Ask HN: How do you deal with an off-day?

Do what I can & be cognizant as to the effect my slowness will have.

And if doubt, be honest walk away and take some me time after letting the team know.

The the mandatory yearly corporate BS trainings.

Organize your inbox.

Do that one thing you've been wanting to but is lower priority, like learning a tool or working on a low priority bug.

I don't. I take the rest I need, and try again another time. This is where remote work shines - I try not to let my teams fall into the trap of 9-5 hours. I encourage everyone to work when they are productive, and don't force it when they are not. As long as the work gets done, it is all good.

I have never obsessed over sleep metrics.

If I am sick, I accept I am sick.

Like most people, I've had jobs with physical demands. Feeling tired is a normal part of a hard day's work.

"Productive" is a bullshit goal. Good luck.

Usually an off day is for kids or other urgent matters, such as water leak or basement backflow.

Our invisible middle aged family man/woman does not have the luxury to be "off".

1. Off day = vacation day = PTO (paid time off)?

or

2. You're not firing on all cylinders and tired and can't get going and feeling unproductive?

Either way, you cannot be productive 100% of the time. Take it easy.

Usually catch up on the little things. Little updates on things that aren’t my main project and don’t need any meetings, consults, or anything else. Clean up my email, purge downloads/screenshots/etc, organize things so when I’m having a better day I can have things easier, and stuff like that.

Or, if there is something that absolutely has to get done, I suck it up and get it done, so I can go do nothing when I’m done, while not having to think about it anymore.

i found a way of sleeping with my hand on the mouse that moves it slightly with the motion of my breathing so that teams doesn't show me as away while i nap

Small documentation work, research, cleaning up my desk and of computer files/inbox.

Just do small stuff that normally fall trough the cracks. It's also during these days that my brain comes up with solutions I can then implement during more productive days

An off-day is an off-day. If it was possible to find some method to be productive it wouldn't be an off-day.

Just like getting sick there's not much that you can do about it once you have it.

Once you have an off-day it's better to accept that you won't be very productive and inform your superior, instead of trying to force something and having to make up for that lost productivity the following days.

Just as with getting sick, the best thing you can do is prevention. Make sure you have a healthy sleep pattern, eat varied and in moderation, exercise regularly, and take care of your mental health.

If you feel like you have a lot of off-days try to figure out why that is. Are you sleeping well? are you stressed or anxious? Make a note of these things on your off-days (it can be hard to accurately remember emotions) and try to see if you can discern a pattern.

If I'm physically off, the most productive thing I can do is give myself space to recover. I try to refill my "Sims bars": sleep, eat, socialize etc. If I get bored, I might just clean the flat, triage my Downloads folder, and maybe pick some easy tasks from my to-do list. It gives me a clean slate for the next day, which really helps me recover.

If I'm emotionally off, I leave all work aside and take myself on a date. That usually means cycling to a breakfast place I like, going to a museum, getting drinks with friends or reading in a pleasant place.

Above all, I accept that not every day will be productive, and that forcing myself to produce consistent output is not a good idea.

Normally I'd make that a research day, but now I get very little say in how a day goes. Regularly have half of my day or longer booked.

Reading and trying stuff out can give me that spark. Finding a dozen messages from people wanting 'a quick chat' drowns it.

Off days are simply not a thing. You can either be like physically sick and in that case you take the day off but there are no off days. If you are good at something and you can do things in a single threaded manner with focus and you have one to two things which are major items that you want to check off, every single day will be a good day. Now you might not make as much progress or some days you might make a lot of progress, but the days in which you do not have progress are not off days.

Reflect on where I am in life, where I’ve been, where I’d like to go.

Write (paper and pen), draw diagrams, sometimes sketch.

If sick, watch fav movies and only do email via phone.

I expect that pushing myself will just lead to worse performance that I’ll need to fix later. Do what I can, and not feel bad about it.

Open up the GIMP and start making joke meme comics. Laughter is the best medicine.

I like the approach of a Hall of Fame NHL player, Teemu Selanne- he asks "how good are you on your bad day?" and "if you're having a bad day, what can you do to make it a little bit better?"

Obviously there are exceptions when you're physically ill, but for the most part I think this approach is a good one to keep in mind because it forces you to think how you can make even an off day a little better.

Link to podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spittin-chiclets-episo...

Often just sleep it off. Sleep in the office, or car, or if you're at home, a proper bed. A 3 minute nap does wonders. Sometimes more sugar or hydration helps. Sometimes a walk.

It's rarely ever a full off day. It's an off-hour, then you tilt because you're trying to force yourself on no fuel or you procrastinate and feel worse. Then it becomes an off-day.

Genuine question: why does being productive matter on a off day? Isn't an off day ones body's way of telling that it's need something else not what the mind conjures up randomly or something that is instilled in the subconscious through cultural or personal values?

A little bump of cbd or thc 5-10mg and the induced sleep, it’s a good reset.

I just sleep and read. Why strain yourself more if you know it is not going to be productive?

A lot of people disregard the creative aspect of programming, even if you're feeling great, some days creativity comes, some days it doesn't.

In the company I work for, which is horribly ran, a lot of the projects I work on have a bus factor of 1 - which is me. So, me taking a sick day, or even vacation can throw off one of the many arbitrary or poorly planned deadlines.

I haven't found a good answer to this, but I find it helps me to have a good routine such that no matter how dead tired or sick I am, I can engage the routine and get _something_ done.

The most important part is not trying to catch up, but preparing for a productive next day. It goes against intuition, but sometimes the best I can do is prepare a meal for the next day(s) and go to bed early.