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We need to restrict the amount of hours we spend in front of computers per day and take weekends completely off. There are so many downsides: blue light that da

• wainstead 8y ago
  All true, but neither should we deny ourselves a long session of "flow" if it makes us happy.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • maxxxxx 8y ago
    That's why it would be good to get paid by hour. When I was freelancer when things flowed I sometimes worked 24+ hours straight through or had several 16 hours days. But then I had other days when I got nothing done and took off. In a salaried position the company takes the long "flow" session for free but still expects you to be there the next day.
    • rexpop 8y ago
      Sounds like the solution isn't "getting paid by hour," if an adjustment of expectations is just as good.
      • maxxxxx 8y ago
        True. By hour is just much easier to track.
    • jpindar 8y ago
      That's not true of all salaried positions. In my experience, it's the salaried positions that have flexible time, not the hourly ones.
      • maxxxxx 8y ago
        When I work 13 hours 3 days in a row my employer still expects me to show up for the remaining 2 days of the week. If I had a fixed 40 hours week I would be done and could recover these 2 days. I also don't get more money for working more.
        • jlarocco 8y ago
          Sounds like a problem with your employer. None of mine have ever had a problem with me taking off early to make up for days I've worked longer hours. Have you talked to them about it?
          • maxxxxx 8y ago
            I have talked about this. From my experience it's very common in tech to let people work longer without compensation in time or money.
            • saiya-jin 8y ago
              By your behavior you are putting your employer in a situation where he breaks the law. Mention this to your manager, companies are not above labor laws simply because "its IT, everybody does that". They can be sued easily by disgruntled employees, and for huge piles of cash. Not everybody does that, and if they do, there is appropriate compensation (cash, extra time off and/or both). Good companies simply don't, they realize you can easily walk away to next company. I never ever worked for an employer like that for example, and that's 15 years and 6 employers in 3 countries. You're selling yourself cheap. Have some dignity.
              • Kevguy 8y ago
  • rb808 8y ago
    I love flow, it makes me feel great. But it doesn't make me happy - just grumpy when people interrupt me, and impatient when I'm in social occasions when people are making small talk.
  • hinkley 8y ago
    I'm finding that 'flow' is a significant contributor to NIH Syndrome. You can't flow while integrating a third party library anywhere near as easily as you can flow by rewriting half of it (badly) from scratch. Flow is a rush. Anything that is a rush can be indulged in to the point of self- (or other-) harm.
    • effie 8y ago
      > You can't flow while integrating a third party library anywhere near as easily as you can flow by rewriting half of it (badly) from scratch. That is not so clear cut, it depends on the library. If the documentation sucks or the library is a mess, rewriting it may both induce flow and be a win for the team.
      • amelius 8y ago
        Especially if you have to make changes to it later.
    • mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      I do not believe flow has any significant relationship to whether the underlying thing you are creating is going to interface with a pre-existing tool or be a new creation. I frequently need to reach states of deep flow when I am reading large inter-related files for refactoring, or modifying existing code to use a new library, or to follow tutorials for something only tangential, like new deployment tooling. Reaching states of flow is necessary no matter what you’re doing, and given the insane explosion of modern process overhead and meeting-centric corporate culture, it’s important to protect flow time and make it known how important flow is. Whereas I can see how people might try to use thinking like in your comment to undermine flow time, and falsely act like it’s somehow better to deny developers workspace or blocks of time for getting into flow states.
      • tommymachine 8y ago
        I have to agree with this. You're either writing assembly code yourself, or you're using code that was invented by someone else (and even the assembly code will have been invented by someone!). If using libraries/frameworks is something you do consistently, you can absolutely reach a state of deep work while working with them. Libraries should help keep the flow going at a high level by keeping one from being bogged down with having to reinvent the wheel. In fact, if they didn't contribute to flow, I don't think we'd use them!
  • war1025 8y ago
    "Flow" definitely can be enjoyable and productive. Unfortunately, I've found that as often as not people use it as an excuse to not have to interact with anyone, or as a badge of "look how hard I'm working" without necessarily getting much done. (Which I guess is nothing against what you said, just a pet-peeve of mine)
• ljm 8y ago
  Pretty much the same with deadlines. If the workload is reasonable it'll get done in good time. Might even to be my own schedule and not a 9-5 but it will for sure get done. I will even avoid the flow unless I feel particularly meditative. There's nothing good about vanishing down a rabbit hole for several hours and prioritising the rabbit hole above your own health.
  • tyldum 8y ago
    Sometimes the deadlines are unavoidable, but when a manager creates a deadline based on estimated development time I have decided to push back. Also I now refuse to do single estimates, but instead provide more of a histogram that shows how probable I think various estimates are (basically a minor risk assessment).
  • dwringer 8y ago
    Is there a formalized definition of this "rabbit hole" people have been abusing ever since The Matrix was in theatres? I feel like it was originally a metaphor but it's being used more and more literally to where I hear it almost daily.
• burke 8y ago
  > blue light that damages your vision Can anyone explain to me how looking at a computer screen is not several times less harmful than spending time outside from a lifetime-blue-light-exposure perspective? The sky is blue and natural light has a blue component in probably about the same proportion as white light from a screen. Maybe I'm wrong — and I'd like to find out if I am — but this whole blue light scare really just feels like a weird bandwagon.
  • TACIXAT 8y ago
    I think you're right. There was just an article about blue light speeding blindness, but the flux author chimed in and said screens are less than 5% of the hazard weighted irradiance of the sky. [1] I'm not totally sure what that means honestly, but I think we're OK. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17726716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17726716
    • hyperpallium 8y ago
      Though you don't stare at the sky for hours.
      • TACIXAT 8y ago
        I did on shrooms once. It had some nice patterns because my pupils were so dilated. Thankfully not blind.
        • smolder 8y ago
          I don't think the patterns are from your eyes behavior mainly but rather misfiring nerves directly thanks to the toxin. Noise transformed by visual circuitry into patterns, as patterns are what it deals in on the perceiving end.
        • Rapzid 8y ago
          Shrooms don't cause blindness; the sky causes blindness.
    • 8y ago
• toomanybeersies 8y ago
  I managed to avoid using my computer at home from Friday night all the way through to Wednesday night where I used it for 20 minutes. I'm quite impressed with myself. Upon saying that, I did watch a couple of movies on the TV with my roommate, but that's different because it's a social activity, I wasn't really watching the movie. I've been making an active effort to avoid using my computer at home. 40 hours a week of sitting in front of one is plenty. That's not to say my alternatives are exactly healthier, sitting in front of a computer is probably better for you than drinking pints at the pub.
• DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y ago
  What does ripping your soul mean?
  • mariopt 8y ago
    If you get depressed, doctors will prescribe you antidepressants which is drug that is supposed to lift your mood and "fix" depression (lol). Imagine the following: Your life is not great and you're not where you want to be, as a result you get sad/depressed. If you take a pill that makes you feel good, you're felling good about something that generally YOU would fell bad about but know you fell ok/good about it. This is nasty part of antidepressants: Who are you? Some people get depressed for chemical reasons and in that case antidepressants can make wonders for them. When you work long hours, don't exercise, don't care much about have a social life, eat poorly, etc. What do you get? Depression. In this case you might have a chemical imbalance BUT it is because you're not taking care of yourself. If you take a antidepressant it will mess you up even more. If you become addict to it, you'll loose a sense of you own self because the pill affects your emotions. Some people think that pooping a pill solves everything. So, by saying "ripping your soul", I mean that you're entering a hole that is really really hard to get out. I've faced depression, did some psychotherapy and I made the rational decision (thank God) of not taking any pills. I knew people who took them in a daily basis and it's not a happy picture at all. You've to switch meds every X years, people tend to feel sorry about themselves, etc etc. Those people I know are completely fucked up, in the next 10/20 years they'll become zombies most likely. In my opinion, sometimes people have a huge EGO that gets in the way of growing up and turn into pill to feed their mental picture of themselves and the world. For me, depression was not nice but I took it as a wake up call. Throw psychotherapy I became aware of stuff that was bothering but I was not aware of it. Unless you've some physical problem that brings depression, today's depression is a simple product of the Western capitalism, social media, etc. Sometimes you just have to face the your own problems and grow the hell up. Throw pain, you grow.