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I'm not sure if it's due to increased self-awareness, or whether it's physically due to aging, but I know for a fact that pushing over 50 hours a week will quic

I'm not sure if it's due to increased self-awareness, or whether it's physically due to aging, but I know for a fact that pushing over 50 hours a week will quickly lead to lower overall productivity for me. I love what I do and I used to work insane startup-level hours, but on reflection a lot of those hours are less efficient, whether due to decreased efficiency or downright procrastination when I'm too tired to deal with a difficult problem. To some extent I think tech startup culture evolved this way not just because it takes a superhuman effort to build a successful company, but also because learning to be a good programmer is something that is extremely difficult if you're not at least a little obsessed with it. My tendency to work 80 hours a week at my startup is the natural evolution of my 14-year-old self wanting to spend all my time working on the computer. But now that I have a couple decades experience under my belt, I can sit down and focus for 8 hours that will lead to far more productivity than slogging through 16 hours. Furthermore, my subconscious is able to continue working on problems during my downtime, so stepping away, getting some exercise, cooking some healthy food, sleeping 9 hours all feed back to greater overall productivity.

LesZedCB 12y ago
Ok, I have to ask. Geniune question here. How the fuck do you people do this? I hear stuff like this a lot, especially in the software community. Do you guys actually log 80 hours a week of doing stuff? How on earth do you "start loosing productivity" at 50 hours a week? I start loosing productivity around 40 if not before. BTW, totally not asking this to be a dick, and I really respect your work ethic and your choices for how to live. I just don't understand how people can live in that reality. Most of Europe says 40 hours of work a week is too much, and frankly I'm completely on board.
- maaku 12y ago
  I lose serious productivity at 30hrs. But I manage to fill in the corners with mindless tasks like answering emails. I think 80 hours a week is only achievable with the help of drugs i.e. caffeine
  - dietrichepp 12y ago
    Speaking of silicon valley, it seems like it's often: * Caffeine in public, or for starters, and then adderall or something more potent, * Alcohol after work to wind down, * Maybe oxycodone or heroin. If it seems like your problems can be solved by working more hours, then you end up medicating yourself into oblivion, blowing up, or burning out. I am also baffled by the idea of working 80 hours in a week.
    - pm90 12y ago
      Well, its not just peeps in SV that use the caffeine + alcohol recipe for productivity, its pretty much all of America. Speaking anecdotally, I find that Caffeine makes me super alert and alcohol super relaxed, both of which are the intended effects. But I do make a point to not abuse either of them, simply because I don't want my senses to get numbed by their effect.
      - seunosewa 12y ago
        what's the difference between daily use of coffee/alcohol and abuse?
        BozeWolf 12y ago
        One beer a day is not abuse? I drink 1 beer at workdays and probably 10+ in the weekend usually in one night. Needless to say, the day after having those I do not drink any beer at all and suffer from a hangover... Which in turn sometimes sort of is enjoyable because it makes you stop thinking for a day.
        fat0wl 12y ago
        A doctor would probably classify this as some level of abuse, since medically accepted drinking levels are low (few drinks a week, I think?). Even if its just "1 per day", chemical dependency in order to function is usually seen as an issue. Sure, small doses of coffee & alcohol are well... small, but there are tons of people out there who rely on neither at all, where as the absence of these "small" doses would greatly impact your life. EDIT: I should mention though that I am not really against small-dose self-medication, as the alternative of getting medicated through the "proper system" is probably even more frightening. I do wish I could kick all small-dose habits though, rather than dealing with relapses (boring work without coffee is haaaard) & other compensatory habits. As for your 10+ beers followed by welcome hangover comment, I believe Adorno addresses this in Minima Moralia and some of his other texts. His basic belief is that people are so alienated from themselves that they treat the weekend (their only time to really be themselves completely) as a respite that will ready them for the onslaught of the next week's work. Basically, the work week and attitudes that have arisen to rationalize it are a system of total self-alienation, with all traces of your "in an ideal world" personality smothered out of you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minima_Moralia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minima_Moralia Anyway, sorry if this came off sounding very dramatic. I really am not like deeply worried about you, hah, I'm just saying from a theoretical standpoint what you're describing does not prove your point at all. It's more like you're just using black humor to perpetuate bread&circus mentality.
- refurb 12y ago
  You just power through. I worked as a management consultant a while back and we had record hours for accounting purposes although i was on a salary. One week i worked 106 hrs. That included 20 hours on the weekend and one day where i clocked 20 hours. Needless to say i don't work there anymore.
  - infinite8s 12y ago
    Were you actually productive the entire time?
    - refurb 12y ago
      Hell no. I can hit 50 hr in a week and be pretty productive. After that i'm running at 50% efficiency and rapidly dropping after that. Once over 80 hr it's a struggle to get the most menial tasks done.
- uptownJimmy 12y ago
  I can go 55-60 hours/week at a pretty good clip, but the fall-off after that is drastic, and I can only keep it up for a few months before everything starts to get sad and depressy. 50 hours/week is probably a sweet spot for me.
- Swizec 12y ago
  It depends on how varied your stuff is. I can easily log 30 hours of paid coding a week, tack on 10-ish hours of email, add some 5+ hours of marketing, and add 10 hours of working out with 10 hours of learning new stuff. I call all of this productive hours and will gladly say an average week contains 70 to 80 productive hours. But you'll notice that I never spend more than 30 hours a week on any one type of productivity. And that only some 30 odd hours a week are directly billable.
- ikrima 12y ago
  I'd say watch out for the "One brain" fallacy/cognitive bias in all of these responses. There are lots of factors (age, discipline, interest in what you're doing, etc) but I think a lot of people overlook that one big component of this is brain chemistry. Some athletes are endurance athletes, some athletes are sprinters. It seems obvious that you wouldn't expect Usain Bolt to run the fastest marathon just because he's a runner. Our brains are just as genetically varied as other physical characteristics. For me, I know that my peak productivity is from 11 pm - 4 am and it goes down exponentially if I have to do non-fun tasks or if I'm in a stressful crunch as opposed to a positive crunch. I also know that after 3-4 months of 10-12 hours, I need to go back down to 5-6 hours until I get excited again. And for some strange reason, if I don't feel something is required, I can leisurely work on something for 12-16 hours a day indefinitely (researching, reading conference papers, learning). If I have to debug code nasty bugs like multithreaded data races, I can't be productive at those lengths of time so I try to mix fun work with this type of dreaded work. Know what works for you and build your work schedule around that. That's how we work at our startup.

LesZedCB 12y ago

Ok, I have to ask. Geniune question here. How the fuck do you people do this? I hear stuff like this a lot, especially in the software community. Do you guys actually log 80 hours a week of doing stuff? How on earth do you "start loosing productivity" at 50 hours a week? I start loosing productivity around 40 if not before. BTW, totally not asking this to be a dick, and I really respect your work ethic and your choices for how to live. I just don't understand how people can live in that reality. Most of Europe says 40 hours of work a week is too much, and frankly I'm completely on board.

maaku 12y ago
I lose serious productivity at 30hrs. But I manage to fill in the corners with mindless tasks like answering emails. I think 80 hours a week is only achievable with the help of drugs i.e. caffeine
- dietrichepp 12y ago
  Speaking of silicon valley, it seems like it's often: * Caffeine in public, or for starters, and then adderall or something more potent, * Alcohol after work to wind down, * Maybe oxycodone or heroin. If it seems like your problems can be solved by working more hours, then you end up medicating yourself into oblivion, blowing up, or burning out. I am also baffled by the idea of working 80 hours in a week.
  - pm90 12y ago
    Well, its not just peeps in SV that use the caffeine + alcohol recipe for productivity, its pretty much all of America. Speaking anecdotally, I find that Caffeine makes me super alert and alcohol super relaxed, both of which are the intended effects. But I do make a point to not abuse either of them, simply because I don't want my senses to get numbed by their effect.
    - seunosewa 12y ago
      what's the difference between daily use of coffee/alcohol and abuse?
      - BozeWolf 12y ago
        One beer a day is not abuse? I drink 1 beer at workdays and probably 10+ in the weekend usually in one night. Needless to say, the day after having those I do not drink any beer at all and suffer from a hangover... Which in turn sometimes sort of is enjoyable because it makes you stop thinking for a day.
        fat0wl 12y ago
        A doctor would probably classify this as some level of abuse, since medically accepted drinking levels are low (few drinks a week, I think?). Even if its just "1 per day", chemical dependency in order to function is usually seen as an issue. Sure, small doses of coffee & alcohol are well... small, but there are tons of people out there who rely on neither at all, where as the absence of these "small" doses would greatly impact your life. EDIT: I should mention though that I am not really against small-dose self-medication, as the alternative of getting medicated through the "proper system" is probably even more frightening. I do wish I could kick all small-dose habits though, rather than dealing with relapses (boring work without coffee is haaaard) & other compensatory habits. As for your 10+ beers followed by welcome hangover comment, I believe Adorno addresses this in Minima Moralia and some of his other texts. His basic belief is that people are so alienated from themselves that they treat the weekend (their only time to really be themselves completely) as a respite that will ready them for the onslaught of the next week's work. Basically, the work week and attitudes that have arisen to rationalize it are a system of total self-alienation, with all traces of your "in an ideal world" personality smothered out of you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minima_Moralia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minima_Moralia Anyway, sorry if this came off sounding very dramatic. I really am not like deeply worried about you, hah, I'm just saying from a theoretical standpoint what you're describing does not prove your point at all. It's more like you're just using black humor to perpetuate bread&circus mentality.
refurb 12y ago
You just power through. I worked as a management consultant a while back and we had record hours for accounting purposes although i was on a salary. One week i worked 106 hrs. That included 20 hours on the weekend and one day where i clocked 20 hours. Needless to say i don't work there anymore.
- infinite8s 12y ago
  Were you actually productive the entire time?
  - refurb 12y ago
    Hell no. I can hit 50 hr in a week and be pretty productive. After that i'm running at 50% efficiency and rapidly dropping after that. Once over 80 hr it's a struggle to get the most menial tasks done.
uptownJimmy 12y ago
I can go 55-60 hours/week at a pretty good clip, but the fall-off after that is drastic, and I can only keep it up for a few months before everything starts to get sad and depressy. 50 hours/week is probably a sweet spot for me.
Swizec 12y ago
It depends on how varied your stuff is. I can easily log 30 hours of paid coding a week, tack on 10-ish hours of email, add some 5+ hours of marketing, and add 10 hours of working out with 10 hours of learning new stuff. I call all of this productive hours and will gladly say an average week contains 70 to 80 productive hours. But you'll notice that I never spend more than 30 hours a week on any one type of productivity. And that only some 30 odd hours a week are directly billable.
ikrima 12y ago
I'd say watch out for the "One brain" fallacy/cognitive bias in all of these responses. There are lots of factors (age, discipline, interest in what you're doing, etc) but I think a lot of people overlook that one big component of this is brain chemistry. Some athletes are endurance athletes, some athletes are sprinters. It seems obvious that you wouldn't expect Usain Bolt to run the fastest marathon just because he's a runner. Our brains are just as genetically varied as other physical characteristics. For me, I know that my peak productivity is from 11 pm - 4 am and it goes down exponentially if I have to do non-fun tasks or if I'm in a stressful crunch as opposed to a positive crunch. I also know that after 3-4 months of 10-12 hours, I need to go back down to 5-6 hours until I get excited again. And for some strange reason, if I don't feel something is required, I can leisurely work on something for 12-16 hours a day indefinitely (researching, reading conference papers, learning). If I have to debug code nasty bugs like multithreaded data races, I can't be productive at those lengths of time so I try to mix fun work with this type of dreaded work. Know what works for you and build your work schedule around that. That's how we work at our startup.