<story><title>Don&apos;t End the Week with Nothing (2014)</title><url>https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/do-not-end-the-week-with-nothing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vbtemp</author><text>I mean, what the hell is with all this 60-90 hours per week stuff going on? Am I an incredibly defective human being or something - I cannot even fathom working anything even CLOSE to that (in software&amp;#x2F;tech, maybe if you&amp;#x27;re in med school or work an an ER I can see it). There is no way in hell I could ever even be close to productive for that period of time for more than, say, one week a year or something (and even then I&amp;#x27;d need weeks to recover).  I&amp;#x27;d guess I&amp;#x27;d ask everyone, &amp;quot;Really?&amp;quot;. When you work those kind of hours, are you _actually_ doing value-adding or value-optimizing things, or just engaging in work theater?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve found the most incredible thing is just to say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; to things. Not doing things has this fantastic side effect of not causing more work. When you don&amp;#x27;t do more things, you don&amp;#x27;t cause more problems, which doesn&amp;#x27;t need more work, which doesn&amp;#x27;t need more staff, which doesn&amp;#x27;t require more money, which gives you less stress, and gives you happier staff, happier customers, and a happier self.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if I&amp;#x27;ve totally lost my marbles if this kind of thing only makes sense to myself...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GordonS</author><text>I used to occasionally worked 80+ hours at a time in my younger days, during a period where I was working for an oil services company, building tooling for migrating different business systems to SAP.&lt;p&gt;The company has several locations across the globe, and each was using something different to be migrated to SAP. One time I flew to Brazil to build SAP integration tooling for the local division of the company - 3 flights over 20 hours (all in economy), and I was expected to go straight to the office on arrival. I then worked feverishly, drinking gallons of local coffee to sustain me. Everyone else was doing the same. We ended up making some bad decisions (I think because we were all so tired), and at one point I totally lost my shit with the Brazilian project lead, coming close to getting violent. I&amp;#x27;m absolutely not a violent person, but that amount of sleep deprivation, pressure and caffeine are not a good combination.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d do this for 2-3 weeks at a time, and feel completely fried at the end of each stint.&lt;p&gt;I simply couldn&amp;#x27;t do that anymore, but I&amp;#x27;m also convinced it was a false economy - if we&amp;#x27;d just worked normal hours without all the pressure from above, we could have achieved the same result, without all the mess along the way.</text></comment>
<story><title>Don&apos;t End the Week with Nothing (2014)</title><url>https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/do-not-end-the-week-with-nothing</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vbtemp</author><text>I mean, what the hell is with all this 60-90 hours per week stuff going on? Am I an incredibly defective human being or something - I cannot even fathom working anything even CLOSE to that (in software&amp;#x2F;tech, maybe if you&amp;#x27;re in med school or work an an ER I can see it). There is no way in hell I could ever even be close to productive for that period of time for more than, say, one week a year or something (and even then I&amp;#x27;d need weeks to recover).  I&amp;#x27;d guess I&amp;#x27;d ask everyone, &amp;quot;Really?&amp;quot;. When you work those kind of hours, are you _actually_ doing value-adding or value-optimizing things, or just engaging in work theater?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve found the most incredible thing is just to say &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; to things. Not doing things has this fantastic side effect of not causing more work. When you don&amp;#x27;t do more things, you don&amp;#x27;t cause more problems, which doesn&amp;#x27;t need more work, which doesn&amp;#x27;t need more staff, which doesn&amp;#x27;t require more money, which gives you less stress, and gives you happier staff, happier customers, and a happier self.&lt;p&gt;I wonder if I&amp;#x27;ve totally lost my marbles if this kind of thing only makes sense to myself...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mjrbrennan</author><text>&amp;gt; just engaging in work theater&lt;p&gt;I do not have firsthand experience at this, but from my understanding being a salaryman in Japan means staying in the office until the boss leaves. It does not matter if you are producing value or not in that time, it is more about appearance and company loyalty.&lt;p&gt;I agree with you 100%...I think the most I&amp;#x27;ve ever worked in a week was probably in the 50-60 hour range and that was one of the worst experiences of my life. I cannot fathom doing 90 hours for SEVERAL YEARS without wanting to drive into oncoming traffic.</text></comment>