Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity | Hacker News Reader

Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity

thewebivore.com

151 pointspselle54 comments

Video from the "Go The Fuck Home" Ignite Philly presentation.

Personally, I find it more annoying to see so many "my business I hacked up over the weekend" and "look at my startup that I created in 20 hours" posts. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure I see way more of these kinds of posts than I do ones that contain expletives.

In fact, I would prefer a page full of posts with titles that contain 'fuck' rather than an entire page of posts about copycat blogging platforms or 'my weekend project, now app, now "business," made with rails and coffebonemongodb.js'.

Well, that came out of no where.

Time to read the OPs post.

/rant (which was supposed to be in reply to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771670)

Edit: I definitely agree with the video and wish everyone worked like that. The part about the managers leading the team by going home on time is true too.

It's amazing how few people get this.

I just started a new job and everyone is telling me how much everyone here works. I look at the products we make and the deadlines that are set and they aren't any bigger or more agressive than anywhere else that I worked.

It has just always been a part of this companies culture I guess, but I don't see the need to sit in my office for 8 extra hours a week when all I'll end up doing is bullshitting on the Internet.

At my job, I used to stay late. I'd stay until 10 PM some nights and be super productive. Except I realized that I was dicking around until 5 PM and then being super productive for five hours after most (non-tech) people had gone home. I was staying up late, waking up late, being useless for most of the morning, taking long lunches, and not getting much done.

Now I get up every morning, I get to work around 8:30. I spend about an hour in the morning getting my work sorted out, getting my head together, figuring out my tasks for the day, and then being productive until 5 PM, then leaving. I've been more productive, I've been more accessible to coworkers with different schedules, I'm enjoying my job more, and more importantly, I'm enjoying life more. I'm not tired all day, I'm not useless when I get home, I'm not up late for no good reason.

Working a fixed, reasonable schedule (with occasional exceptions) has been such a huge boost to my productivity that even people I don't work directly with have commented to my manager on how much of a difference it's made.

The hardest part, as she mentions in her talk, is leaving even though my manager is still here, and still working on things, but when I realized that I stopped being very productive at about 4:30 anyway, I figured that was a good reason to tap out and go home.

Try it. It works.

Yes.

In many cases, I don't think it has anything to do with employees wanting to be there. The problem I've found is that most managers (and VCs) I've met seem to think that if you aren't devoting your life to your code monastery, you aren't productive and you aren't dedicated. Startups place an enormous amount of value on "ass in seat" time even though sometimes being in the seat isn't often the productive thing to do. There is a horribly mistaken belief that the more you sit at work, the more you get done, and if someone else is sitting there longer than you, they're a "better" employee. It's perception, not reality.

If we really want to go the fuck home, managers need to drastically change what they think "productive" is in a knowledge industry. Writing code is not like being on a factory line. The motions are not repetitive and you are required to be creative. I think I'm as productive in a 30 hour week as I am on a 60 hour one: in the latter case, I'm spending too much time spinning on overhead or burned out and playing Portal.

Stress is probably the worst thing that can happen to you when trying to start. Crushes your immune system and get you sick. Prevents creativity, hell keeps you from doing even mundane and simple tasks well. Makes you hell to interact with your peers, friends and family.

People are always preaching at us to work until our faces fall off, but that's just not sustainable nor productive.

To me, the most interesting part of this video was the graph of worker efficiency as a function of hours worked per week, which can be found here as part of a fascinating study: http://cmdept.unl.edu/drb/Reading/overtime1.htm

what's up with all the swearing? this trend of swearing as linkbait is getting pretty lame.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with swearing. I actually have more of an issue with the automatic disapproval than a healthy spread of profanities.

I doubt it's an automatic disapproval. It's annoying because swearing is used as linkbait all the time.

Now, that argument I can understand. And if that is indeed the reason for the GP, then fair enough.

But is it really any different than 'sex sells'?

If it's used all the time, it must be easy for you to provide a few examples. I've seen a few cases where a post title used profanity in a way that's arguably unnecessary, but I can't think of any examples of outright linkbaiting.

You mean like this? http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=fuck

Perhaps if we narrow it down to titles only: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...

No, I mean the specific examples that prompted you to make the comment I was responding to. You wouldn't make such a broad claim without at least one or two examples, would you?

Suffice it to say that any of the examples you find in those search results are examples of "fuck" being used as link bait.

Even the submissions with "fuck you money" in the title since that is a linkbait-y term unto itself. I am of the opinion that unless you're discussing the word 'fuck' there is almost no possible reason to use it in a title unless it's to attract clicks and votes by eliciting an emotional response.

I think that's debatable. I don't see anything blatantly wrong with any of those, but I could see how someone might find titles like that inappropriate. I personally don't have a problem with it.

Everything is debatable! :)

Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth.

I'm purely focused on the link-bait aspect. Using swear words in a title is in a way like gaming the attention economy by subconsciously tricking peoples' minds into thinking that a piece of content "grabs" them on some level, even before seeing that content.

What I would be interested to know is if there is data that shows that people up-vote those articles -- before reading them -- disproportionately more often than articles with no swear words in the title.

Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth.

You don't think that's important? If you had put a lot of time into this presentation, were proud of it, and submitted it to Hacker News to share it with others (without realizing that some people would take the profanity as a linkbait attempt), wouldn't you be at least a bit upset if someone said:

"Why do you people keep linkbaiting by putting profanity in the title?"

If it were me, I'd probably tune them out and their (valid) complaints would go unheeded. But if someone said something like:

"That was a great presentation! I think it would be even better if you excluded the profanity though. To be honest, it's a bit offensive. But that's just me. What do you think?"

...then I'd be more likely to listen, and might change the title just because I couldn't fathom offending someone so nice. Wouldn't you?

On the contrary, it's unreasonable to make a broad claim based on one or two examples. When people say "I keep seeing people do this," it's based on a memory of repeatedly seeing similar things, not any one specific example they have in mind. Similarly, I noticed today that a lot of people around here have silver cars, but I couldn't name for you any specific silver car I saw on my commute today.

Well sure. But at the same time, it would be setting a bit too high a standard for me to expect people to do a scientific study for every silly little comment they leave on HN, don't you think? If someone claims that something happens "all the time", don't you think it's reasonable to expect that person to have observed it at least once or twice recently? Or at least be able to provide a reason why they don't have one or two examples?

My point is that there's a difference between passively observing something multiple times and remembering precise secondary details about the instances when you observed the thing. I remember seeing lots of silver cars quite well, but I don't remember any specific details about the cars — and remembering the make and model of a car is a lot easier than remembering the URL of a Hacker News posting.

At any rate, I just don't see why it would be useful for him to have specific examples in mind. What is the point in asking for that?

It's important to verify your intuitions, and it doesn't have to be a grand science experiment or a research project. If your intuition is that there are a lot of silver cars, a good place to start would be remembering the last time you saw silver cars. Or you could pay attention to the silver cars you see and take notes about the details that you feel are relevant. If it's worth it, then you can do a more in-depth analysis.

Now that said, there's not really much wrong with making broad assertions about the number of silver cars you're seeing without a more in-depth analysis. Chances are, nobody will care if you're wrong. There is something wrong with making a broad claim about things other people are doing without at least a little bit of evidence to support what you're doing. Just giving a list of search results and expecting others to find their own evidence isn't the best way to go about doing that.

> I've seen a few cases where a post title used profanity in a way that's arguably unnecessary

I think that's pretty much what he means, but you can't blame the author since it seems to work. People here are passionate, especially when it comes to articles related to the human side of software development. Profanity can tap into that emotion fairly well.

"but you can't blame the author since it seems to work" -> "Profanity can tap into that emotion fairly well."

So a formula for getting knee-jerk clicks and votes is to "bait" the user by using language that elicits an emotional response. :)

Exactly, I was agreeing with you.

Ahh, so you were. For some reason I got the impression that you were justifying the use of swearing because of the response it generates while not making the connection between that and outright baiting.

The way I understand it, ignorant of the psychology of swearing but having had to think about it since arriving here from the UK, is that if you're swearing, you're breaking a taboo that people assume you understand, so if you break it, they guess that you've lost your ability to keep your cool, and that because of that they fear you might punch them or shoot them. Which it seems, to me, most people, rightly or wrongly, believe happens quite often here in the US.

Swearing serves a purpose: to express strong emotion. In this case, the author is expressing that it's really important to take breaks. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

The problem I have with this is nicely illustrated by a (possibly apocryphal) story about John Steinbeck. He wrote to a college paper that was printing an entire page of the word "FUCK" He asked them to stop, not because it was offensive, but because it was devaluing the word. Swearing only serves to get a strong emotional reaction when it's uncommon.

You seem to be disagreeing with a fictional comment that said "People should swear a lot," rather than the real parent, which said "I think it's pretty well justified in this case."

Actually, that isn't what the parent said, and I'm not arguing with the parent. I'm making a point that cursing only maintains it's visceral power when used sparingly, which I don't think it really is in this video or in some recent articles.

The trend of swearing needlessly is getting a bit old period. Regardless of personal opinions it's not particularly professional…

Although I never swear, I can understand when someone I respect swears. It means that they are dead serious about what they are saying. They don't swear lightly, nor frequently. When I hear them swear, I better be taking them seriously, because it means they're upset. I don't lose any respect for them over it, because again, they don't do it lightly, nor frequently. They only do it when they want to make a serious, serious point.

I love swearing. I also actually agree with the OP. It's getting a little old. Some of the presentations I'm seeing really feel a little patronizing linkbait. But you know what I really can't stand? The word professional, used in this context. What does that even mean? I find it such an obnoxious term when used to suggest that the privilege of working comes at the cost of subscribing to some universal etiquette.

Professional = something you'd say in front of your clients / customers / potential employers etc.

Why should that have anything to do with anything we do when not in front of them?

What gives you the impression that the things you do and say in public are not in front of them?

If we're taking that definition, fair enough, but I don't think most of us would accept self-censorship in any public forum on the off chance that a client or customer might see it.

I respectfully disagree that you believe that's the definition. The presenter gave this talk and put it on the internet, with what I can only presume is her actual name. So I'd submit that she said things she has no problem with her clients/customers/employers seeing or hearing.

My guess is that when you use the word professional you mean things that you would say in front of your clients/customers/employers, and that's what irks me about the term.

Agreed - my guess is it's getting harder and harder to grab people's attention and swearing is an effective way to 'shock' some people into noticing your headline.

What's worse, it _reduces the value of the swear_. When I swear, I mean it.

> not particularly professional…

I am reminded of http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-...

I don't think it really counts as link bait if it's in the title of a presentation you gave in person to a live crowd.

I do think it's relevant to use as it is the title of her talk, as someone else mentioned.

I have more of an issue with people who take an issue with swearing. How does a word become a "curse word". It's an arbitrary assignment by society. Regular use of a particular word in a situation with negative emotions that conditions a response when used in conversation again... are we no better than Pavlov's dog?

People who are offended by swearing... well... it's their own fucking problem. :P

"How does a word become a "curse word". It's an arbitrary assignment by society."

Not true. We specifically make it a taboo, ie. a word that's not supposed to be said by anyone at any occasion, and after that, from time to time, we brake this taboo. But beware, if you use a swearword too frequently, it will lose its power.

3 comments about the article. 19 (now 20) about the swearing in the title. Including the swear may have been good for the author, but it's definitely bad for Hacker News.

It's just an intensive. Probably the most innocuous use of the word 'fuck' there is.

If English had standard intensive forms, and we could add additional intensity just by tweaking a word ending, we wouldn't have this issue. But we don't.

Normally I think unnecessary swearing is lame too, but I'm having trouble figuring out a better way to intensify 'go home'. 'Go the heck home' is corny, 'seriously, go home' lacks the same punch, and 'GO HOME!' is just ugly.

I wish I knew how and when 'the fuck' became the intensive of choice after an imperative. Now that'd be interesting.

Innocuous perhaps, but the real time net-nanny filters installed by IT don't know or care. I can't read the article because of the proliferation of blacklisted words. I can't even read the Hacker News comments about it because of all the discussion using the opportunity to use such blacklisted words. Had to switch to my own personal system & ISP just to make this comment. Whatever the quality of the article, however salient his point, a lot of people are blocked from reading it - never mind poignant commentary getting lost amid all the blather over whether or not a four letter word should be used.

"Go home" doesn't need an intensive on par with cursing or copulation.

So you you work at a company so censorious and distrustful that it expends labor and money to make sure you don't view any content with the dreaded F-word in it. And the OP is responsible for tuning her content to this company's perceived needs... why, exactly?

I'd be curious how the management of this company (and others like it) feel about the actual content of the talk - sustainable pace vis-a-vis productivity & all that. I would not be at all shocked to find out that there was an inverse correlation between employee distrust and a GTFH ethic.

So instead of complaining about a fascist employer, you make the effort to complain about someone using common language, ignoring the utter insanity of a company filtering access to words on the internet.

I can think of certain phrase to describe that that wouldn't make it through those filters.

Reality check: LOTS of businesses use such filters. It's normal practice, especially in this litigious "sensitivity" age where one stray "objectionable" page could cost a company a whole lot o' money from which one "offended" person could get rich. Ergo, if you're trying to reach out to a broad professional technical audience, don't use terms which widespread common-usage lawsuit-avoidance filters will block. You may not like it on principle, but that's the reality out here in the business world.

It's a gimmick to attract attention. It's the verbal equivalent of Ozzy Osborne biting the head off of a bird on TV, except lamer.

I felt the same way, fwiw, and I'm glad you mentioned it. I considere it an immature form of attention-getting, and counterproductive (I don't need to click through to read someone's opinion on work schedules from someone who isn't mature enough to express themselves without swearing)

This trend of people complaining about the perfectly innocent and common use of swearing is getting pretty lame.

Especially combined with the unfounded accusation that there is some kind of deliberate, manipulative intent behind it. What on earth makes you think this is intended as linkbait? Nobody ever uses swear words where you're from?

I think the title is inspired by the children book "Go the f* to sleep".

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