Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpmoyn | Hacker News Reader

Managing daily burn-outs where my mind prevents me from looking at code objectively and patiently. I recently have tried putting on meditative music and trying to clear my head so i can be productive again. It is really hard for me to code for 8+ hours a day.

View on HN

I do not aim to code for 8 hours per day in a professional context. I know very few people who can really honestly do 8 hours a day of "thinking" work on a regular basis. It may be possible in some cases: perhaps on a new project where there is a lot of boilerplate code to write and you are free to make design choices as you see fit. However, most of the time when writing code in a existing large complex code base I find that 5-6 hours a day is a very productive day for me.

I work from home I work in bursts of 2 hours. When I get stuck/bored (either because I don't have any more focus left or I'm stuck on a tricky problem) I will read, shower, go for a walk, or take a nap. When I come back to the problem, I generally find I am able to resume work.

I find that I get as much done if not more than my coworkers who must be in the office 8 hours a day. I also graduated from my PhD using similar tactics, while many of my classmates seem to LIVE at school.

My point is just that the 8+ hour work day may be possible for some types of tasks, but for real "thinking" work I don't think it is a good goal. You are burned out because you are trying to do achieve an unreasonable goal. Redefine your goals so you can succeed and be happy.

This. Seriously, no one minds if you take breaks where I'm at. I'd bet it's an unreasonable minority of companies which do.

If your company has salespeople, they probably spend a large amount of time chatting. It is what it is. Some amount of it is healthy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com