I'm going to say something that might be wildly unpopular among ambitious people: If you have a full-time job, you are by far not a passive consumer. You presumably contribute >40 hours every week of creatively demanding, high-quality labor to society.
For most people, the premise of this question is wrong. Procrastination, when you don't obviously have a lot of available time and effort, is a symptom that most of your creative energies are already spent elsewhere and are unavailable for other high-energy pursuits. I commend the effort to organizing your remaining free time to produce something of societal value, but for most people this is an exercise that will in the long run lead to burnout. Your mind is already subconsciously telling you this.
I know some people who have energy levels that allow them to sustainably burn the candle at both ends, but they are a small minority. I am quite envious of this group; they appear to have a big leg up in accomplishing great things, but there appears to be a component of either genetics or upbringing that leaves only a small portion of people with this capability.
If you are not in this minority and you strongly desire to produce more creative output outside of your full-time job, there are two options: You can set small goals, e.g. spending 3-5 hours a week of dedicated time towards your pursuit, or putting everything else in your life on pause for a year or two while you go at it with all your effort. The latter course of action will likely not be sustainable, and you have to listen to your mind and body when it's had enough of it.
My preferred choice would be to get a job that pays enough to sustain your lifestyle but has much smaller hours (e.g. 60% or 40% of a full-time position), if this is at all possible. Most places, sadly, it isn't an option. If you can organize this, you free up a significant portion of your creative energy, which can then be used for other ambitious goals.
The guy wants advice on "how", not some words to make him feel better about not doing stuff, so let's give him that.
> for most people this is an exercise that will in the long run lead to burnout. Your mind is already subconsciously telling you this.
I want to point out that this is one of the reasons why people never start things. Let me share my experience as someone who has started, AND burned out, multiple times. Hopefully this helps people change their beliefs.
1. Yes you are right that you will burn out if you push yourself too hard, but this only happens if the result is not satisfying enough compared to the effort you pour in. From my multiple experiences where some I succeeded and some failed, I only burned out enough to give up when things weren't going well despite the effort I put in. I guarantee you you WILL NOT burn out if your thing goes well.
2. Another mistake people make is thinking that burning out is like dying, and you can't recover. This is why people want to "save it for the best" and don't commit 100%, because they "want to be able to commit 100% only when they truly really come across the perfect opportunity". But the thing is, these people NEVER end up doing anything because of the law of inertia. "The perfect opportunity" is an elusive thing, and the more you wait, the higher the bar goes up, which means you will never meet that perfect moment.
3. Burning out is a phase, not the end. I've burned out multiple times, and stopped working for a couple of months to several months (and did nothing but entertain myself). But eventually you recover and can't wait to start a new thing. This never happens to people who wait for the perfect moment because they don't even know what it feels like. They think there's only one chance.
4. Don't try to bend the spoon. It's impossible. Instead, only realize the truth. There is no spoon. Then you will see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is yourself.
> I guarantee you you WILL NOT burn out if your thing goes well.
I strongly disagree with this. I'm a compulsive person, I used to say yes to everything, I enjoy everything. I don't think I ever spent effort towards something that wasn't rewarding in some way or other.
However. Stress is stress and it can be negative or positive. Stress makes you perform better, adrenaline pumping, your senses sharpen. It can all be in a positive loop with great feedback, everyone loving what you do, amazing results, and still you end up burnt out.
My stress manifests physically, "skipped" heartbeats, adrenaline rushes when waking up in the night, I even got atricular fibrilation (AF) and was hospitalised to be "reset" through one of those heart machines you see in ER. I was convinced there was something very wrong with me. Heart problem? Doctors did test after test, and nothing.
I learnt my lesson, I know how to recognise the signs now. I can manage it by just taking care of myself.
But guess what, every single thing I do is fun, positive, great feedback.
I disagree as well. I actually gave a whole talk on the topic. Burnout has nothing to do with whether an undertaking is successful or not. If you look at Christina Maslach's work on the measurement and factors that lead to burnout you will see that the success/failure of the effort is not a significant antecedent to burnout.
For anyone interested in a (potentially) helpful framework for how to evaluate opportunities and avoid burnout, you can watch my talk here - https://vimeo.com/202061452
Are you 100% sure that it was positive stress that got you into the ER? I myself distinguish between stress (=anxiety of not meeting goals in time), and positive motivation (=joy, and not the caffeine one). Sadly, I haven't had much of the second type in recent years, but it's something I'm working on. It sounds as if your HPA axis gets super worked up and your body enters fight or flight mode, causing your heart to go crazy. That's what kept happening to me until I actively took care of the underlying stresses or beliefs I have while coding ("I'm not gonna make it" / "I won't have the time to finish it" / "I won't finish this task today but I desperately want to"...). I didn't get heart symptoms, but rather fatigue and anhedonia.
Just some thoughts on caffeine, since I think stress in programmers is often caused by it, or covered up:
I only very rarely have caffeine, and rather do vitamins if I need to be more stress resistant (Vit C, D, K2, Pantethine and sometimes B vitamins). That way I'm not fooled by the motivation that comes with caffeine, which somehow covers up what I really want to do. If I have caffeine I get giddy about the thought of writing this and that tool, while I couldn't care less when off caffeine.
It's hard to describe, but I can quite easily get "into the flow". This is where I focus on a single project, time cease to exist and I just become one with the code. I can focus on coding for hours and hours without break. In fact, lunch and toilet breaks are irritating distractions. I can go to sleep at night uneasy about something I'm not exactly sure about and suddenly the solution strikes me when I'm half awake in the shower next morning.
I don't use much caffeine, a bit of coffee in the morning, rarely in the afternoon – however I do know that coffee and alcohol makes my condition worse.
It's totally engulfing and extremely productive. This _is_ the mythical man month that people talk about. Only. For me it takes a toll. It's not about any underlying stress like "I won't make it in time". My work is luckily such that I don't have much pressure. It's being "in the zone" that is the problem.
The "flow state". I love it yet mustn't overdo it.
I don't think you need to label this as a condition. I can remember when I used to get into those states. Sadly, it was an artifact of my youth.
I probably would be able to get back into that state if I somehow managed to get all my responsibilities squared away for large periods of time-or alternately, convince myself thoroughly enough to ignore them.
Well, it's great that you found out your boundaries! Most people never do things that push their comfort zone and never find that out, and live their lives wondering what it would have been like.
Sounds like you have a medical condition for dealing with stress, but most people don't have that kind of condition, so obviously if you have that kind of condition you should watch out for yourself, health is everything.
> Another mistake people make is thinking that burning out is like dying, and you can't recover.
Speak for yourself, buddy. I'm still trying to overcome medical issues from my last bout with burnout, including sleep disturbances and stress-related gastritis, and so far the medical profession hasn't had much luck in dealing with any of them.
Burnout and the stress that goes along with it can absolutely do lasting damage to your body.
Oh now my recent state makes sense. I very recently had an endoscopy after vomiting blood, turned out my stomach lining that had become so inflamed it had slightly torn and had started to bleed. I couldn't really think what it could be, I don't really drink, my diet is good, I exercise daily and I don't get much in the way of negative stress. The only change recently in my life was taking up helping a friend code their app, again not exactly stressful but it did consume the rest of my free time I had outside of work, seems like even a slow burn out can cause health issues.
Yeah sure, this can happen.
But for most people that's not what burnout means.
Mostly it's having a project you want to start but every time you think about it you think "I'll have more time tomorrow, I'll just watch TV now", or "Ugh I can't concentrate on this, I'll take a break". And before you know it 6 months have passed.
That is more common, and that you can recover from
You can't. Because it's impossible to describe how hard it was for me in words, you would have to experience it yourself.
When I say "burnout", I don't just mean mental burnout. I've even been in situations where I went completely broke, lived homeless, and much more sensitive details I can't talk about on a public forum.
Of course it doesn't have to be all life threatening to qualify as a "burnout". I've been through more moderate burnouts where I just couldn't keep up mentally. I started doubting humanity (I still haven't fully recovered from this and don't think I ever will).
But overall, these are things you can't just describe. Even if I did, people who've never been through one will never understand.
What I meant was I got to know more about how the world works, and the world is a messy place the more you know about it. So basically what i meant was the world let me down a little. It is impossible to "unknow" what you already know, so that's what i meant when i can't recover, which is a good thing (although some people may decide to take it negatively)
So in my case there have been no downside and only upsides. I regret 0% of the decisions I made and the "burnouts" have been just part of the experience. Just like how when you date someone and you go through all the fights and perils, and it feels like hell when you're living it, but in a couple of years it's all good memory (not talking about weird cases like an abusive partner)
Have you ever had brake fade in a car? It's like that, but inside your mind. Everything starts feeling mushy and mental processes don't get the results they used to.
I will counter with one (older person's, I guess) observation of a bunch of my friends who are now in their early to mid fourties and late thirties. The one's who focus on making a career and accomplishments, be they for social value or greater equality for all or the justice in society being more balanced, etc. etc...... anyway, they end up at my age, when naturally, the larger group starts to drift apart a bit, looking around alone with their accomplishments being their only companion. That's great if you are only driven by business success/societal accolades. Super awesome and congratulations. You've figured out what makes you happy and I commend you. That isn't most people.
Take some of that spare time and energy and go out, meet some people and have some fun. Blow off some steam. Have some sex. Meet four or five significant others. Pair them down to the point where you're both (or whatever) are happy. Build a life together. And stop rushing around. I know a bunch (most) of friends who are on their third or fourth spouse because they were in such a hurry to get things done, they never took the time to figure out who their significant other was, who their friends were or why they liked them or who, in fact, they really were.
Don't fill the hole inside of yourself with hollow accolades and useless trophies. Take some time to figure out who you are and what is really going to make you happy. Experiment with different things. Fail. Try something else... You know. Live your life. Have fun.
Now. That being said. I doubt this will be an overly popular sentiment. But when their friends start dying, they'll see them all start saying the same sorts of things, and none of them are, "I wish I'd spent more time working."
P.S.
If you want to figure some stuff out and do some good, go volunteer at an eldercare facility. That can be you in 50 years (I'm guessing at ages here, forgive me). Sitting in a home, alone for the most part, wishing people would visit.
Building a happy life with strong relationships is important to the society at large. Trust me. Society without happy people without friends is fucking terrifying.
> But when their friends start dying, they'll see them all start saying the same sorts of things, and none of them are, "I wish I'd spent more time working."
I hear this a lot. But I'm not sure if this is always true. I chose an education path that required a much greater amount of work than other paths I could have taken. I would spend weekends working on homework and projects when others were out having fun. But as I start my career, it seems to have paid off (so far). I have a better work/life balance than many of my friends due to sacrificing some free time earlier in life.
Now I wonder: if I work hard in my 20s, can I retire a decade earlier that I otherwise might have? Or (more likely) can I save up enough that I can start spending my time working on projects that are entirely self-driven? Saving and working hard early in life can also result in a lot more time to spend with family later on. In other words, there is a tradeoff between voluntarily working harder earlier in life and effectively being forced to work hard later in life. Sure, you could be struck by a meteorite today, and you would never reap the reward from all of the work that you put in, but the much more likely scenario is that if you don't put in enough work in the front end, you will end up working 9-5 at 70 years old. So I can see many possible situations arising later in life where I think "I wish I spent more time working".
You seem to have missed one very valid option, the middle road, you don't have to trade free time now for free time later, there is in my opinion a happy middle ground to be had (like most thing life, politics being the primary one).
Sure you could argue that you get more free time later if you give up free time now but then you enter into the difficulty of quantifying the quality of the free time. When you are young, active and healthy you might be able to enjoy your free time more or perhaps having more money later in life allows you to do things you enjoy more, either way I feel balance is the key.
Do you really want to spend your most productive, healthy and free/uncommitted years working too much just to have more time when your body is starting to weaken and many of your dreams start to become impossible?
Do you want to spend less time with your children for the chance to have more time for your grandchildren?
B.S. chemical engineer -> Ph.D. chemical engineer -> data scientist
The "working a lot" was mostly the last couple years of my Ph.D. where I would frequently pull all-nighters to finish everything I needed to, but I'm glad I did that now. It's not nearly the optimal path for rapid wealth accumulation, but it's a good balance between having work that I enjoy and having enough leftover time to work on startup projects and hang out with my family.
Anyone who builds accomplishments without building lasting and deep relationships with people around them has done something wrong in the process.
Early in life, I had a small amount of artistic success (music). Though I probably couldn't have gone big with it, I did enjoy some amount of regional fame. Hard work, definitely an accomplishment, and I built several friendships out of it that have lasted over two decades (as well as lots that did fade away in time).
Similar thing with a startup I cofounded several years ago--the problem we were solving had me out in the public eye for a while, and I ended up building friendships with lots more people...people I'm still friends with.
And you know, if not for the relationships I build, some of which turned into lasting friendships, I wouldn't have had the success in the first place.
Nothing goes anywhere in life without people around you, helping you out. If you don't treat those people as the most important part of whatever you're doing, you're doing it wrong.
>Anyone who builds accomplishments without building lasting and deep relationships with people around them has done something wrong in the process.
This is one of the fundamentals of leadership, and leadership starts with leading your own life. One of the other fundamentals is awareness -- self-awareness and awareness of others, which these comments seem to be touching on.
I, for one, wish I'd spent more time working, earlier in life, so I could've saved enough to make work optional now. Nothing like having a whole day free, to give you that "I wanna start a project" feeling.
>But when their friends start dying, they'll see them all start saying the same sorts of things, and none of them are, "I wish I'd spent more time working."
The issue here is we do not know the true spectrum of outcomes with and without working. I assume many people who say "I wish i worked less" on their deathbeds presume that all the trappings of their work would come with.
I would trust it more if people paired what they'd give up with what they want to gain. ie if they said "Putting my daughter through college wasnt worth it, I wish i worked less". Or (more realistically) "I wish I spent less money on luxury, so I would have had more time with people".
Also a note of caution, any time you're wasting time thats marginal time you will be begging for on your deathbed. "I wish I had one more day with my wife (or kids)" -- today could be that day, instead of wasting it, use it up fully.
im not sure the drifter-bro-waster life of idle leisure is that satisfying. Your telling me people at the top of their careers, yan le cun (deep learning etc) are not having constructive, exiting, shared, social fun? you think hans zimmer has an isolated boring life? stress in any case has more to do with context and attitude than it has to do with the profession you practice.
Being at the bottom of one's craft doesn't equal happiness either. Accomplishments in a field are not a replacement for a healthy outlook, but they have their merits.
The crux of the problem is overlooking how work can be "positive" too. 9-5 can be pure drudgery that drains every ounce of your energy, but if you can find work that is fulfilling, putting additional hours won't exhaust you; in fact, I think it'll recompense your lost spirit at job. I would go far as to say that, expending your time in watching TV, video games, social media is more wearing than people realise. I have seen myself exhausted on days where I managed to do nothing at work; and highly motivated, when I achieved something significant.
I really appreciate this comment, mostly because I feel an immense amount of pressure to use my remaining time to do something "amazing" or keep up with the insane rate of frontend changes. I feel the core issue is that as developers/engineers, we spend a lot of time doing things that companies want, which can be at odds with skill growth, professional development or other things that are actually really important to making ourselves better. If I want to learn something new or improve myself, it's done on my time, not the company's. I guess this does make some sense, because they hired me to build things, not to study, although allowing me to spend some free time doing interesting things is known to provide large dividends.
I think the solution to this is the 20% time rule, but Google only really does this.
This is a great point. Something "amazing". That may not be possible to do on your own. But there are some tricks you can apply to achieve that anyway:
1) Do non-amazing things that can build up to amazing things. E.g. help other projects with simple maintenance jobs like triaging tickets, reviewing pull requests, writing docs for things you know, discussing with people in IRC and mailing lists. By this you will learn things automatically that make other tasks later on easier. Another way to build up is to learn simple tools like linux, vim, git, etc better and more indepth. That enables you to handle more complex tasks with less effort and produces value in itself when combined with teaching others. The last example I can think off immediately is pg's doing non-scaling tasks. Really work with people and treat them very individually. Thereby you don't just build a following that can give more impact to what you are doing, you also really learn what other people need.
2) Don't build alone. We programmers hate all these meetings, but truth is, that few people are that good that they can do "amazing" things alone. Usually this is achieved by having a group off slightly above average people, and letting them cooperate. Organize non-meeting things that brings people together, like a lunch with your local docker group. Then use these opportunities to make small progress in complex tasks. Send everybody home with a small thing they need to do that together will be a huge step, but trust everybody to figure out what that thing is by talking not by commanding. Doing that a few times will lead to amazing results automatically.
PS: AFAIK google also doesn't do the friday projects rule anymore.
Just judging from comments here, it sounds like officially it's still running but unofficially that 20% time had better not detract any actual work hours from any of your official work. So really it's "work 20% overtime on whatever you want, and the company will own it" which doesn't sound very motivating to me.
Some smaller companies and startup still do this. They need to in order to attract good talent. Toss that in with the fact that they sometimes pay better (for the same reason) and a fairly decent balance can be had.
For anyone interested, as someone that currently works 75%:
At my last career change, I applied for a full time position, but asked if the employer would consider hiring me at 75%, with a matching reduction in salary. I work full time days, but am not paid to work Fridays plus a full week each quarter.
Pros: the time off itself has been brilliant; I spend that extra time learning computer vision programming in Go, and took a part time class to become a certified master gardener (massively recommended, best $150 I ever spent(1)); it also leaves time for recreational fishing, hiking and hunting.
Cons: It's a strain on my career, it's not just that I work less, but the fact that I'm gone as much as I am has somewhat limited which tasks I'm able to take on properly; it's also, at least for myself, psychologically problematic since I lead a team and the rest of the team is full time.
All-in-all, I think the career drawback is by far outweighed by both the quality of life and skills I've gained; I'm not sure if it's sustainable as the company grows from a small startup to a more regular company. For now, I'm very much enjoying working part time.
I did this too for about 5 years, except I took 2 weeks off each quarter. I learned Scala, programming language theory, did papers on finance and logic, etc. The job I have now is based on some of the open source work I did during that period.
When I took time off to work on interesting stuff I found I was more practical and sensible in my main job. When I designed solutions I was very business focused. I didn't need to use the latest tech or do novel work, since I could do that in my own time. The day off each week kept me fresh and interested without needing to get that from my main job.
I did that as well for some time. Consider not taking a whole day off, but but taking off two hours here and two hours there. This way you seem much more available but may actually be even more flexible in how to spend your free time. Of course that requires a lot more flexibility on your part. But the payout in time and career success is worth it.
I wrote an released some open source software in my spare time. I just stopped watching 2 hours of TV a night and coded then. I would got to the pub 2 hours later than my mates, I would miss popular TV shows (X-factor or whatever) but it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed it.
But I do think there are people who just feel the need to make things, they just get on and do it.
People who question how makers find the time.... hm, it's like I question how people have the time to watch endless Netflix shows. Where do you fit that time in? Oh, you aren't making a hydrofoil in your back room? OK, that's currently what's taking up a lot of my spare time.
I think humans were designed to enjoy making things. As soon as you start using your hands and brain and try to make something that no one else has -- enjoyment happens.
The other day I had the option of buying some rope on eBay and getting free splicing. Wow. Challenge accepted! I purchased the more expensive non-spliced rope and spent a week learning all about splicing. It's amazing how many new places around my house a bit of spliced rope came in handy.
Don't get me started on how many hours of YouTube videos I watched on rope making. I spent many a happy hour at a friends garden making string and rope out of nettles. He thought I was a bit nutty, but he used the string to tie up his beans. His kid used some of it to make a den.
I'm getting distracted. Everyone enjoys making (kids love lego) you just have to accept that you are re-inventing the wheel and not to worry about it. You won't get famous. You'll just enjoy life more.
There is definitely something here; some pursuits feel like they come naturally (i.e. feel like they replenish rather than cost energy) while others are more of a chore that require a deliberate application of energy to perform. Perhaps some creative people have certain interests that are just so engaging they could spend most of their waking hours doing them, but that these activities are very specific.
My feeling has always been that the time component isn't the deciding factor. Of course you spend a significant number of hours every week doing non-work-related activities, but although the number of hours spent is identical, watching an enjoyable Netflix show isn't nearly as demanding as building a hydrofoil in your garage. At least that's the case for most people; maybe you are one of the few for whom building boats is a great passion and naturally spend your effort doing that.
I've always found that there are only a few weeks a year that I'll naturally be able to spend doing demanding creative labor outside of work. And at those times it'll be pretty specific, e.g. some programming project that for some reason seems unusually interesting. Apart from that, I can certainly turn off my other natural energy-replenishing interests for a while (reading, computer games, movies, conversations with friends, biking/working out), but it is not sustainable and will lead to burnout and depression if I ignore my body's signals and don't stop in time.
Eventually I've found that it's healthier to just acknowledge and be proud of my significant contributions in my full time-job, and consider this a human limitation. I don't think it's healthy or constructive to feel guilty about not being as energetic and capable as (a small number of famous) other people.
My experience worth people who work a lot in their spare time is that their productivity at work drops. Basically, former in the pub socialization is replaced by in the office socialization. Their tv watching is replaced by more browsing at work. Effectively they do 60% position, but are able to switch to full time productivity when needed.
There are positions where it is ok (slow company) and there are situations where you have to do it (when you need to learn something new).
So basically, my advice would be to find company that is not much demanding and then produce whatever you envoy producing.
I've seen the very same thing. I wondered why one particular guy I know managed to be relatively productive at his leisure with personal projects when development was also his FT job. He let it slip, effectively, that he was not so productive at work and even neglected it in favor of personal projects. This must be common practice in creating that mythos of the tireless programmer with a strong involvement in open-source.
Indeed, although it takes two to tango. Impossible to know the relationship between said person and their management. I take my inklings to start new things while employed as an indicator that I need to talk to my manager. Help doing more work should be a good request, and 'in a month' or so is an acceptable answer. If they don't help me out I start feeling restless and perhaps start that project on the weekend. If they don't respond to my progress then I start feeling unappreciated/underutilized, and express this. If it still goes nowhere, time to move on. Not moving on at this point is where the problems start, as you go into a reactionary mode and "aren't yourself" anymore.
I also second the joys of a part-time job. One of the most productive periods in my working life was when I had a job that was 30 hours a week. I worked 6 hours a day -- so that forced me to get out of bed, shower, and become fully human -- and then in the evenings I had enough time and energy to make real progress on my artistic goals.
I even found that the pay cut wasn't a 25% pay cut, but more like a 10% pay cut, because with the extra time I had, I did more shopping and meal planning, and spent less money overall on conveniences. I could afford to do things the "inconvenient" way.
I wish more companies in tech considered offering part time jobs. I know there would be a lot of people interested in those jobs, and they would be super loyal employees because they would be psyched to have the chance to have a real life.
> I know some people who have energy levels that allow them to sustainably burn the candle at both ends, but they are a small minority. I am quite envious of this group; they appear to have a big leg up in accomplishing great things, but there appears to be a component of either genetics or upbringing that leaves only a small portion of people with this capability.
Why isn't there more research on this? A huge number of people would like to be this way—consistently delivering Musk-ian type efforts week after week. But how do you do it? The "feel good" self-help articles about waking up early and other nonsense are clearly wrong, otherwise everyone would be super productive by now (I think these articles mistake correlation for causation). But I'm not convinced it is entirely genetic—I know people who have gone from extremely lazy to extremely hard working. What caused the change? Can it be replicated? I'd love to be able to push myself for 16 hours a day, every day, and while I keep finding little techniques that help me achieve more productivity over time, I wonder if there exists some technique that provides a huge boost in productivity. I just don't know what it is.
If I had to guess, I would think that increasing hours of productivity is a skill like any other, and it requires ramping up slowly over time. If you've never run before and go out and run 20 miles one day, you'll burn out and injury yourself. But if you add a few miles every week, eventually 100 mile weeks become normal and you don't really become tired from them (speaking as a former runner). I wouldn't be surprised if productivity works the same way.
I bet Elon Musk has a number of advantages, such as: not doing laundry, not preparing meals, not washing the dishes, not going to the grocery store, avoid driving to work (either have a chauffeur or a very short commute)… Basically, not doing any work but "work".
He's rich enough that he can pay somebody else to do everything he can't be bothered with. That frees him to take care of his companies and have other creative ideas.
On the other hand, think of the work of the average housewife. She would do most of the house chores and taking care of the children, and would plan all of it. All that on top of a 40 hour work week, plus commute. Let's see: 8 hours at work times 5 days, 2 hours of house work per work day, then 8 more during the week-end. Add, say, 30 minutes of driving to work (and 30 minutes back), and we get 63 hours of work per week. And that's a conservative estimate.
Just try asking her to do personal projects on top of that.
One quibble, by definition a housewife doesn't have a full time job (taking care of the household is a full time job). Otherwise good point about outsourcing everything that isn't work.
Some days I feel fucking great. Like I can take on the world. Do anything. I'm motivated, want to get things done, and feel like I can do it. There's not a hint of fog in my brain, not a bit of fatigue in my muscles. It's awesome. I leap out of bed, think "damn, I feel great!" and just go.
But... it's also only 5-10 days a year, and seems to hit more-or-less at random (though sunny, long, not-too-humid days seem to make it a lot more likely).
I imagine the people who seem to have an easy time doing lots and lots of productive stuff have a lot more days like this per year than I do. So figure out how to feel that way, say, 50-100 days a year and you're on the right track, I'd say (for a shortcut, see the other post about drugs). Unfortunately, I'd guess there's a strong genetic component to it.
What you described could be symptoms of undiagnosed ADHD. The brain fog, only 5-10 days of random great/motivated days.
Contrary to popular belief, people with ADHD can be very smart and successful without even realizing they have it. Check out the ADHD subreddit and TotallyADD.com.
This comment is exactly how I've described myself for the past two years (first two years of my career). I say it like a joke, but a part of me is worried that I won't be able to fix it.
Aye - energy drinks were mine. I ended up almost ruining my body by the time I was 30, so that I could have the energy to pursue all of these side projects that I felt like I "had to" work on.
I think side projects are good, particularly if you're passionate about said project. But don't ruin yourself for the sake of them! You can't experience the benefits of your labor if you're dead.
I hope that younger people can learn from my example. When I was young, I felt invincible: I wasn't seeing how the things I was consuming to keep going were harming me in real, material, and permanent ways.
I'm not saying don't work on side projects, but if you have to abuse a substance (even legal ones) to burn that candle, please think about your future and give yourself a more sustainable timeline.
> I hope that younger people can learn from my example
Thanks for sharing. Would you mind going into a little more detail for the curious? For example, how many (and what type of) energy drinks would you typically drink per day, and what harmful effects did they cause?
I was a 2 cans of soda a day drinker, and any given day if I felt like I didn't have enough energy one or both of them would be replaced with an energy drink (usually red bull). There was also a ~6 month period in my life that really did a number on me, where I was working a day job and continuing that aforementioned standard, but then I went to work at night on a project a friend of mine was starting up. In that night shift, I'd drink probably 2-3 large cans of this terrible stuff called "Unbound" to keep me awake. I don't know if they even make it anymore. I'd sleep for about 3 hours a night, and get up and repeat it.
Just before I turned 30, I found that I couldn't keep my eyes open, I'd fall asleep sporadically. In retrospect, I believe it was some pretty intense adrenal/caffeine tolerance combined with other health issues that were starting to develop. One day shortly after I turned 30, I woke up and my vision was so blurry that I couldn't see street signs from across the street. I went to a doctor, and it turns out I had developed diabetes. I was 313 pounds by that point, inflated by my long nights spent focusing on work instead of my health and very poor eating/drinking habits. Before that sudden exhaustion just before I turned 30, I felt like I could go at that pace forever. But it was like my body pushed the brakes hard.
The slightly good news is that I've turned my life around a bit. I quit both soda and energy drinks, switched to black coffee, I'm down to about 225 pounds and my blood sugar levels are normal - but only because of quitting both energy drinks/soda and almost abstaining entirely from carbohydrates. It's something that I'll have to watch for the rest of my life now.
Anyways, yeah. Don't do what I did. You'll feel invincible until you suddenly wake up one day and don't feel invincible anymore.
I notice a hive-mind of looking-down on "ordinary work" even if it's not really challenging, and is actually isn't less purposeful than open source projects that get to the HN front-page.
'Coolness' is an unmeasured and a dangerous motivation.
It's not a hivemind, it's people expressing their frustrations. In this industry, it's easy to feel safe in terms of income, so naturally people seek fulfilling needs from higher up the Maslow's pyramid.
And a typical programming job is not really doing anything useful for the society except maybe extremely indirectly. At best, it's not actually harmful.
Personally, I've been through plenty of webdev jobs, and almost always, it was building a copy of something that already exists and is better, so that our company (or our customers) could compete in the same space. If I ever met a potential user of such service and my bosses weren't looking, I'd actually direct them to the original competitors. It would be dishonest to do otherwise. It's jobs like these that can make one feel they don't contribute anything useful to society (making your boss richer by building a copycat product in a global market is hardly useful for people other than your boss).
Essentially, companies/products like Google (AltaVista, Lycos, ect.), Facebook (Friendster, MySpace, etc) or Slack (IRC, Skype, etc)?
IMHO, it's very rare to be working on something truly unseen; and if you are, the chances are numerous people are working on the same thing at very this moment, just in a different flavor. Aren't these incremental improvements part of the natural selection?
IMHO, you should strive to find meaning not in the external, but internally; you should start somewhere, however basic it is (fixing your bed and cleaning your room, before trying to change and help the world). Jordan Peterson talks about that in great detail - highly recommend his lectures (they're available online).
Outside of tech, there are plenty of pretty mundane businesses that do lots of social good. In tech this is harder mostly because everything has almost global availability by default. But still, you don't neccesarily have to work at one of the big five to have social impact.
As for finding meaning within, I see this as a cop out. If you extend it to the limit, the most meaningful life is that of doing nothing and enjoying your inner self. It's not the kind of life I'd personally find meaningful.
the biggest problem with ordinary work is the rote schedules most such work entails. Just having to be in the same building for many years from X am to Y pm Monday through Friday, except for M weeks vacation, is itself pretty depressing to many people
He was comparing coolness, an "unmeasured and a dangerous motivation", to curiosity, which is similarly unmeasured and dangerous. ie, both are unreliable motivators and yet the industry idolizes both.
It's a form of virtue-signalling, much like making sure all of Hackernews knows you eat strictly paleo and only have as many possessions as can fit in a single rucksack.
Most weeks I expend about 40 hours (mostly remote) working as a software developer in order to pay the bills. At the same time I'm spending between 10 and 40 hours working on my own startup as I don't want to be an employee forever. I also have a young family and I really do my best to fulfil my obligations as a parent, as is fair and right.
A day for me does not stop from the moment I wake up (7am) to the moment I get into bed (11pm) and weekends are no different. Sometimes I feel like the entire world is crushing in around me, sometimes I wonder if it's all too much, but then I get back to it and I keep moving forward.
I've been doing this for about two years now. There are definite ups and downs, where my energy and ability to produce (code, or business related output) is greater, and lesser. Sometimes I feel really shitty for not doing more than a few hours side work in a week. Sometimes, when I have taken a weekend off, I have felt guilt.
It's tough. You find you are doing essentially 2 full time jobs, 7 days a week, almost 52 weeks a year, but I was raised to work and to work hard, while I am young, while I can.
I think if you want to do something like this, you have to have a solid reason. If you have a family, even more so, you have to make sure it's fair to them too.
I wish I knew why I feel the urge to work 24/7, why I feel guilt if I don't work, and whether this is actually a problem?
Whoa, I kinda feel the same way, always feeling I gotta be working something. Always balancing work and life. Lugging around my laptop everywhere in case I can do something productive on it. I quit my job recently, trying to focus on my side project, but also been busy getting engaged and married soon. Always feeling I don't have enough time or not focusing or getting enough done. GLHF!
> I'm blogging one a week about dev stuff and it takes 2-4 hours depending on the topic.
I'm so jealous! :)
I publish a new post once every couple of months. Some posts take really long to prepare, like 40 hours (and more) of work long. The biggest problem is that it doesn't really show - for that much time my posts should be each as long as "Steve Yegge's Best Of" anthology.
I'm not even sure it's worth it as a learning experience, but at least it's still fun. I'm being told that my writing quality improves, too, so it's not that bad overall. It's still irritating that every time I try to write a post in a short amount of time it somehow spirals out of control and becomes 3 full days of work...
> I try to write a post in a short amount of time it somehow spirals out of control and becomes 3 full days of work...
Writing, especially when you want it to be good writing backed by solid evidence (or a solid plot), is not an easy thing. I liken it to programming: the language is rather poorly specified in comparison, but the planning and researched required to do it properly is at least as arduous.
Oh! Please don't feel bad about that. Writing short is harder than writing long. But it's worth it because it respects the time of the reader.
As an analogy, think of those radio talk show personalities that can go on for hours every day just running their mouths. It's impressive, but what they're doing is glib entertainment, a way for people to fill the hours while driving.
These days the world is filled with quickly-made, quickly written stuff. Nothing wrong with that, really. But I love it when I come across people who are doing something different.
Steve Yegge gets away with it because he's Steve Yegge. There's definitely lots of people that write blog posts that are too long, and if you're just starting and don't have name recognition yet, I'd say it's better to aim for a reasonable length that most people will at least get through.
I think this is important. Someone else mentioned that this isn't helpful for what he asked, but I think it is - I think it's important that we understand that working is not passive. If you're working 40 (or in some of our cases, 50, 60, 70) hours a week, you are devoting a significant portion of your life to creation.
I agree with the points others made about how to avoid burnout, find things you're passionate about etc... but I hope the question asker understands that what they're doing does have value. The value may be labor - which, indeed, is undervalued in society compared to actually being the controller/owner of the product on which work is being performed - but it is creating value just the same.
Now, if you reach a point where you want all of that value to be creating to be yours and not mostly someone else's, or if you find you have energy to spare to start working on side projects, then you may be ready to move from putting labor into other people's products to putting labor into your own. But there's no shame in working hard and earning a paycheck, and devoting the other time in your life to doing whatever it is that makes you happy. (and if what makes you happy ends up being creating a side project that turns into something where you control your own product, that's great!)
It's interesting -- I have sort of been coming to the same conclusion myself. I work full-time and have a family. I have ideas for side projects and learning new stuff but on any given day, after work and activities with kids I usually don't feel like spending the hour or two of spare time I might have on something that takes a lot of mental engagement. Sometimes on weekends, if there isn't a lot else going on, I'll spend a few hours on a Sunday afternoon on that sort of thing, but beyond that it generally doesn't happen.
Of course I then feel bad that I'm not getting things done that I want to do, but have lately been more inclined to think that I'm already at capacity and it just isn't going to happen unless I trade off something else. So now I'm evaluating whether I would really get more reward out of pursuing these extra activities at the expense of something else, or if I should stop even thinking about it and just enjoy what is already happening in my life.
Job is rarely utilizing all your capabilities, in fact rather forces you to spend too much time on things you hate and would do differently or even not do if you weren't forced by your employers. Your advice is for people that are happy to be defined by their job, not by their accomplishments and potential fulfillment. The rest of us with some ambitions and drive have to do/study things on our own with the hope we can go ballistic on those ideas and make some part of our world better.
On what basis can we make the assumption that full-time jobs do in fact contribute to society? In this current world it's not an easy question to answer.
My approach is: many, but not all do; use your own judgement. If you can land a job that you believe is doing a service for the society, all the better for you. If you can't, it's fair to seek alternatives.
I think there's something of a catch-22 here where it's much easier to get a low-hours job when you've already put yourself out there and have something like a blog that you can point to.
One thing I'd suggest is speaking to your employer and saying you'd like to take some time off to travel (preferably if you can spin this as needing to see family or something that would make them look like a dick for saying no to) but that you'd like to continue working while you're doing so and can commit to keeping all your current tasks going and bill say 40 hours per month.
I think many employers are paying full time salaries but only really need like 40-80 hours of work per month but they can't just pay for those hours so they pay a full time salary and the remaining time gets filled. Suggesting they can get 40 good, accountable hours per month can be a win win.
I would add that if you can find some overlap between your daily job and any personal goals you've set, you could potentially be using your good creative energy for two things rather than one.
I agree. That's why at the start of the year my side project was learning advanced Haskell topics. And now I've said f'it I'm not enjoying that and I'm setting up a Shopify store instead. Polar opposite side project!
No coding aka brain burning required and I get to create something super quick with minimal brain power and potentially profit which if I do could buy me more time to spend in it.
Can you cite any credible source other than subjective reasoning for creativity being a limited resource that we spend during a dayjob and have almost none left to build something at home?
Because the fact that daily work exhausts people and drains their energy is some kind of complex nuanced issue that requires dedicated research to verify?
Obviously it depends on how demanding/time consuming the daily job is, but that's a standard observation with millennia of empirical evidence.
I swear, it's like people can't even tie their shoes anymore unless there's a long-term study (and preferably, meta studies) to prove them that tying one's shoelaces is good.
It isn't a "complex nuanced issue", talking about the depletion of some non-existent entity (creative energies? srsly?) is at best a failure of self-expression and at worst spiritual nonsense.
I guess people get defensive because of this very frustration of being wrong and unable to correct themselves at the same time.
It's not creativity, it's mental energy. Most people don't have the capacity to even work 40 mentally demanding hours per week, let alone double that. Just look around at your colleagues and ask how many are really working hard eight hours every day for five days straight. I know I'm not. My best output comes in shorter stretches of flow a maximum of a few hours long, and often not even every day.
For most people, the premise of this question is wrong. Procrastination, when you don't obviously have a lot of available time and effort, is a symptom that most of your creative energies are already spent elsewhere and are unavailable for other high-energy pursuits. I commend the effort to organizing your remaining free time to produce something of societal value, but for most people this is an exercise that will in the long run lead to burnout. Your mind is already subconsciously telling you this.
I know some people who have energy levels that allow them to sustainably burn the candle at both ends, but they are a small minority. I am quite envious of this group; they appear to have a big leg up in accomplishing great things, but there appears to be a component of either genetics or upbringing that leaves only a small portion of people with this capability.
If you are not in this minority and you strongly desire to produce more creative output outside of your full-time job, there are two options: You can set small goals, e.g. spending 3-5 hours a week of dedicated time towards your pursuit, or putting everything else in your life on pause for a year or two while you go at it with all your effort. The latter course of action will likely not be sustainable, and you have to listen to your mind and body when it's had enough of it.
My preferred choice would be to get a job that pays enough to sustain your lifestyle but has much smaller hours (e.g. 60% or 40% of a full-time position), if this is at all possible. Most places, sadly, it isn't an option. If you can organize this, you free up a significant portion of your creative energy, which can then be used for other ambitious goals.