Ask HN: I found that I often have a lazy day after productive day | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I found that I often have a lazy day after productive day

46 pointsloboda_ro35 comments

I study at college. Getting my degree in Data Analytics. I study programming almost every day and as many students I also work part time. But in the last 6 months I found that I often live in a cycle where I have a productive day and the next day is lazy. So, I find it super unattractive to do anything. Then it repeats again and again. Have you ever experienced something like this? What would you recommend me to do to get out of this cycle? P.S. I push myself to do stuff on the bad days to gain that ‘work flow’. But it doesn’t feel like it helps me. Because of low energy levels on lazy days I do things slowly, I can’t concentrate on things and so on.

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I'm mid 40s and will say that this productivity/recharge cycle has been in my life for as long as I can remember.

I think it's natural and speaks to the reality that we cannot operate at an all-out 100% continuously.

Use the downtime as an opportunity for self care, physical health, and low mental output tasks so that when the peak comes again you're not distracted by trivial things.

Key thing I learned too late in life: don’t be too hard on yourself when you have those less productive days. It’s just part of the cycle.

> Key thing I learned too late in life: don’t be too hard on yourself when you have those less productive days. It’s just part of the cycle.

That's a good thing to keep in mind!

Maybe also: understand that colleagues are not always at the peak of this cycle.

I'd agree that its just natural. Embrace it and when you're feeling productive, see how long you can go.

I think society/ourselves have put arbitrary time barriers in our days where things occur - meals, bedtimes, work days, etc. Sometimes it would be nice if you find yourself in a "flow" state to just ignore all of those barriers and roll with it for a while. Its like some days you just aren't that hungry or you sleep much longer/shorter. We are animals after all and sometimes believe we can control things to the point of robotic measurable output when our bodies tell us otherwise.

100%. Look at nature and human history:

Cycles are inherent to nature and humans are natural. Planets move cyclically. We experience day followed by nite and the seasons change (in most places anyway). I'm of the opinion that taking time off is natural. It's what agriculture has naturally 'demanded' of farmers (or used it before tech disrupted things) for eons.

Of course there's a spectrum as well -> we all have varying levels of 'passion' - some prefer depth and can go for a long time. Some prefer more breadth over depth. Both kinds of people have their value and probably need each other in a symbiotic way.

Just try to find the balance that fits your personality.

I used to work with a guy who prided himself on his work ethic and productivity. He would pound away at the code daily yet, he was probably one of the worst programmers I've ever known. He was so interested in being productive (which is laudable) that he never took enough time to rest, recharge, and integrate what he had learned. He thought he was delivering quality results because his metric was wrong. Meanwhile, multiple people had to go behind him and rewrite his code because it was so bloated and inefficient.

The funny thing is, he told someone he thought I was the worst programmer he'd ever worked with because I didn't come in and grind out hundreds of lines of code each day. Maybe he was right but, I suspect he had that opinion of other people at the company that didn't meet his skewed standard.

Isn't it obvious?

Your mind has limited capacity for diffucult mental work. After you have used it all, you need time to restore yourself.

You can use several strategies:

  * Smooth it out: work less on a productive day so you can work more on an unproductive day
  * Improve your capacity for work: diet, sleep, exercise. there is a bazilion things written on the topic, find what works for you.
  * Adapt work to your capability. If you have unproductive day, do unproductive things. For example, you can attend meetings, write emails, or take the day off entirely and do something physical.

There is not much else that could be done, you can over extend yourself so you could become sick or burn out. But I don't think that it is best for you in the long term

Love, Emma

Edit: formatting, I am new to the editor on this site

About to turn 30, still struggling with what I think you’re talking about.

Have you tried examining what it is that actually gets you to work on those productive days? I wonder if you’re glossing over that part while you focus on what’s getting you into those unproductive days. Are you waiting until you get to sort of a critical mass, until feeling lazy feels bad enough that you can’t handle it anymore, and that’s your motivation for getting back towards being productive? If that’s the case, it might be worth contemplating how sustainable that is for you, and if there’s anything more sustainable you could use for motivation.

The ebb and flow of productivity is natural - make it work for you, and dont tyrannize yourself over it.

On your productive days you will often have ancillary thoughts - that document needs updating, its been a while since I read up on subject X, that server needs patching, this section of the config parser needs to be more robust, little tidy-up tasks that create more order in your workspace, these tasks are like the monks cleaning the house, they are restorative and meditative, but not cognitively burdening.

Write these down in whatever method suits you. Then they are outside of your working memory. On your less productive days, pick a few that seem appealing to you, and do them.

Lastly, not every moment must be productive, sometimes you actually need rest, life is about balance.

Maybe it's regression to the mean? Perhaps the second day 'feels' more lazy because you did so much the last day, so that when you return to your baseline, you feel as if you haven't done anything in comparison.

This could be proven/disproven with some metrics about your average productivity and productivity on 'lazy' days.

Normalize being tired. Seriously this sounds completely normal and, if you’re keeping up with your studies this isn’t something you should feel bad about.

If you aren’t keeping up, I’d try working less on your productive days and see if you can spread out the work more evenly. Take more time for yourself. Exercise, sleep, eat, socialize.

I experience it the other way around. Sometimes I need an "onramp" of unproductiveness to burst out a crazy productive day. As if I need to allow my brain to sort some things in the background first and if the mood is right, it just flows for a while.

It's the discipline vs passion effect. Discipline can only power you so much. It taps from your willpower reserves, which is limited, and then wait for your willpower to recover.

Passion is the opposite, you have to expend willpower to not do the thing. Once you do the thing, you end up with more energy.

Passion can be destructive in many situations though, especially jobs where your work may be writing docs, meetings, demos, and not doing the thing. So highly passionate people in "the corporation" end up feeling more drained than disciplined people.

But basically what you're seeing is a comparison between the two, instead of seeing it as a normal thing like the sleep/wake cycle.

That's an excellent point. I am more on the passionate side, so the struggle is more being able to stop working once I start.

I tried a bit the discipline part, but that doesn't work for me. If I don't like it, I can not motivate myself to do it. If I like it, I can't stop.

I also work in peaks and troughs, so not every day is productive.

I try to make up for it on productive days by being very productive or extra creative.

The important part is to handle the life admin and low prio stuff on the lazy days if you can so you can clear your time for the peak days. Usually I try to follow my lazy and then get curious.

Working remote helps with this since my output averages out over the week, and I can still have peak days without a manager bugging me or having to be in an office. Some lazy days are on the couch, but then a golden hour / brain wave of good work can happen. If I was chained to a desk it doesn't happen.

You just learned something about yourself - now go and figure out more things about yourself. just because you want something (to be productive 100% of the time) doesn't mean it's what will make you the most effective person possible. Surrender to your ways of being - you will be so much happier than trying to stuff yourself into a box that society or your ego has imposed.

I'm in my mid 20s, but already have ~4 years of professional experience.

Basically for me this "day of productivity" can extend to up to 3 days, but yes the cycle in general is always to some degree: Productive -> Lazy -> Something inbetween -> Productive -> ...

Hey, happy that you could be "lazy", take it as an opportunity to recharge the brain CPU + RAM + Disk storage.

You're a human, myself include.

It's a reminder that we're not a relentless robot. We need "lazy", like in lazy computation. It's a good default optimization strategy.

Have a good day.

I have the same issue. At some point, I ended up procrastinating for days in a row, being afraid to work, because when I do I hyper-focus and work A LOT for 1-2-3 days until I get burned out, then can't work for another week. So I ended up being afraid to start working because I know I get so much into it, I can not stop until the burned out.

What I do now, is to accept more the lazy days, and also when I work, I try to sometimes take it easier, even if it's hard to stop working when you're in the zone. I used to be very harsh with myself whenever I was lazy, but now I understand that's the price to pay for those days with insane high-productivity.

I would listen to your mind / body. You're still developing your "productivity endurance". It will build up over time. Learning now to listen to when you can and can't be productive will help later in life when incidents reduce (hopefully temporarily) your capabilities. You're also getting to see the downside of trying to push through it.

What you're going through is something I'm dealing with now -- one of the side effects of some health conditions is temporary (or permanent) changes in endurance. One of the difficulties I have faced is accepting the days when I'm less productive and moving on in the hopes the following day will be better.

I go with the flow whenever possible. The more lazy I allow myself to get the more productive hours and days are following.

I know that doesn't adapt to student life at all. Back when I needed to get productive ashwaghanda and later prescription amphetamines were helpful. But that led me directly into a burnout so I wouldn't recommend going the amphetamine route. Ash is amazing still

> Have you ever experienced something like this?

Yes, regularly. Yesterday was a lazy day for me. Today was a productive day.

> What would you recommend me to do to get out of this cycle?

I don’t have a solution. I’ve learned to live with it. I’m on ADHD meds and they help, but they don’t prevent the lazy days.

On productive days do you work too much? Have you tried setting limits on your work on those days?

I have the same as OP. I tried that, thinking maybe I was just working too much on the good days. Didn't help. Now I ride the wave, having a good day. I crunch out as much as I can.

This might be a normal human work pattern : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvk_XylEmLo

I read some research recently that shows the same thing happens with exercise. Go out for a run and you will tend to offset that with inactivity later in the day, without consciously thinking about it.

What happens when you do less on the productive days, or incorporate more relaxing things? A day isn’t good or bad based on what we label as productivity. True rest is productive.

You know what they say: a healthy mind in a healthy body. Focus on eating well and doing regular high intensity exercise and your stamina will increase.

Try to buffer mentally challenging and physically challenging tasks with downtimes. Sometimes yes, a full day of surfing is the answer.

Yes, it's normal. We're not machines, meant to operate in exactly the same manner day after day.

Then explain scrum and sprints? /s

Absolutely normal for me. And it's definetly not productive vs lazy, it's a spectrum

Your reward function inside your brain works like this.

It’s called rest.

Same here.

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