to the right end of the political spectrum such as Alliance/CFE-CGC (french readers please forgive my broad simplification, I do know that it's much more complicated than my summary...). My limited knowledge of trade unions in Belgium and Spain comes to a similar analysis However, from how they are portrayed in the media, it seems to me that unions in the US are rather 'trade based', for instance "the" teachers union, or the truckers unions, etc. In contrast in France a teacher could be affiliated to CGT Education or FO Education (depending on their personnal preferences/political leaning), which are in turn members of a larger "confederation" such as the CGT. In my (very simplified) example, the "teachers CGT" and the "truckers CGT" can and do band together and strike/picket together when an issue impact both teachers and truckers. In my simplified example, CGT Truckers also strike in support to teachers during large movements. Is this also a thing in the US? It seems to me that it's not the case? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizing_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizing_model
      • dredmorbius 11y ago
        Why do businesses, nonprofit organisations, schools, governments, and complex multicellular organisms require management (or seem to benefit from them)? Yes, there are some systems which work by emergent properties alone without central organisation, but the very fact that they're limited to specific areas, and are prominantly missing in others, suggests limitations to their effectiveness and scope.
  • falcolas 11y ago
    Dues are how you pay the folks who are spending their time working for your rights. Lawyers, administrative assistants, marketing... these are not cheap. Abuses aside, you don't get the positive - that is someone fighting for your rights - for free, and without playing in the field of politics.
    • cballard 11y ago
      Why do you need all of that, though? Couldn't a private chat room for the engineering team to plan collective action be enough? > Hey all, management's been asking us for too much unpaid overtime. Strike?
      • ashark 11y ago
        You must all be bound to supporting a strike (and to not working outside contract terms, for that matter), or there's no union. Wholly voluntary associations are very, very weak in many situations, and this is one of them. That weakness is pretty much why governments are a thing, for that matter. You're gonna need legal. Professional negotiators would be good.
  • Apocryphon 11y ago
    I've long been a proponent for hackers to "disrupt" labor by reinventing unions. (And call them guilds, because hey it's a name that works on multiple levels). On the subject of dues being required to pay for full-time guild leaders as brought up in the sibling comments, that makes sense. But could it be supplemented by crowdfunding and alternate pay models, instead of mandating a set price? Tiered membership? Freemium guilds? Free 2 Protest? On a less semi-satirical level about startups, hackers already voluntarily contribute willingly to non-profit endeavors, namely open source projects, and sometimes causes such as Wikipedia/Wikimedia, the Internet Archive, even tech-related lobbying like the EFF, etc. Surely some could put that same spirit of voluntarism towards supporting their labor class.
    • cballard 11y ago
      Maybe unions (which are large monolithic organizations covering many employers) are not what I'm looking for. It just seems that more startup engineering teams should engage in collective action, because in many cases, if the entire team left, the company would be crippled.
      • bgilroy26 11y ago
        The continued success of professional sports players unions supports this idea.
      • Apocryphon 11y ago
        Well, just as methodologies such as Agile or programming standards are not controlled, per se, by a central body, but adhered to more or less by individual organizations, what if there was an agreed upon standard for collective bargaining for coders? Like say in a company, you work with your direct coworkers (as opposed to members of a national or even regional union) to adhere to that protocol of bargaining when disputes with management happen?
    • prawn 11y ago
      Definitely agree that there's an opportunity to modernise unions and remove potential corruption. Has anyone explored trying it with a private membership app?
  • walshemj 11y ago
    Your not going to remove the need to engage in the political process.
  • makosdv 11y ago
    We don't need unions for that (and I certainly don't want unions either). I work as an R&D manager/software architect and I simply don't work more than 40hrs per week. It just takes some self discipline and efficiency. My CEO doesn't argue with me about it because I do my job and I do it well. However, if your employer expects you to work more hours than you get paid for, find a different employer who actually respects your time.
  • fennecfoxen 11y ago
    If you'd like to bring pro-union propaganda to the table, I'll have to bring in some Scholarship and point out that the story was complex and as such more unions may not necessarily be a panacea: While unions did play a role in shortening the American work week to 40 hours, broader forces in the labor market played substantial roles as well, like a rapidly expanding economy, reduced immigration, and electrification. I will refer you to The Shortening of the American Work Week: An Economic and Historical Analysis of Its Context, Causes, and Consequences (Whaples, 1991). http://www.jstor.org/stable/2122588 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2122588 "The eight-hour day was won during this decade primarily through labor market tightness (wage increases, manufacturing employment expansion, and curtailment of immigration)."
    • Apocryphon 11y ago
      No one thinks unions are a panacea. But a market without a single union is diseased.
  • com2kid 11y ago
    > Not work long hours? Consumers demand their new toys on a regular cycle. If one company doesn't keep up, another will. Too long not in the news and people forget about you. The only way to stay relevant in a world with a thousand distractions is to keep making enough noise that customers pay attention. If a product can be done properly in 16 months and ignored, or done in 12 months of way too many hours, and be a hit on the market, well the only damn choice is work 12 hour days.
    • lisivka 11y ago
      Sorry, but damn choice is to work 4 hours per day and be more productive than someone working 12 hour per day.
• FreedomToCreate 11y ago
  These points are spot on, but I also believe these are common sense things everyone knows. The issue is that its extremely difficult to detach from the digital world and many jobs require you be available at any time. A a previous job (they named themselves after a fruit) I couldn't even think about turning my phone off. I was pretty much on call 24/7. Companies are global, and there are always problems to deal with and any time of the day.
  • l33tbro 11y ago
    Yikes, kudos for enduring that. I've actually started to turn my phone off at night, and it's actually crazy the feeling of relief I get from that small action. It's like there's some invisible unbilical cord between myself and that device.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • stuff4ben 11y ago
    Yep, my company has the same tendencies. Some folks I work with have their phones configured for company email which I refuse to do. When I'm home, I'm home and it's the only time I have with my family. When they're all asleep and the wife is watching her netflix, I'll usually jump on the VPN but turn off email and IM so I can get real work done. Most of my days are sadly filled with meetings and email, the 30-60 minutes of extra work I occasionally do at home does wonders for my productivity.
    • thorin 11y ago
      While I understand your pov,why don't you flag to your boss if your feel you are spending too long on meetings and emails and find time during your actual working day to do that work. I'm a family man too and I've made a decision that any evening work except emergencies will be stuff I enjoy such as researching a new technology experimenting in code watching tech videos or reading tutorials not corporate "work"
  • neltnerb 11y ago
• sremani 11y ago
  Some are missing the point, most of the work we as software developers does not need long hours but deep focus. The best of the best are able to have 4 hours worth of deep focus, and we are lucky to get an hour or two of it. That would be huge. So the good habits that help us with focus and emphasizes on recovery like walking in the woods (our natural habitat), meditation etc. Its not the time, the hardware of brain is pretty much fixed, its the software, habits and mindset that make the difference.
  • arca_vorago 11y ago
    On the same point, this is one of my primary frustrations as a sysadmin, because sometimes I need to be available lickety-split, but sometimes I need to be in deep focus mode, but my office environment isn't very conducive to deep focus mode... so sometimes I have to disappear myself to a hidden place just to get some thinking in. Or, what happens more often, is that my productivity suffers and I end up staying late till everyone has gone away so I can actually not be interrupted. Also, I really don't like shared open office spaces, and as a vet with ptsd, I really don't like having my back turned to the door, but management wants to be able to see everyones screen as they walk by. While we are talking about overworked, the other issue that bugs me is disparity in expected work vs pay. To me, employment is a contract of goods and services. You pay me money to get a job done at a certain level. If you want me to be superman, you better pay me more like it! Instead, I continually hear the guys who have worked at a place more than 15 years say "You have to put in the work and effort and then hope they give you that raise, perk, etc...". I don't think the baby-boomer generation realizes that there is no such thing as company loyalty in the big scheme of things anymore, especially in an at-will state. I'm tired of employees bending over backwards because they bring no power to the negotiating table on just about anything. I have a personal life and identity that is completely separate from work and I intend to keep it that way. If you pay me enough I would reconsider my work life balance, but I'm not going to do it for free and hope for it, it needs to be a deal struck in agreement between both parties and in contract form. If there is one thing I could encourage we teach IT workers, it's the power of learning how contract law works, and all the stuff that comes with that. (eg: no you don't have to sign that, yes you can amend it, no that TOS is bad and unenforceable, that falls under the UCC, etc)
• simplemath 11y ago
  Overworked? Everyone is overworked. We live in a post scarcity industrial world, or very very close to it, and bad actors have gobbled up the spoils of the huge gains in productivity in the last 50 years. How much of the entire economy is predicated on grey money? How much of your time is indirectly consumed by this leviathan? The more I think about it, the more i want to opt out of the entire fucking thing.
  • static_noise 11y ago
    The cancer has befallen the whole planet. Everything will be made to money. The whole world is becoming one big machine.
    • wrong_variable 11y ago
      Damn, glass half empty much ?
      • sunnybythesea 11y ago
        what glass?
      • rbanffy 11y ago
        A bank owns the glass. You just rent it.
    • losteric 11y ago
      We're seeing the rise of humanity's vile offspring (to borrow from Accelerando)... ethereal ideas birthed from greed and made corporeal by law, financial machines beyond the power or comprehension of individuals.
      • sanderjd 11y ago
        At this point, I'm honestly not sure if this thread is a series of extremely pessimistic people, or a fairly clever riff on Lovecraftian doom writing.
• droithomme 11y ago
  So "instead of" taking an annual vacation, one should limit their work hours to 48 hrs a week, organize their time better, and take up a hobby like knitting. I've got a better idea. Keep the vacation and cut work hours down to 40.
  • gerbilly 11y ago
    >I've got a better idea. Keep the vacation and cut work hours down to 40. Pff, more like we should go to 35hrs with mandatory _paid_ overtime and also _increase_ vacation to 6 weeks. And also demand reparations for all the stolen time. (Real pay hasn't increased since 1970.) After that we can talk about taking it further.
    • kagamine 11y ago
      Welcome to Norway except for the bit about reparations, and it's 37.5 hours.
      • metachris 11y ago
        Here in Austria its 38.5hrs, 5 weeks vacation, and in June and December employees receive a doubled monthly salary ("vacation money" and "christmas money").
        • varjag 11y ago
          If it's anything like Norwegian "christmas money", it's just a tax accounting rule where you pay for it the other 11 months in year.
          • kagamine 11y ago
            Still a huge relief come December, as is holiday money in the summer. It probably works as a huge benefit to the economy too, although I have no evidence to back that assumption.
    • 11y ago
• PeterTMayer 11y ago
  You might get better organized daily and find a good hobby but vacations are important, especially if you spend it with some traveling. A good hobby I recommend everyone that will help you totally tune out from your work is jiu jitsu.
  • preordained 11y ago
    >A good hobby I recommend everyone that will help you totally tune out from your work is jiu jitsu Yes! If people only knew the type of escape that was possible, both mental and physical. American blackbelt Chris Haueter once recalled how he would eagerly drive hours to the gym in his shitty car, from his shitty job and shitty relationship, because he knew it would all roll off him when he hit the mat.
    • PeterTMayer 11y ago
      Learning to escape is part of the mental chess, what jiu jitsu is. Many people bring a bunch of sacrifices for the love the gentle art. :)
• diogenescynic 11y ago
  As someone who routinely has more work than they can finish in an 8-hour work day, the headline and article strike me as tone-deaf and victim blaming. It's simply not possible to solve the overwork problem entirely by 'good habits' alone. When you do a good job digging ditches, often your reward is a bigger shovel. When you do well, somehow more work finds it's way to your desk. I don't think you can always be finding ways to optimize when your workload is constantly expanding. Sometimes you have to get up early and stay up late to finish a project.
  • neltnerb 11y ago
    First, it's clearly talking about steady state, not emergencies. And if you're always in emergency mode these are even more important to know about in terms of the psychology... Maybe you can't stop reading email or have time to go biking after work, but ten minute breaks to go outside scattered around the day? Creating a ritual to help your brain to switch from hard core work mode to resting mode? It can literally just be a cup of tea when you get home. It doesn't have to be hours of time and energy, but the point that not doing so will cause you to become sick is certainly accurate. But I think the point of the article was how to cope with overwork and reduce your stress, not to actually reduce your work load.
    • diogenescynic 11y ago
      >it's clearly talking about steady state, not emergencies I'm also clearly talking about steady state, not emergencies--that's what I meant by "routinely." Yes, taking breaks helps and so do rituals but it doesn't make the work go away or let you get home any sooner. My point is that some jobs always have a backlog or glut or work to catch up on. Usually this is because the company purposely under-staffs the position/department. However, I don't see these systemic issues as something the individual can change. They can merely cope or find a new job--neither of which provide an 'answer' as they headline implies. Healthy work habits are great, but it's no solution to simply being overworked.
  • Qantourisc 11y ago
    My take on this is easy: if you have the occasional overtime, sure I'll pitch in. If it's however a structural imbalance, I will not sacrifice myself for it. The tricky part is stopping to care to get things done in time, when it's a structural problem. If you don't, it will eat you (eventually).
• foxbarrington 11y ago
  If anyone's interested in the tl;dr bullet points: * At home have a sense of separation (psychological detachment) from work: * avoid work emails at home * incorporate a ritual like changing out of work clothes * get fully immersed (no negative work thoughts) in a sport, exercise, volunteering, musical instrument, or other creative pursuit * At work reduce nagging thoughts of "unfinished business" * plan and organize your work day / develop a clear picture of what you can realistically get done during the day * do not start a new task right before leaving * take rest breaks, and seek out natural environments if possible, * do not do errands on a break
• elcct 11y ago
  Regardless of how much time you you spend at work I think having a couple of weeks in a year for yourself to explore the world or be it just mindlessly staring at the sea waves is a reality check and time when you can evaluate whatever you are doing. It is also a good benchmark - if your current job doesn't allow you to do that then - is this a good job? Or you can't really afford to go at the other side of the world, then - am I being paid right? Go figure...
  • maxxxxx 11y ago
    Vacations also can bring interest in your work back. I used to do freelancing and take off at least 8 weeks a year. When I worked I was really interested in my work and put a lot of effort in. Now I work in a corporation with only 3 weeks vacation and it's just one big long never-ending drag of the same thing again and again. The quality and creativity has gone down a lot. I just don't care that much anymore.
• sandworm101 11y ago
  >>> So instead of having large breaks every few months or once a year, it’s better to incorporate simple recovery practices into your everyday routine. Is this some Orwellian nightmare? Rather than have the workers do less work through holidays, let's have deal with the stress during their off hours. Don't take a 2-week holiday, just exercise more every day. Sitting at a desk all day isn't making you fat, it's that you're spending the hour between work and sleep with your kids rather than at the gym. Some things matter more than productivity. Give your people the time off they need. Or how about just allowing employees to exercise and de-stress on company time.
  • readymade 11y ago
    Agreed, I'm kind of shocked people aren't seeing this for what it is. Like the much ballyhooed open office plan, or the typical "we don't track vacation time" policy in modern startups, the real bottom line, so to speak, is always the bottom line. It may very well be that employees who don't take vacations are more productive, overall than those who do. But by placing the burden of self-repair entirely on the employee, on their personal time and dime, the employer effectively washes its hands of the matter. If we take this article to its logical conclusion, burnout is your own fault, even in the face of pathological organizational structures, workloads, etc. That's an outward radiation of risk and responsibility par for the course in the new economy.
  • michaelhoney 11y ago
    This is an article from Australia, where we have 4-week legally mandated vacation time. What the article _is_ saying is that positive vacation effects only last a couple of weeks and that everyday routines can help you, well, every day.
  • cableshaft 11y ago
    > Or how about just allowing employees to exercise and de-stress on company time. That's the key to the obesity epidemic right there. Have an onsite gym, and let employees take up to an hour off their normal 8 hours a day to exercise (or perhaps at a nearby gym, with some sort of oversight). If you just give people that hour off, they'll be lazy and use it for other things, but if it's set aside specifically for exercise (or at the very least sitting their butts in the gym), it'll get done over time. But it has to be unstructured and unforced. They can do it any time throughout the day, for as little as they want, but it will be no questions asked if they're in the gym (or out taking a walk or something). And then group health premiums will drop, employee energy when they are working will increase, and they'll get just as much work done as they would have otherwise. As a society we went from having mostly active jobs to mostly sedentary jobs. These sedentary jobs are slowly killing their employees. It should be the company's moral imperative to allow for exercise breaks during company time.
• q-base 11y ago
  From reading the comments a lot of people take a really negative spin on this for some reason. I only see it as trying to explain that if you rely on vacations alone then you could still be overworked and stressed. They only dim the symptom but does not cure the disease. If you are overworked and stressed a vacation might help in the short run but if you go back into the same routines, then of course you'll end back where you were before taking the vacation. What they do advise instead is working on the disease itself and try to manage your day-to-day better instead of ONLY relying on annual holidays. They aren't saying you shouldn't take holidays only that they won't cure all your stress permanently. I think this is good advice. Not groundbreaking or new knowledge, but still - good advice!
• hackercomplex 11y ago
  I have an idea. What if some startups began incorporating hiking and/or climbing (easy/moderate skill level) into their process ? You can find trailheads that have wifi at various waypoints. The team could plan challenges and expeditions that span multiple days, but instead of hiking all day like the pros they set a less grueling pace and hack more. The company could purchase gear, and could rent private wifi-shelters along the way that are stocked with modern amenities, tiki torches, rest rooms, ready-to-go-bonfire pit, gormet catered cuisine, and more. This way there really is a comfy environment to spend time resting and working (perhaps for more than one day) at each major waypoint. There could be pre-planned short nature hikes around the waypoint, and the team could engage a nature conservationist or an expert on the local geography. I imagine that this kind of expedition planning could even be provisioned somehow as a service, so there might be a startup idea in there somewhere :) I'm imagining a good way to ease into it might be first climbing the flatirons in Boulder or Stone Mountain in Atlanta.
• timwaagh 11y ago
  forgive me for saying this but the title sounds like an employer (or someone paid by industry) feeling bad about that employees are complaining they get no holidays. corporate ethics is the answer. not a blog article.
• drjesusphd 11y ago
  I always thought there was something wrong with me because I don't feel "recharged" after a vacation. Of course, sometimes a break is desperately needed, but there always seems to be a period of readjustment where work was harder than before I left.