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Once upon a time I did the start-up, sleep-deprived, living at work thing, and frankly younger me thought it was awesome. Older me looks back and things younger

Once upon a time I did the start-up, sleep-deprived, living at work thing, and frankly younger me thought it was awesome. Older me looks back and things younger me was sometimes an idiot. Recently I had a kid and got to experience the sleep-deprivation effects all over again except this time with one big difference: I work with an awesome team who were able to pick up the slack, and I was smart enough to know when to ask for help (once literally saying "I'm too stupid to do this now, can you do it?") Sleep-deprivation is going to continue to be endemic in our industry (not just amongst start-ups, the twenty-somethings today are going to be having kids soon themselves). Instead of fighting through the slack, find ways to mitigate it; build your teams with people you can rely on to cover you when you're short.

EC1 13y ago
I realized this super early on in high school. I don't even bother doing anything remotely brain intensive if I haven't gotten 8 hours of sleep. I just can't, I know how great a good sleep feels and anything else sucks in comparison, so I cast it away as a lost day as my "punishment" for not sleeping.
- cclogg 13y ago
  Oh yeah man I'm totally with you on that. My unproductive side takes over on those days: "Hmm could work on that project... na feeling a bit sleepy, how about some video games... just a bit..." ;)
  - snarfy 13y ago
    If you're feeling a bit sleepy, take a nap.
  - jules 13y ago
    I'm the opposite. When I'm sleep deprived menial tasks don't seem as boring as they do normally, since I need my full attention to do them with the limited brain capacity.
    - specialist 13y ago
      My prior scrum team's PM had 4 hour sprint planning meetings. Every two weeks. Sounds agile, right? Pure torture. I'd skip sleep and coffee before the meeting(s), just to survive them.
      - mathrawka 13y ago
        Throw in spending three 8+ hour days working on an inception deck. Then do a 2 hour sprint planning meeting, spend 1.5 days working, then a 2 hour sprint review meeting. Then throw in a pivot every 2 or 3 weeks, involving a new inception deck.
      - matwood 13y ago
        Why were they that long? There could be many valid reasons to have a sprint planning that takes 4 hours. If 4 hours every 2 weeks is the only planning type meeting you have that is pretty good.
      - michaelochurch 13y ago
        So much of "Agile"/Scrum, at least in practice, is passive-aggressive, collective punishment. The team is judged to be underperforming, thus subjected to painful, useless meetings and degrading process that might turn zeros into just-barely-employable 0.5x programmers but bring the 10x down to zombie levels.
- vidarh 13y ago
  I switch to doing anything mind-numbingly boring where mistakes will not cause critical problems when I'm sleep deprived. E.g. at home, if I notice I'm too tired to focus on something challenging, I'll do the dishes, or clean the kitchen, or tidy up. At work, I might tidy the server room, or go through my cron-job folder and investigate all the errors/warnings I've filed away as "annoying but harmless; needs fixing some day" that usually involve fixes that are low risk and easy to verify. Anything that are risky (e.g. requiring changes to a production database server...) I'll defer if possible. I find a lot of the boring/reptitive tasks are easier to do when I'm tired, as when I'm tired I fall into repetitive routines easily, so as long as I push myself to get started on something repetitive, I'll just keep doing it without getting easily distracted.
peter_l_downs 13y ago
> Once upon a time I did the start-up, sleep-deprived, > living at work thing, and frankly younger me thought > it was awesome. Same here. My team recently all stepped back and decided to improve our work-life balance because in the past it had gotten seriously out of whack. Working 16 hour days just doesn't seem sustainable, and I say this as a 20-year-old with a fair amount of energy.

EC1 13y ago

I realized this super early on in high school. I don't even bother doing anything remotely brain intensive if I haven't gotten 8 hours of sleep. I just can't, I know how great a good sleep feels and anything else sucks in comparison, so I cast it away as a lost day as my "punishment" for not sleeping.

cclogg 13y ago
Oh yeah man I'm totally with you on that. My unproductive side takes over on those days: "Hmm could work on that project... na feeling a bit sleepy, how about some video games... just a bit..." ;)
- snarfy 13y ago
  If you're feeling a bit sleepy, take a nap.
- jules 13y ago
  I'm the opposite. When I'm sleep deprived menial tasks don't seem as boring as they do normally, since I need my full attention to do them with the limited brain capacity.
  - specialist 13y ago
    My prior scrum team's PM had 4 hour sprint planning meetings. Every two weeks. Sounds agile, right? Pure torture. I'd skip sleep and coffee before the meeting(s), just to survive them.
    - mathrawka 13y ago
      Throw in spending three 8+ hour days working on an inception deck. Then do a 2 hour sprint planning meeting, spend 1.5 days working, then a 2 hour sprint review meeting. Then throw in a pivot every 2 or 3 weeks, involving a new inception deck.
    - matwood 13y ago
      Why were they that long? There could be many valid reasons to have a sprint planning that takes 4 hours. If 4 hours every 2 weeks is the only planning type meeting you have that is pretty good.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      So much of "Agile"/Scrum, at least in practice, is passive-aggressive, collective punishment. The team is judged to be underperforming, thus subjected to painful, useless meetings and degrading process that might turn zeros into just-barely-employable 0.5x programmers but bring the 10x down to zombie levels.
vidarh 13y ago
I switch to doing anything mind-numbingly boring where mistakes will not cause critical problems when I'm sleep deprived. E.g. at home, if I notice I'm too tired to focus on something challenging, I'll do the dishes, or clean the kitchen, or tidy up. At work, I might tidy the server room, or go through my cron-job folder and investigate all the errors/warnings I've filed away as "annoying but harmless; needs fixing some day" that usually involve fixes that are low risk and easy to verify. Anything that are risky (e.g. requiring changes to a production database server...) I'll defer if possible. I find a lot of the boring/reptitive tasks are easier to do when I'm tired, as when I'm tired I fall into repetitive routines easily, so as long as I push myself to get started on something repetitive, I'll just keep doing it without getting easily distracted.

peter_l_downs 13y ago

> Once upon a time I did the start-up, sleep-deprived, > living at work thing, and frankly younger me thought > it was awesome. Same here. My team recently all stepped back and decided to improve our work-life balance because in the past it had gotten seriously out of whack. Working 16 hour days just doesn't seem sustainable, and I say this as a 20-year-old with a fair amount of energy.