Time and Work
I'm not sure if it's serendipitous but I stumbled upon a few things today that I find strictly correlated. One is from "The Almanack of Naval Revikant" which I don't necessarily recommend (I'll write a review for it). It had a few tidbits that, while not original, are still valuable. The concept covered is the idea of hard work. No matter what "wealth" means to you (because it's not just monetary wealth), it's important to know what to work on to bring the wealth you desire. This is in contrast with the idea that imbibing hard work is a virtue. Working longer hours is not something to be proud of. When I hear that all I can think about is that the other person cannot find a balance.
I'm not advocating against longer hours at all, there are times when working late is necessary (e.g. production is on fire, hitting a hard deadline). But those should be the exception, not the rule. All of this resonates with me because I've been trying for more than a year to stick to a work schedule. I refused to do any work after my day ended unless I needed to support my team with on-call. This schedule was partly forced by my newborn so I took it as a chance to learn if I could excel with this restriction. Spoiler alert, I did! I'm still not quite happy with what I achieve in a day and it's been a never-ending battle to keep distractions away and context-switching to a minimum.
To top it off I have been pursuing stretches of deep work. That requires a lot of discipline and breaking old habits. I block time on my calendar to focus and I set the expectation that I won't be responsive. I do 1-hour slots, take a break and check in on the team and sometimes I can extend it to an additional hour. A rarity, so I count my blessings when it happens. I don't think I have my routine down and I still tend to break out of it, but I'll keep practicing until it becomes second nature. This is because I realized that most of the time my response is not needed immediately, except for production issues.
The other thing I found is the High-Functioning Workaholism post, and it linked perfectly with what I've been thinking about today and for the past year. Those longer hours come at a cost. I noticed how the quality of my work drastically declined when I was somewhat sleep-deprived (a newborn will do that to you). There's this one specific instance I recall where I was reading a tech spec for a project. The first read felt like I was interpreting a different language. The day after, given a good night of sleep, everything was clicking so easily, I was shocked! While this might not be as surprising as I make it sounds, it hits differently when it happens to you vs. reading about it in a book.
Hristiyan makes a lot of good points in his article, one should not work longer hours but instead invest in ways that can make your regular working hours more efficient. I find myself getting distracted too easily by checking emails, so I'm trying to switch to scheduled inbox cleaning. My goal is to have a day that is not as fragmented but instead groups similar tasks. For example, instead of checking my email at 8 AM, 9:15 AM, 10:30 AM, and 10:45 AM (you get the idea), I would spend 1 hour in the morning, and then maybe 30 minutes in the middle of the day and 30 at the end.
Thoughts
I actively discourage working longer hours. When my team comes to me feeling like that's an accomplishment, they don't get praise. I try to understand what's the reason for it and what can we do to avoid it. Some have an itch to scratch but there's a ton of research around this, you NEED that break. Your brain NEEDS that break. More often than not that pause from your current task is so powerful that it might help you get unstuck. I want to keep focusing on ways to make my day more efficient and get even more done than I'm used to. I encourage anyone to do this exercise and write down what's distracting you during the day, and how you could avoid it. Is there a way to move things around in your day to have more focused time? If you had to shave an hour from your workday, how would you change your schedule to be able to get the same amount of work done?