I think one of the major causes of this, although not mentioned in the article, is the institutionalised culture of having to arrive at the office at a certain time early in the morning, then having to spend the next 8-9 hour block trapped in it.
With such an inflexible regime, all it takes is one night of going to bed late (real life can disrupt even the most disciplined schedules) and you're doomed to exhaustion for the rest of the week. Let alone the fact that people aren't clones of one another; not everyone has the same sleep patterns.
As much as everyone trash talks big corporations, I work for one now and have this beautiful thing called flex hours. Unless there's a meeting in the morning (rarely) I'm usually up at 915 and into work before 10am (no rush hour traffic). Some people arrive as late as 11-1130am, but as long as you're doing the work that needs to be done it doesn't matter.
It's a nice balance because it allows me to go to bed ~1am and then any shift in sleep during the week (usually the weekend) isn't so drastic to cause massive exhaustion for the next few days while trying to rotate back.
As much as everyone trash talks big corporations, I work for one now and have this beautiful thing called flex hours.
Those that have flex time are lucky, and I find that programmers are more likely to have this perk. When I was an employee, I didn't explicitly have flex time, but I pretty much lived on the 10-to-6 schedule, coming in at 11 if I needed the extra hour.
I have a few friends (who are also programmers) who explicitly get flex-time.
But my wife, who is a fashion designer for a major department store, does not have that option. She has the classic "corporate" job. Be there at 8:30, attend useless meetings all day, and after 4 or 5pm the real work can finally start. But she has to be there at 8:30, otherwise she's likely to miss a meeting in the morning. The whole process from concept to delivery is one of the most convoluted processes I've ever heard, involving meeting after meeting. Nothing is approved until an army of committees have agreed to it.
How are you "forced" to do anything? If you've made the choice to work a corporate day job, you've also made the choice to be "forced" to be in the office for 8-9 hours a day. This sounds like making a decision and then not accepting responsibility.
Secondly, I also have the option of working from home and can easily just VPN in, except personally I work much better when I'm in a setting that is designated for work only, so I choose to head into the office M-F.
As a programmer there's a lot of flex in big companies that let them come pretty close to the flex of working on a startup. In fact, I would argue that working 80-90 hour weeks (including weekends) on a startup is hardly flexible. The only real difference is whether or not you're working on something that is intrinsically motivating, but I find it's always possible to find meaning in even the most dull of tasks.
For now though, I balance the need for food and rent with pursuing my own ideas.
Well yes at a high level of course I am not forced as it was my choice. I'm talking at the local level of company policy. It's nice that you have the option of working from home; I'd like that as an option once in a while.
The thing is, if I left the office in the middle of the day for a walk/gym session, everyone would get noticeably uncomfortable. Mind, I'm not sure how much walking one can get done in a suburban office park.
I can easily work long hours on something I care about, but the pressure to chain myself to the desk and avoid noticeable breaks gets to be quite a drag. In summary I don't think we are disagreeing on anything.
Sure, it sucks, but I wouldn't say it's as bad. Being required to work X hours per day with the option to start when you want is still an improvement over a completely regimented schedule.
On the other hand, my experience has taught me that going to bed late and not having to get up at a certain time in the morning, leads to going to bed even later. I've found that this does not make me less tired, but more.
Forgive me if I'm missing something, I'm not trying to catch you out but I'm curious why you believe that one late night will affect the rest of your week.
Surely a correspondingly early night the next evening will redress things?
I'm always surprised by the lengths people (self included) will go to rather than just sleep, stop eating when they aren't hungry, etc. People seem to want a more complicated solution.
Yeah. It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody, but I found that I felt a lot better in the evening when I hadn't been marinating my brain in loads of caffeine all day. Green tea gradually over the day, or a mug of coffee in the morning and another sometime after lunch is all right, but much more than that makes me manic, then cranky, then gloomy. Not good.
For me, personally, it's a much simpler formula. I feel exhausted when I've been doing something I don't want to for too long. Exhaustion and motivation are really tightly linked for me.
I notice that I get brutally exhausted when it's time to change jobs or otherwise move on in life. Can't wake up, have trouble getting things done, generally just worn out.
The funny thing is, if I start something else the next day, like a new job I'm excited about, boom, back to full steam. I don't sleep much and don't want to, work crazy hours and wake up excited about rather than dreading my to-do list.
Thus far the startup life has catered well to that. At one year in I'm still excited almost every day about getting up to work. I work around 100 hours most weeks and it doesn't seem like a chore. I'm really hoping that pattern holds true for the long haul.
That is the description of my life at the moment. Unfortunately, life demands (wife, children, mortgage) make it difficult to move on. In the meantime, getting out of bed is a chore.
You mean that you work like 14 hours a day, 7 days/week? Is it full working hours that you could invoice or just 100 hours that you spend in front of the computer? What does your daily schedule look like? Just curious.
It's not nearly consistent as 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. First, I don't sleep on a consistent schedule. Some nights I sleep 3 hours, sometimes 10. Usual is closer to 5. These hours of sleep may or may not actually occur at night.
Second is that I'm not consulting, so "billable" and "work" aren't the same thing.
Yesterday I spent:
- 1 hour in a meeting with a potential customer
- 2 hours traveling there and back on the subway, during which I read work-related research papers
- 1.5 hours talking with my co-founder about stuff we've got coming up on the horizon
- 1 hour reading and answering mails
- 9 hours, from around 6:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m., coding with a break in there for cooking dinner
I then woke back up this morning at 7:30 a.m. and am about to get back to that code, after my morning routine of checking mail and news. :-)
I've found my own effective method for beating that exhausted feeling: I call it "supercharging" your batteries. The trick is to down two or three redbulls immediately before going to sleep. 45-50 minutes later you basically hit the ceiling, transitioning in seconds from unconsciousness to compulsive jabbering. be careful with this technique: if you're unable to fall asleep before the medicine kicks, you're screwed.
The author maintains that fats and cheap carbs can only interrupt the body and add to its exhaustion. I think this is true only if you fail to shoot the moon.
"Two or three redbulls" sounds a bit extreme to me but the principle itself is sound[1]. The idea is that a short nap helps you feel refreshed if you can keep it just that: a short nap. Caffeine also can help you keep alert, but it takes a while to absorb it when taken orally, just the amount of time as a short nap. So when the caffeine wakes you up you are ready to go.
1. With the caveat that 45 minutes sounds too long to me. It should only take 15 minutes or so for the caffeine to get through your digestive tract. Also, sleeping longer than 15-20 minutes probably results in significant grogginess.
I also want to dispute the notion that life today is so incredibly busy and challenging. Sure, we work 8-10 hours a day but for the most part its doing higher level thinking and interesting work (at least for people on this board). On the other hand, jobs at other times in history required probably the same number of hours but in more labor-intensive pursuits (farming, construction, etc..).
Whether we want to believe this or not, all of us could leave our job and find something easier. We might have to downgrade our lifestyle a little but we would survive. So not only do we work jobs that really aren't that tough but we have the flexibility to leave at any time. In short, we need to stop being whiners.
I think he was right on about keeping a dark bedroom, but his ideas about exercise are off:
"Exercise is important too, although, says Lipman, this should be restorative rather than exhausting - he doesn't think we are built to run marathons or spend hours on treadmills.
Instead he promotes moderation, focusing on yoga and simple programmes designed to retrain our bodies to rest and recover..."
Not only are human bodies remarkably well-built for running, but it was key in our evolution. Yoga was not.
This is why I've started adapting my desk to allow standing most of the time. I feel fresh even at 6 or 7pm. I tried standing all of the time for a day or two but I find that sometimes I want to sit too.
32 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 81.4 ms ] threadWith such an inflexible regime, all it takes is one night of going to bed late (real life can disrupt even the most disciplined schedules) and you're doomed to exhaustion for the rest of the week. Let alone the fact that people aren't clones of one another; not everyone has the same sleep patterns.
As much as everyone trash talks big corporations, I work for one now and have this beautiful thing called flex hours. Unless there's a meeting in the morning (rarely) I'm usually up at 915 and into work before 10am (no rush hour traffic). Some people arrive as late as 11-1130am, but as long as you're doing the work that needs to be done it doesn't matter.
It's a nice balance because it allows me to go to bed ~1am and then any shift in sleep during the week (usually the weekend) isn't so drastic to cause massive exhaustion for the next few days while trying to rotate back.
Those that have flex time are lucky, and I find that programmers are more likely to have this perk. When I was an employee, I didn't explicitly have flex time, but I pretty much lived on the 10-to-6 schedule, coming in at 11 if I needed the extra hour.
I have a few friends (who are also programmers) who explicitly get flex-time.
But my wife, who is a fashion designer for a major department store, does not have that option. She has the classic "corporate" job. Be there at 8:30, attend useless meetings all day, and after 4 or 5pm the real work can finally start. But she has to be there at 8:30, otherwise she's likely to miss a meeting in the morning. The whole process from concept to delivery is one of the most convoluted processes I've ever heard, involving meeting after meeting. Nothing is approved until an army of committees have agreed to it.
Secondly, I also have the option of working from home and can easily just VPN in, except personally I work much better when I'm in a setting that is designated for work only, so I choose to head into the office M-F.
As a programmer there's a lot of flex in big companies that let them come pretty close to the flex of working on a startup. In fact, I would argue that working 80-90 hour weeks (including weekends) on a startup is hardly flexible. The only real difference is whether or not you're working on something that is intrinsically motivating, but I find it's always possible to find meaning in even the most dull of tasks.
For now though, I balance the need for food and rent with pursuing my own ideas.
The thing is, if I left the office in the middle of the day for a walk/gym session, everyone would get noticeably uncomfortable. Mind, I'm not sure how much walking one can get done in a suburban office park.
I can easily work long hours on something I care about, but the pressure to chain myself to the desk and avoid noticeable breaks gets to be quite a drag. In summary I don't think we are disagreeing on anything.
That's what hacker news is for.
Surely a correspondingly early night the next evening will redress things?
Also: Getting regular exercise helps so much.
I notice that I get brutally exhausted when it's time to change jobs or otherwise move on in life. Can't wake up, have trouble getting things done, generally just worn out.
The funny thing is, if I start something else the next day, like a new job I'm excited about, boom, back to full steam. I don't sleep much and don't want to, work crazy hours and wake up excited about rather than dreading my to-do list.
Thus far the startup life has catered well to that. At one year in I'm still excited almost every day about getting up to work. I work around 100 hours most weeks and it doesn't seem like a chore. I'm really hoping that pattern holds true for the long haul.
OK, I'll stop whining now. :)
Second is that I'm not consulting, so "billable" and "work" aren't the same thing.
Yesterday I spent:
- 1 hour in a meeting with a potential customer
- 2 hours traveling there and back on the subway, during which I read work-related research papers
- 1.5 hours talking with my co-founder about stuff we've got coming up on the horizon
- 1 hour reading and answering mails
- 9 hours, from around 6:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m., coding with a break in there for cooking dinner
I then woke back up this morning at 7:30 a.m. and am about to get back to that code, after my morning routine of checking mail and news. :-)
The author maintains that fats and cheap carbs can only interrupt the body and add to its exhaustion. I think this is true only if you fail to shoot the moon.
1. With the caveat that 45 minutes sounds too long to me. It should only take 15 minutes or so for the caffeine to get through your digestive tract. Also, sleeping longer than 15-20 minutes probably results in significant grogginess.
Whether we want to believe this or not, all of us could leave our job and find something easier. We might have to downgrade our lifestyle a little but we would survive. So not only do we work jobs that really aren't that tough but we have the flexibility to leave at any time. In short, we need to stop being whiners.
"Exercise is important too, although, says Lipman, this should be restorative rather than exhausting - he doesn't think we are built to run marathons or spend hours on treadmills.
Instead he promotes moderation, focusing on yoga and simple programmes designed to retrain our bodies to rest and recover..."
Not only are human bodies remarkably well-built for running, but it was key in our evolution. Yoga was not.
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2004/11/17-running...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4021811.stm