Sorry for the unqualified snark here, just couldn‘t resist. The realities couldn‘t be more different for different people at this time.
Someone recently asked me whether I enjoyed my Corona free time as well.
I didn’t know what to answer as could not even comprehend the concept.
I‘m missing everything. Time for myself. Silence. Holidays. Physical movement. Sanity.
Work and Noise, non-stop, around the clock. Still falling behind on all projects with limited understanding of single colleagues with more time to kill than Netflix has content.
I love those rascals, but I‘m crashing on the couch every night and barely make it out of bed the next day. Just functioning and surviving.
Never been more exhausted in my life before.
My wife and I are toast by kids'(2&4) bedtime, and can only sit on the couch watching something and reel from the day.
Like Ron Swanson said, I miss silence, and the absence of noise.
These people are also the most overrepresented on various internet fora.
They have the most time.
This past few weeks I've started work at 6am (it's 6:07 right now) so that I can create some more space during the day and give her time.
I give my son some focused attention / special time in the middle of the day and in the evening. It's important that he gets a good intense dose of me and I'm not distracted when with him. Without that he's feeling unwanted (why does papa work all the time?) and he acts out. He refuses to join us for dinner: "I'm working" he says.
I was burnt out. Right now I'm doing well.
I disagree. I've got more kids than you do (edit: I misread your post, I'm not clear how many children you have. My apology for the mistake), all at difficult ages including a 1 year old. They are one of the few things making COVID seclusion tolerable for me.
The near constant interaction can be exhausting, but it has also been very rewarding. I know my kids better than ever and have gotten to participate in a lot of moments I would've missed.
I find that the narrative I give myself around things like this is very important. If I told myself I was barely surviving my kids I would probably feel that way. Instead I focus on how lucky I am to be surrounded by my family, and that it's a wonderful thing to have unprecedented amounts of time with them. I've perhaps never been happier with my family than I have been during the pandemic.
None of that is a criticism of people who are struggling. Just looking to offer another point of view.
Life is complex. A change can be beneficial in some ways and harmful to others. And you have many children and keeps wanting more, you are probably an extravert not an introvert.
They never said how many kids they had, which makes it hard to take your comment seriously.
You don't know what their kids are like, how much spousal support they have, the floorplan or acoustics of their home, how hard their work is, or what their threshold for noise is.
> None of that is a criticism of people who are struggling. Just looking to offer another point of view.
No. It's easy to convince yourself that that sort of thing is helpful, but all you're really saying is that you can't understand because your particular circumstances are better.
I've really enjoyed the extra time with my six-year-old daughter rather than sending her off to school. Having her around the house and able to come into my office for random cuddles during the working day is a joy.
He has two adorable little girls; 1.5 years old and 2 months.
His kids are pretty calm, by most standards.. but you can't let the older one out of sight for a few seconds.
I certainly feel your pain even though I don't have kids.
Question: Tell me how much you love going to the bathroom or getting washed now. It's the only time you have to yourself lol
My daughters daycare told us point blank no staff wear masks unless answering the door and they “don’t want to close for a virus” (you can read between the lines). One of the teachers also shops for instacart half days. No thank you.
Hang on and things will get better!
If this is important (and I agree it is) then we're setting up the vast majority of people for burnout. Most people don't have the luxury of a room they can convert into an office.
For those who don't understand, here's my annecdote:
After the divorce the only thing I could afford in my son's school district is a 2 bedroom^ apartment. I have to pack up "my office" just to serve dinner. We now have lunch from the couch. I'm not complaining, but the idea of a dedicated room is up there with personal island for me.
^ the master is his to give him playspace lacking a playroom
Feel free to write code after work if you like, but to consider it anywhere close to a requirement, even to just help with burnout, is perpetuating a rather toxic view of this particular industry's workers.
Additionally, if you're smart that time can wind up being compensated later. I wrote JavaScript on my own for 3.5 years before I started doing it professionally, and while I didn't get paid, it allowed me to eventually double my income, so I consider it a great investment.
> We don't expect this of other careers,
Sure we do. Doctors may be expected to read medical journals or keep up on the latest research, for example.
Great if you are young and have no commitments. Not so great if you are old and have many commitments.
Or are we expecting programmers to program after work even during their later years?
Look, OP suggested a strategy for not getting burnt out that works for them, and I'm just saying what works for me. You are the one who is turning this into some sort of "expectation".
If you don't want to code outside of work, and don't see value in it, don't do it. Nobody gives a rats ass.
"Find a hobby" would be a better phrasing.
One should never consider it a requirement, but it's not a recipe for certain burn-out either. (But yeah, if you are doing it because it's a requirement, then it's work and it will lead to burn-out.)
That is so not true. When are doctors supposed to perform research or their required continuing education? When seeing clients? No. It’s on their own time.
They may be on-call sometimes but generally if they're off they are not working or training.
They read UpToDate on work time.
I’ve gone the entire pandemic in a 450sq ft studio with my wife and our pets. My trick was to put my desk between a window and a wall and get an $80 room divider. Anytime the room divider was closed it meant one of two things: “Please don’t distract me, I’m busy”. Or “I’m not sitting back at my desk to work until tomorrow”
I love working — prior to my wife moving in, all I wanted to do was code and tinker with different ideas. But I know that isn’t sustainable for many reasons. Having a blocked off space, as tiny as it may be, to “get in the zone” or literally separate me from work has worked wonders for my mental health during the pandemic.
* I used some past tense here because we finally just upgraded to a 1 bedroom after 2 years :)
Alternatives I've heard from others are things like dressing up for work. I had a colleague that wore a suit to work every day (at a tech startup) so that when he got home he could change into something else. That helped him define a boundary.
Find what works for you, it doesn't have to be physical space.
That's actually a great point - the days that I put on a button-up and nice jeans as if I was going into an office are days that I'm way more productive, as opposed to wearing pajamas all day.
Also my kids whom are stuck at home at the moment recognise the difference and "somewhat" tries to disturb me less if I got a work shirt on.
Make sure you've got everything ready to go when you 'arrive'. Don't do chores during the day -- but if you have a partner, discuss your reasoning for this with them beforehand.
I grew up sleeping on the floor for 15 years because I couldn't afford a bed. I get it.
It's not as good as having a separate system for office work but you can conceptually separate what you are doing at least.
I try to keep work/personal data completely separated. No logging in to private email from work account, no hobby code and work code accessible for same user account. No Hacker News or other unrelated sites on work browser. Private matters during work hours done on my private phone.
I find this good for work/free time separation, and helps a lot with concentration too.
When booted off the work drive, do not mount your internal drive.
2. It's very hard to do casual check-in with another person.I feel like I'm bothering them too much. I can't get over it. Too stressful. Was way easier in person. Just feel the room and interrupt as needed.
3. I wake up early, take my pre-workout or red bull or 5h energy but just stare at the screen for 4 hours between 8 and noon and can't start.
4. I love the product but I can't start working wihtout others around me.
5. I hired multiple therapists. They put me on meds. I took medical leave. Nothing helped.
For me, work is for work and home is for home or for "work on autopilot"
Without this, I think I would be a lot worse off in this crisis, and I'm a pretty extreme introvert.
If I was in your situation and had to actually bug people to talk to them... Ugh. No way.
Have you asked others if they want to be on an 8 hr/day video call with you? Perhaps there are others that would prefer that, or would do it to help you.
I personally would not enjoy that, but if someone on my team needed it... I'd at least try to deal with it.
Alternatively, maybe you can find a few of them to do it for 2 hrs/day and take the edge off.
I live in a city where an apartment costs 1500 a square foot, so a two bedroom apartment for a single person is barely affordable.
This pandemic has taught me that crowded cities suck.
When I relocated back east, I made it a point to a) not live in the city since it'll be overpriced and I won't be able to enjoy the surrounding area and b) Price per square footage wouldn't make sense if I'm at home 24/7. So I went across the river and pay less for _a lot more_.
I know a lot of people are moving to Austin TX. They get a LOT more for their money. I was lucky to be on a month by month lease when the pandemic hit.
Homelessness is off the charts with the street camping and violence that comes along with it. If you're familiar with SF, it's nothing like the Tenderloin but more like SOMA-lite.
In addition, shootings are way up. For context, there were 39 total in 2019. In the summer of 2020, we had 40 consecutive days of shootings. Further, the local DA has also adopted the mindset of not prosecuting "low level" crimes of any theft under $750.
Sacrificing what makes Austin compelling is not the way to go.
Austin isn't entirely alone with this: most of the sunbelt cities that are growing are doing so in the context of a complete lack of long term city planning. But Austin, IMO, is the worst right now. Even Phoenix, with an even more insane lack of water than Austin, has managed this side of things better.
I was taken back because I never thought Austin would have such a problem.
I'm single so I'm wary of not living in a large, walkable city.
I was fortunate enough that my lease expired back in July so I looked for somewhere a bit further out of the city with more room. I pay a smidge more each month, but I probably at least doubled the size of my place and I have a dedicated office now
But I've heavily considered it!
1. Realise you're lucky to be in this position to work from home, as opposed to medical staff and being depressed is a luxury.
2. You are not a code machine, amount of code written is not a good measure of how productive you are. Better think of how much you contributed overall or learnt something new that year.
3. Your work is not your life, so focus and even obsess over other things such as hobbies and spend more mental energy on that rather than worry about your job. Your job just pays the bills nothing more.
4. Find online ways to socialise such as playing online games. If you're introverted that should be enough to satisfy your social needs.
I know rationally that you're correct but it's damn hard to keep that in mind when you're depressed.
I used to drink it daily and it destroyed my body. Also, Red Bull is quite expensive!
I was working around this once by drinking red bull, which I found lifted my emotions temporarily, but after it wore off in 4 hours I crashed way harder into despair. This effect built up over time and fortunately I noticed it and stopped using it routinely.
YMMV - just a friendly warning of how it affected me.
And the worst case scenarios happened when my body was tired and wanted to stop, but my brain was high on Red Bull and didn't let me fall sleep.
This can apply to pretty much any substance or routine. Right now for me it's video games :(
Once I finish this case, I think it's time to go back to water and coffee for 6 months. :)
Partly because we have "real coffee" here in Portugal (expresso, a cultural import from the Italians via the Cimbalino series of coffee shop hardware, IIRC), partly because a long mug is better suited to winter, and partly because I am back working 90% with British folk, to the extent where we can compare blends...
But, overall, it suits me better. Takes longer to drink, does not mess with my stomach in the mornings, and smells great.
(Mind you, we do not consider American-style coffee to be "coffee" in the strictest sense of the word, because it's too processed/diluted/mixed).
Out of curiosity, what exactly do you mean by "American-style coffee"? Are you referring to something you would get at Starbucks, or are you referring to the quality of the coffee beans used to make it?
Europeans prefer to chew on a few green coffee beans throughout the day as a long-lasting source of clean, non-jittery, all-natural energy.
If you add an equal quantity of hot water to an espresso that is the European cafe attempt at emulating an American coffee, but it still has different taste because of the pressure.
I don't think Europe is as obsessed with aribica beans, robusta is common and actually quite good. In drip coffee, arabica is really the only thing drinkable or the closest to drinkable depending on your perspective.
I’m currently experimenting with different blends of black tea and decreasing the amount of milk (as is tradition in Ireland) so that I can taste the tea better. I find that I can develop a taste for any decent tea leaf (or coffee bean).
I can't compare the De'Longhi with any other burr grinder but the results are similar to those of the shop that I get my coffee from. Its one downside is that the minimum grind quantity is too much coffee for one person so I try to time it for when my wife will share the coffee with me. The whole point of grinding your own is that you can then brew the coffee at its freshest.
So far, I've been enjoying the results of having freshly ground coffee. Best of luck with your own grinding.
[1] https://www.delonghi.com/en-us/products/coffee-and-espresso/...
You end up really not using the PC for anything else than working because in your free time last thing you wan't will be in the front of that PC.
I sold my gaming PC and bought a Xbox to spend my free (I used my laptop to work at the company so I'm just using that laptop to also work).
If that's you, absolutely, definitely, try having different user accounts for work and personal.
Having that separation is very important, and having different accounts is an cheap and easy way that almost everyone's OS already supports.
One bad thing is I keep trying to use my Discord push-to-mute keybind in zoom and it never works :(
When I'm working I use a dock/monitor/mechanical keyboard and sit in an office chair, but after work I switch to just the laptop and sit on the couch. Every little bit helps.
Now I just go to the living room and play in my Xbox. Dunno, I need to change environments to separate things.
I'll emphasize on 3. Manage your expectations with your direct reports. Let them know in order to stay sane you are going to have set schedule to manage stress while wfh. I do this with everyone I meet at work to set those expectations onset. It has helped tremendously.
- https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/10/29/2200
My recommendations (which are very much like yours):
- https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2020/03/05/2230
Some venting on remote challenges:
I messed up sadly on that one.
Point #4... not everyone has that choice.
Item #4 - I fully disagree. Some choices are scary to actually make, but are healthy. For instance, my mom stayed with her abusive husband for many years because she had Stockholm syndrome. If you had asked her why didn't she leave during that time, she would say "I didn't have a choice". Ask her now, and she will tell you "Fear - fear of not knowing how things would work out."
Sometimes the hardest choices to make are the impossible choices.
Are you listening to the others venting too?
I'm convinced that a large part of the stress people have been feeling this past year is due to dehydration and lack of proper nutrition.
Lightheadedness is a big one for me.
To void burn out, I did a few things which I feel are extremely helpful.
1. Have a room that is a dedicated office. When I leave this room, I leave the "office".
2. Establish communication throughout the day. This means having slack conversations (typed and video) that are casual. It's okay to vent on these calls.
3. Have a defined schedule - Awake at 6am, washed/dressed by 6:30am, Red Bull (or if you like food) and at my desk by 7am. I do work long hours, but I enjoy it because I'm accomplishing something.
4. Work on something that excites you or find joy in your work somehow.
5. Lastly, realize most of the mental stress can be managed with a little mindfulness, learning to accept that you still can grow and find joy even when at home and cut back on social media; or if you're like me, I cut out 99% of social media.
I hope everyone remains positive. Do something today, that makes you better tomorrow.