Re:Thomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation
by zhte415 on Thursday May 15, 2014 @05:01AM
(#7748439)
> I am going to go one step further and claim that anyone who says they work 10+ hour days regularly and are still productive is full of shit.
It depends on the type of work, work environment, and people one's working with.
One environment I've worked in had almost nothing but 'performance budget' and 'risk budget' defined. It was fascinating for myself, a 20-something at the time, to sit in a quite comfortable office for 12 hour stretches just looking at numbers and figuring out interesting things to do. Invigorating, in fact, with almost no pressure, just fun.
In another I ended up in quite a large organisation as regional 'service delivery head' which basically meant fielding several hundred emails per day across quite a broad timezone. Despite a an array of systems hacked together across several decades, and perhaps that was the fun, the team and I were pretty productive, however defined, and cut operating expenses by a considerable margin. Less blue-sky, more operations focused, but fun long hours nonetheless.
Having a child was quite a learning experience: we're all learning, all of the time, and we're also doing stuff, all of the time. I now work for myself, and view time on HN, or watching recordings of STTNG, or walking in a local park, or going to local university art displays, very legitimately as productive time, as I'm exposed to others' views, findings, methods, and inspirations of people that create something great.
It depends on the type of work, work environment, and people one's working with.
One environment I've worked in had almost nothing but 'performance budget' and 'risk budget' defined. It was fascinating for myself, a 20-something at the time, to sit in a quite comfortable office for 12 hour stretches just looking at numbers and figuring out interesting things to do. Invigorating, in fact, with almost no pressure, just fun.
In another I ended up in quite a large organisation as regional 'service delivery head' which basically meant fielding several hundred emails per day across quite a broad timezone. Despite a an array of systems hacked together across several decades, and perhaps that was the fun, the team and I were pretty productive, however defined, and cut operating expenses by a considerable margin. Less blue-sky, more operations focused, but fun long hours nonetheless.
Having a child was quite a learning experience: we're all learning, all of the time, and we're also doing stuff, all of the time. I now work for myself, and view time on HN, or watching recordings of STTNG, or walking in a local park, or going to local university art displays, very legitimately as productive time, as I'm exposed to others' views, findings, methods, and inspirations of people that create something great.
I've never filled in a timesheet.