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I think a huge part comes down to if you are actually interested in what you are working on. I can pretty easily do 16+ hour days if I'm doing something I enjoy

I think a huge part comes down to if you are actually interested in what you are working on. I can pretty easily do 16+ hour days if I'm doing something I enjoy, whether that's writing code or playing videos games when I was a kid. Another huge factor is being able to avoid external stressors which are what really drain people and cause burnout I think, having bad co-workers or manager, health issues, family issues, etc. is a killer and will impact your focus drastically. Big difference between working long hours because you are having fun versus working long hours because a boss is breathing down your neck and you'll be fired if you don't finish something in a few weeks Carmack is also in a favorable position where he's basically always been able to choose only projects he's passionate about for work, so he can't really see the perspective of somebody being forced to work on something pointless by their boss my take from his comment was that even when you are too mentally drained to write code or something similarly demanding, you could still do stuff like meetings, responding to emails, getting feedback from customers, planning stuff you will code when mentally fresh, etc. So the critical thing is to make sure you can focus on valuable stuff when you are at your best and try to save the other stuff for later

epolanski 3y ago
But how many days can you do it? Doesn't matter how much I love an activity I can hardly do it all time for more than few days.
- kqr 3y ago
  Maybe I'm in the same atypical group as Carmack (a sentence I never thought I'd utter) but during a normal work week, my idea of relaxing is things like studying statistics, product development, numerical methods to solve differential equations, history, etc. This is stuff most people would call "work" because it does take effort, it makes me a better developer and much of it ties somewhat directly into problems I'm facing at work. But for me it's winding down after work, and recharging for the next day. Sometimes I have so much to do at work that I need to just read fiction or play around in the darkroom to relax. But this is not the norm -- it's happened twice in the last decade, and lasted for about a month. So for the question of how many days I can do it? On average 1795.
  - djhn 3y ago
    Out of curiosity, how would you rate on a scale of 1%-100% the extent to which your professional work aligns with what you want to do professionally later in your career?
    - kqr 3y ago
      Great question. Considering all possible lines of work, maybe 99.5 %? But that's a little like saying I share 98 % of my DNA with chimpanzees -- maybe those last 2 % are the parts of interest. Considering just the general area of IT, maybe 80 %? I get to do product development which is my interest, but there are also many things which I would like to be different, like purpose of product, organisational size, leadership philosophies, etc. Now -- why do you ask?
      - djhn 3y ago
        I'm curious to hear about people who have found themselves in such a great place professionally. I can work all waking hours on passion projects (including the boring grind - not just the infatuation and ideation phase) as long as it's self directed. Finding work opportunities that aren't orthogonal to long term areas of interest and don't feel like accumulating useless experience and constructing a parallel career is hard.
  - neuronerdgirl 3y ago
    >Sometimes I have so much to do at work that I need to just read fiction or play around in the darkroom to relax. But this is not the norm -- it's happened twice in the last decade, and lasted for about a month. Ok but you're literally describing a burnout cycle. Some people would prefer to just skip that part and have a completely sustainable working pace.
    - kqr 3y ago
      No. Having so much to do at work for a brief period that I choose not to take on extra work is not burnout. Calling it that would insult every person suffering from actual burnout.
cramjabsyn 3y ago
The point still stands that doing 16+ hour days leaves little left for yourself and family.
gexla 3y ago
So, the huge factor you're talking about is stress. Another factor is multi-tasking. Each are multipliers in draining energy. I can work 16 hour days also, but I'm still dealing with a good portion of that at a seriously degraded mental state. At the end, I'll be making the dumbest mistakes, and it's questionable if that time is even useful. Athletes do it best I think. They have their cycles of sport, training and recovery. They know their limits. They know their optimum.
- staunton 3y ago
  They (top athletes) are also often physically devastated at age 40 and suffer from chronic issues for the rest of their lives. The incentives for top athletes are not conducive to a healthy life at all.
  - jdkoeck 3y ago
    Citation needed! I don’t think any of this is true and, of course, I would imagine it’s not the same for all sports.
    - cplusplusfellow 3y ago
      It’s anecdotal but I was pretty shocked by the fact that NBA players have significant and serious issues with their feet.
      - cafard 3y ago
        Well, they tend to be bigger than other fit people (NFL players excepted), and they do a lot of jumping, which if all goes well is followed by landing.
    - throw__away7391 3y ago
      I worked with a guy who played college football and had aspirations for the NFL, he was a wreck and always complaining about the lingering effects of injuries from his days playing. I guess this is somewhat expected with a contact sport, but I've also seen guys I knew who did a lot of high intensity training and after about 10 years or so seem to start aging more quickly compared to their non-athletic siblings. I mean getting exercise is definitely good for you and in a choice between too much and too little I think you're better off overdoing it, but just constantly burning your metabolism at full steam seems to age you faster, couple that with the impact caloric deficit is supposed to have on aging and at least in my mind there's a pretty clear connection between the two.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
PhasmaFelis 3y ago
> I can pretty easily do 16+ hour days if I'm doing something I enjoy, whether that's writing code or playing videos games when I was a kid. I'm a coder by trade, but I've never really spent lots of personal time coding, like most of the really good coders I know. That's just not fun for me. On the other hand, I do sometimes spend many personal hours making spreadsheets for fun. I need to figure out how to get paid for that.
- theodric 3y ago
  > I need to figure out how to get paid for that. Or don't. Monetizing your leisure activity might well turn it into Just More Work that drains and stresses. Speaking for myself, I needed zero-stakes activities as a pressure relief valve when I was doing the corporate job, or I'd end up relying to chemicals to simulate that relaxation and get back to baseline. Benzos rot your brain, booze makes you fat; pottering in the ham shack does neither.
  - PhasmaFelis 3y ago
    Mileage may vary, but the only times I really enjoy my job are when I get to really muck around with spreadsheets and handy little scripts. Most of the rest of it is just endlessly frustrating. It's possible I'm wrong, but I think my life satisfaction would be a lot higher if I could do that fill time and get paid.
    - theodric 3y ago
      Well, you do you. Vaya con Dios. I hope you can get rich & happy!
kramerger 3y ago
> Carmack is also in a favorable position where he's basically always been able to choose only projects he's passionate about for work, so he can't really see the perspective of somebody being forced to work on something pointless by their boss BUT HE SHOULD! One of his first jobs was a soul crushing dev work when they had to write X random PC utilities every Y week for some monthly subscription thingy. You know what he did? He started slacking like crazy at work so he could work on game development with his bodies at home. Using company equipment he more or less stole from work. (I think he was sued for this, and then repeated it many years later and was sued by Facebook) So technically, he worked shorter hours. He just didn't tell his boss. Source: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155 https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...
- ionwake 3y ago
  Really interesting thanks for sharing and for the link
- omnimus 3y ago
  In this context it sounds like hes a hypocrite. Hes the boss now so hes pushing overwork as s virtue. I wonder how would he like having current self for a boss in those PC utility companies.
- the_overseer 3y ago
  People are so in love with the guy they never mention this part.... Maybe because they dream of being in his position? Most people doing what he did would get so fired so quickly... yet when everbody's favorie guy does it...
- hoten 3y ago
  Can you provide a source for the Facebook claim?
  - LordNibbler 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_v._Oculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_v._Oculus
chr1 3y ago
Stress or being passionate can not explain all the difference between what people can do. They sure help, but if you then compare average person to someone like John Von Nueman or Ramanujan it's almost as if they are on different class of hardware.
2muchcoffeeman 3y ago
I think stress is the clear negative factor. I can easily work my day job, go to the gym and give it my best, and then come back home and fire up my own project if I’m generally feeling happy. If I’m stressed it can lead to some other mental health issues and then even my day job is effected. I think anyone can do this if they were allowed to structure their work the way they want and work on the things they want to. Then we’d all be Carmacks in our chosen field. But we aren’t all so lucky.
devchix 3y ago
>I can pretty easily do 16+ hour days if I'm doing something I enjoy But is there context switching? I can probably do 12hrs of X, but if it's 8hrs of X + 4hrs of Y, X and Y being things I enjoy and want to do very much, I don't think I'd have the wherewithal to switch to Y after 8hrs of X. 12 hrs of X: you're already in the groove, you have the context, you're working toward a goal in a continuum. 4hrs of Y, you have to spend activation energy, fiddle a bit with finding where you left off, what the problem space was, before you get in the groove. That take-off alone will sap probably an hour. You can do it, but attended with all our human foibles, are you going to mentally decide you're going to start Y, after 8hrs of X?
downrightmike 3y ago
He left Meta because his ideas conflicted with other's

epolanski 3y ago

But how many days can you do it? Doesn't matter how much I love an activity I can hardly do it all time for more than few days.

kqr 3y ago
Maybe I'm in the same atypical group as Carmack (a sentence I never thought I'd utter) but during a normal work week, my idea of relaxing is things like studying statistics, product development, numerical methods to solve differential equations, history, etc. This is stuff most people would call "work" because it does take effort, it makes me a better developer and much of it ties somewhat directly into problems I'm facing at work. But for me it's winding down after work, and recharging for the next day. Sometimes I have so much to do at work that I need to just read fiction or play around in the darkroom to relax. But this is not the norm -- it's happened twice in the last decade, and lasted for about a month. So for the question of how many days I can do it? On average 1795.
- djhn 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, how would you rate on a scale of 1%-100% the extent to which your professional work aligns with what you want to do professionally later in your career?
  - kqr 3y ago
    Great question. Considering all possible lines of work, maybe 99.5 %? But that's a little like saying I share 98 % of my DNA with chimpanzees -- maybe those last 2 % are the parts of interest. Considering just the general area of IT, maybe 80 %? I get to do product development which is my interest, but there are also many things which I would like to be different, like purpose of product, organisational size, leadership philosophies, etc. Now -- why do you ask?
    - djhn 3y ago
      I'm curious to hear about people who have found themselves in such a great place professionally. I can work all waking hours on passion projects (including the boring grind - not just the infatuation and ideation phase) as long as it's self directed. Finding work opportunities that aren't orthogonal to long term areas of interest and don't feel like accumulating useless experience and constructing a parallel career is hard.
- neuronerdgirl 3y ago
  >Sometimes I have so much to do at work that I need to just read fiction or play around in the darkroom to relax. But this is not the norm -- it's happened twice in the last decade, and lasted for about a month. Ok but you're literally describing a burnout cycle. Some people would prefer to just skip that part and have a completely sustainable working pace.
  - kqr 3y ago
    No. Having so much to do at work for a brief period that I choose not to take on extra work is not burnout. Calling it that would insult every person suffering from actual burnout.

cramjabsyn 3y ago

The point still stands that doing 16+ hour days leaves little left for yourself and family.

gexla 3y ago

So, the huge factor you're talking about is stress. Another factor is multi-tasking. Each are multipliers in draining energy. I can work 16 hour days also, but I'm still dealing with a good portion of that at a seriously degraded mental state. At the end, I'll be making the dumbest mistakes, and it's questionable if that time is even useful. Athletes do it best I think. They have their cycles of sport, training and recovery. They know their limits. They know their optimum.

staunton 3y ago
They (top athletes) are also often physically devastated at age 40 and suffer from chronic issues for the rest of their lives. The incentives for top athletes are not conducive to a healthy life at all.
- jdkoeck 3y ago
  Citation needed! I don’t think any of this is true and, of course, I would imagine it’s not the same for all sports.
  - cplusplusfellow 3y ago
    It’s anecdotal but I was pretty shocked by the fact that NBA players have significant and serious issues with their feet.
    - cafard 3y ago
      Well, they tend to be bigger than other fit people (NFL players excepted), and they do a lot of jumping, which if all goes well is followed by landing.
  - throw__away7391 3y ago
    I worked with a guy who played college football and had aspirations for the NFL, he was a wreck and always complaining about the lingering effects of injuries from his days playing. I guess this is somewhat expected with a contact sport, but I've also seen guys I knew who did a lot of high intensity training and after about 10 years or so seem to start aging more quickly compared to their non-athletic siblings. I mean getting exercise is definitely good for you and in a choice between too much and too little I think you're better off overdoing it, but just constantly burning your metabolism at full steam seems to age you faster, couple that with the impact caloric deficit is supposed to have on aging and at least in my mind there's a pretty clear connection between the two.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

PhasmaFelis 3y ago

> I can pretty easily do 16+ hour days if I'm doing something I enjoy, whether that's writing code or playing videos games when I was a kid. I'm a coder by trade, but I've never really spent lots of personal time coding, like most of the really good coders I know. That's just not fun for me. On the other hand, I do sometimes spend many personal hours making spreadsheets for fun. I need to figure out how to get paid for that.

theodric 3y ago
> I need to figure out how to get paid for that. Or don't. Monetizing your leisure activity might well turn it into Just More Work that drains and stresses. Speaking for myself, I needed zero-stakes activities as a pressure relief valve when I was doing the corporate job, or I'd end up relying to chemicals to simulate that relaxation and get back to baseline. Benzos rot your brain, booze makes you fat; pottering in the ham shack does neither.
- PhasmaFelis 3y ago
  Mileage may vary, but the only times I really enjoy my job are when I get to really muck around with spreadsheets and handy little scripts. Most of the rest of it is just endlessly frustrating. It's possible I'm wrong, but I think my life satisfaction would be a lot higher if I could do that fill time and get paid.
  - theodric 3y ago
    Well, you do you. Vaya con Dios. I hope you can get rich & happy!

kramerger 3y ago

> Carmack is also in a favorable position where he's basically always been able to choose only projects he's passionate about for work, so he can't really see the perspective of somebody being forced to work on something pointless by their boss BUT HE SHOULD! One of his first jobs was a soul crushing dev work when they had to write X random PC utilities every Y week for some monthly subscription thingy. You know what he did? He started slacking like crazy at work so he could work on game development with his bodies at home. Using company equipment he more or less stole from work. (I think he was sued for this, and then repeated it many years later and was sued by Facebook) So technically, he worked shorter hours. He just didn't tell his boss. Source: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155 https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...

ionwake 3y ago
Really interesting thanks for sharing and for the link
omnimus 3y ago
In this context it sounds like hes a hypocrite. Hes the boss now so hes pushing overwork as s virtue. I wonder how would he like having current self for a boss in those PC utility companies.
the_overseer 3y ago
People are so in love with the guy they never mention this part.... Maybe because they dream of being in his position? Most people doing what he did would get so fired so quickly... yet when everbody's favorie guy does it...
hoten 3y ago
Can you provide a source for the Facebook claim?
- LordNibbler 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_v._Oculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_v._Oculus

chr1 3y ago

Stress or being passionate can not explain all the difference between what people can do. They sure help, but if you then compare average person to someone like John Von Nueman or Ramanujan it's almost as if they are on different class of hardware.

2muchcoffeeman 3y ago

I think stress is the clear negative factor. I can easily work my day job, go to the gym and give it my best, and then come back home and fire up my own project if I’m generally feeling happy. If I’m stressed it can lead to some other mental health issues and then even my day job is effected. I think anyone can do this if they were allowed to structure their work the way they want and work on the things they want to. Then we’d all be Carmacks in our chosen field. But we aren’t all so lucky.

devchix 3y ago

>I can pretty easily do 16+ hour days if I'm doing something I enjoy But is there context switching? I can probably do 12hrs of X, but if it's 8hrs of X + 4hrs of Y, X and Y being things I enjoy and want to do very much, I don't think I'd have the wherewithal to switch to Y after 8hrs of X. 12 hrs of X: you're already in the groove, you have the context, you're working toward a goal in a continuum. 4hrs of Y, you have to spend activation energy, fiddle a bit with finding where you left off, what the problem space was, before you get in the groove. That take-off alone will sap probably an hour. You can do it, but attended with all our human foibles, are you going to mentally decide you're going to start Y, after 8hrs of X?

downrightmike 3y ago

He left Meta because his ideas conflicted with other's