Re:John Carmack on shorter work weeks (2016)
by kenjackson on Saturday June 17, 2023 @12:20AM
(#36367246)
He’s definitely atypical. I’m certainly not like him. I won’t ever revolutionize an industry — and that’s OK. I’d like to do it in theory, but if it meant being in an office 16 hours a day then I’ll pass. I’m more than happy he gets the spoils for his hard work and brilliance.
Re:John Carmack on shorter work weeks (2016)
by slowking2 on Saturday June 17, 2023 @10:48AM
(#36370649)
Same here, interacting with people makes my performance on all sorts of mental tasks drop much faster. 5-6 hours of meetings, and worst case I don't want to do anything else, best case I still need to go for a walk and another 30 minutes on top of that before I'm back to average coding skill.
On the flip side, even for coding I don't love, I can usually grind out 9-10 hours at fairly high productivity; I usually won't because I have other priorities to balance but I can. If I find what I'm working on really interesting, I can do 12 hours at high productivity.
For work, I try to have 2 days a week where I put most of my meetings so that hopefully at least 1 or 2 days of the rest are high productivity.
We're all different. I certainly know people who can be focused for more than seven hours a day (some colleagues, me when I was younger, my family doctor, my dentist). Personally, as an introvert, what drains me most is interacting with people. I think I could be coding 7 hours on my personal project and still be rather fresh. But this isn't what my job looks like, unfortunately.