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Journal tomhudson's Journal: The 30-hour-plus work day. 11

Journal by tomhudson
That was my work day Tuesday-Wednesday. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. For those who program, there's nothing quite like "getting into the zone" for an extended period of time.

We were running the risk of being behind schedule in delivering a data visualization tool this week, so rather than try to do it at the office, I bundled up the images, spreadsheet, and description, and worked from home Tuesday.

So I got up a bit before 6 in the morning, made pancakes, and took the dogs for their morning walk. Some time before 9 am I started coding. Worked straight through to 10:45 pm, then took the dogs for a walk and nuked some leftovers. Then more coding until 4:30 am, walked the dogs again, more code, and at 8:55 am. emailed the working program to the office. A quick shower, breakfast, walk the dogs again, and then headed into the office for the day, which of course ended late (6pm). Around 7pm, did a few mods to the program to add a new feature, then ate supper.

Oh, btw, the customer loves it!

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The 30-hour-plus work day. More

The 30-hour-plus work day.

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  • That's what I'm talkin' bout
    Am familiar with this lifecycle all too well.

    • I was joking around that maybe, to get the most done, I should do it every week - a 30 hour day, an 8 hour day, and a 5 day weekend.

      I could actually live with that :-) 2 days of sleeping in late and then doing housework and stuff to recover, and 2 days for a "real" weekend, since a good chunk of the weekend is taken up with laundry, vacuuming, washing floors, shopping, etc.

  • The longest day I worked was early in my career. I got to work at 7:30am on a Thursday and left Friday at 5pm. I also billed 102.5 hours in one week during my first trial.

    Course having done it, I don't really feel compelled to do it again :-)
    • But it *is* pretty awesome to have done it :-)

      And in this business, I know that it happens every once in a while ...

  • For me personally, when I've had all development/implementation/coding to do, and a lot of it so that I chose to do 12-hour days at work, I found that the fruits of the last hour tended to be crap and had to be largely scrapped or reworked. Programming has been described as having to be able to focus on multiple levels of a problem, largely at all the same time. I love and live for and was born for coding, but I don't think I can maintain the edge just described after 11 hours straight of good, intense, min

    • 12 hours at the office results in the same thing you say - the last hour is pretty much a waste - or worse. Good thing for unlimited undo :-).

      Taking the day off and coding from home, though, it's different.

      For one thing, it's QUIET! With the desktop turned off, and a 26" screen as the main screen for my 17" laptop, and a keyboard and mouse plugged into it, I have the near-ideal coding environment.

      (... but my next laptop, hopefully, will support 2 external screens at the same time, so I'll be able to

  • Oh, btw, the customer loves it!

    I absolutely love to hear those words. Makes everything else worth it.

    • They like it enough that they eventually want to expand it from the continental US to the rest of the world ... "do you want to play a game of GLOBAL DOMINATION?"

  • that is what I am being paid for - with flex time and 4 weeks rec leave a year and sick leave and superannuation contributions (that aren't taxable income).

    Doesn't stop the job sucking though.

  • The human mind is a marvellous thing. When it is given a problem so complex that it's not easily resolved in a single day, and driven to near exhaustion by data inputs, your mind can achieve superhuman feats of integration in self-defense. It achieves a state of super-cognition that can't be found any other way.

    Much like the Ballmer peak [xkcd.com] the results require independent confirmation - but generally they hold up.

    Some of the problems with managing people who achieve this state: The feeling of being in this

    • BTW: Hardcore programmers call this state "the zone". Zone junkies are the hardest to manage - but it's easier to find managers than it is to find durable Zone junkies.

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