<story><title>On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others</title><url>https://blog.lawrencejones.dev/working-too-hard/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maccard</author><text>I found myself nodding along to almost everything in this article; Two comments:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The problems pulled me in, and I’d get so involved I’d be unable to sleep until I solved a problem, sometimes escaping into my dreams if I hadn’t found a natural pause point.&lt;p&gt;I can relate to this, so much. It&amp;#x27;s an incrediblely productive time period when my brain is like this at 7&amp;#x2F;8&amp;#x2F;9pm, but inevitably I lose out on a day or two following it. It sounds cliched, but exercise + mindfulness are a hard requirement for me, and not doing either of those inevitably has my brain racing on whatever I&amp;#x27;m working on at 4am.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Grey found me at exactly 5pm and forced me to logoff.&lt;p&gt;Nobody ever told me to work late, but nobody ever told me to _stop_ working. If my boss&amp;#x2F;bosses boss&amp;#x2F;&amp;lt;etc&amp;gt; came up to me a once or twice and told me &amp;quot;hey, you shouldn&amp;#x27;t work past &amp;lt;x&amp;gt; PM&amp;quot;, particularly in my first few days, _and most importantly_ they left too, that would have set an excellent example on how to have a work-life balance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>piva00</author><text>&amp;gt; Nobody ever told me to work late, but nobody ever told me to _stop_ working. If my boss&amp;#x2F;bosses boss&amp;#x2F;&amp;lt;etc&amp;gt; came up to me a once or twice and told me &amp;quot;hey, you shouldn&amp;#x27;t work past &amp;lt;x&amp;gt; PM&amp;quot;, particularly in my first few days, _and most importantly_ they left too, that would have set an excellent example on how to have a work-life balance.&lt;p&gt;When I moved to Sweden my first manager did exactly that. I was on my 3rd day and working until 18:00, he came to me and asked why I was still at my desk, I should&amp;#x27;ve left an hour ago. He always enjoyed his time off and allowed us to be flexible whenever needed, it was an amazing example to set right at the beginning.</text></comment>
<story><title>On working too hard: finding balance, and lessons learned from others</title><url>https://blog.lawrencejones.dev/working-too-hard/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>maccard</author><text>I found myself nodding along to almost everything in this article; Two comments:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The problems pulled me in, and I’d get so involved I’d be unable to sleep until I solved a problem, sometimes escaping into my dreams if I hadn’t found a natural pause point.&lt;p&gt;I can relate to this, so much. It&amp;#x27;s an incrediblely productive time period when my brain is like this at 7&amp;#x2F;8&amp;#x2F;9pm, but inevitably I lose out on a day or two following it. It sounds cliched, but exercise + mindfulness are a hard requirement for me, and not doing either of those inevitably has my brain racing on whatever I&amp;#x27;m working on at 4am.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Grey found me at exactly 5pm and forced me to logoff.&lt;p&gt;Nobody ever told me to work late, but nobody ever told me to _stop_ working. If my boss&amp;#x2F;bosses boss&amp;#x2F;&amp;lt;etc&amp;gt; came up to me a once or twice and told me &amp;quot;hey, you shouldn&amp;#x27;t work past &amp;lt;x&amp;gt; PM&amp;quot;, particularly in my first few days, _and most importantly_ they left too, that would have set an excellent example on how to have a work-life balance.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>&amp;gt; Nobody ever told me to work late, but nobody ever told me to _stop_ working. If my boss&amp;#x2F;bosses boss&amp;#x2F;&amp;lt;etc&amp;gt; came up to me a once or twice and told me &amp;quot;hey, you shouldn&amp;#x27;t work past &amp;lt;x&amp;gt; PM&amp;quot;, particularly in my first few days, _and most importantly_ they left too, that would have set an excellent example on how to have a work-life balance.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve had managers try to nanny my working hours like this. It wasn&amp;#x27;t fun. I know they thought it was a good gesture, but if I have a spare hour or two in the evening and a good idea I want to try out before bed, I don&amp;#x27;t want anyone telling me I can&amp;#x27;t work right now.&lt;p&gt;In fact, I don&amp;#x27;t want my manager policing my working hours at all, in either direction.&lt;p&gt;What works better is for managers to gather honest feedback about how long tasks took and how many excess hours were being worked during their 1:1s with employees. It&amp;#x27;s not hard to ask employees how their workload looks and adjust schedules or resource allocation to compensate.</text></comment>