4 ms·

When I was in my early twenties, hungry and looking to prove myself, it was fun for me to stay up all night programming, put in wild hours to get stuff done, lo

When I was in my early twenties, hungry and looking to prove myself, it was fun for me to stay up all night programming, put in wild hours to get stuff done, lose myself in overly ambitious projects etc. At some point I realized I kept hitting a wall (which was just actually me burning out, but I didn't recognize it at the time) and finding it basically impossible to care or get even the simplest things done for weeks at a time. My overall productivity was extremely bursty then–herculean efforts followed by barely anything at all. Now, years later, I'm much more defensive of my time, it's far easier to maintain a consistent flow of good work, and I no longer wake up in the middle of the night having had a bad dream about my code crashing.

phaedrus 8y ago
This resonates for me, particularly the description of falling into bursty-then-herculean-then-barely anything. So what did you do when you were hitting that wall? Myself I've started putting more time the last few years into non-computing hobbies when outside of work. It's a hard decision because that feels like an abandonment of things I used to like to do or of creative things I had high hopes for producing. But it's probably necessary. I know that taking a vacation is important too, but it's hard to take enough time off when you only get 10 days' a year. And I have a crap immune system so I end up using half of that to cover for when I run out of sick days every winter. (At my last job they started "hemorrhaging" developers because a local startup put out a standing offer to higher people for 20% less pay, but 20 days starting vacation. So many people took them up on it that our branch office dwindled from 12 to 2-3 people and retention of new hires went to the basement as well. The impression we got from management was they'd let the company burn to the ground before making "more vacation" a negotiable, probably because they had a vesting scheme and existing senior employees had worked there 10+ years to earn comparable amounts.) At my now-job I have the option to work 9 hour days and get a day off every other week, which helps make my "real" vacation hours stretch longer but the downside is that 9 hour days are not easy, either.

phaedrus 8y ago

This resonates for me, particularly the description of falling into bursty-then-herculean-then-barely anything. So what did you do when you were hitting that wall? Myself I've started putting more time the last few years into non-computing hobbies when outside of work. It's a hard decision because that feels like an abandonment of things I used to like to do or of creative things I had high hopes for producing. But it's probably necessary. I know that taking a vacation is important too, but it's hard to take enough time off when you only get 10 days' a year. And I have a crap immune system so I end up using half of that to cover for when I run out of sick days every winter. (At my last job they started "hemorrhaging" developers because a local startup put out a standing offer to higher people for 20% less pay, but 20 days starting vacation. So many people took them up on it that our branch office dwindled from 12 to 2-3 people and retention of new hires went to the basement as well. The impression we got from management was they'd let the company burn to the ground before making "more vacation" a negotiable, probably because they had a vesting scheme and existing senior employees had worked there 10+ years to earn comparable amounts.) At my now-job I have the option to work 9 hour days and get a day off every other week, which helps make my "real" vacation hours stretch longer but the downside is that 9 hour days are not easy, either.