I think this is incredibly important at most levels of the organization. Pushing for 100% capacity utilization (e.g. no downtime or slack) doesn't leave any room for garbage collection (and other optimizations) to occur in people's minds. Often the "Eureka" moment can't be found if you're exhausted after working full-tilt all day.
I also find that individual contributors, particularly in a software context, need more downtime than you think. Sure, you can solve just about any problem quickly if you rush, but you're introducing bugs (subtle or overt) that will have to be cleaned up later.
I'm not saying that programmers should sit in their office chair all day staring out the window, but some amount of it is a good thing.
Definitely part of my plan during the rest of this Thanksgiving week.
This is a great reminder. I feel like people typically spend too much time at the nascent stages of a venture planning everything out in their heads. There's not enough DO at this stage. They typically don't do much of anything to actually progress only to find that once they do dedicate themselves to the venture, they forget that they still need to think. Actual planning and strategerizing (it'll catch on) take a backseat to hitting deadlines. I doubt I'm the only programmer who would love a couple days to just sit down, plan, THINK, and revamp the entire architecture of their current project.
This is another point against the attitude of "My time is worth $XX/hr". Valuing all of your time at the maximum never gives you any time to be at your minimum. And, like others have stated, we aren't equally productive at all times.
Many of my inspirations come from busy work - sweeping, cleaning, maintaining my car, etc.
This is what has been bothering me about the proliferation of cleaning service apps targeted at the tech crowd. I have found cleaning and other menial tasks to be rather meditative. In fact one of the reasons I love working from home is that, when I hit a rut, I can go wash some dishes or vacuum a room. It is a productive way to step away from your problem, while at the same time it is not mentally demanding enough to distract you from your problem.
A great reminder that the macho "work all the time" attitude is actually counterproductive - not just in life, but in work.
You need to relax to be creative. Not just at Thanksgiving, or other publicly mandated holidays, but all through the year. There's a great deal of peer pressure in America to not do this, but hey - whoever said running a startup was about going with the flow? And you need to be creative to make great products and services.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 21.1 ms ] threadI also find that individual contributors, particularly in a software context, need more downtime than you think. Sure, you can solve just about any problem quickly if you rush, but you're introducing bugs (subtle or overt) that will have to be cleaned up later.
I'm not saying that programmers should sit in their office chair all day staring out the window, but some amount of it is a good thing.
This is a great reminder. I feel like people typically spend too much time at the nascent stages of a venture planning everything out in their heads. There's not enough DO at this stage. They typically don't do much of anything to actually progress only to find that once they do dedicate themselves to the venture, they forget that they still need to think. Actual planning and strategerizing (it'll catch on) take a backseat to hitting deadlines. I doubt I'm the only programmer who would love a couple days to just sit down, plan, THINK, and revamp the entire architecture of their current project.
Many of my inspirations come from busy work - sweeping, cleaning, maintaining my car, etc.
You need to relax to be creative. Not just at Thanksgiving, or other publicly mandated holidays, but all through the year. There's a great deal of peer pressure in America to not do this, but hey - whoever said running a startup was about going with the flow? And you need to be creative to make great products and services.