editione1.0.1
Updated August 7, 2023A common misconception is that the more hours you spend in the office, or working from home late at night, the more work youโll get done. While it may feel this way, it can actually have the opposite effect and lead to a negative impact on the quality of your work.
Working longer has diminishing returns, because at some point your brain will hit a wall where youโll start to drift and lose your ability to focus. A 60-hour workweek is not the same as two 30-hour workweeks. While it may feel like youโre getting more done in half the time, it may be lower-quality work.
Instead, focus on working smarter and more efficiently during your workweek so you can get all your work done in 40 hours. Distractions and context switching can kill your productivity.
โexampleโHere are some examples of what you can do to stay focused:
Buy a nice pair of noise-canceling headphones to minimize distractions.
Block off chunks of time on your calendar for โfocus time.โ
If possible, try to stack meetings back-to-back rather than having them spread throughout the day so youโre not switching contexts constantly.
Block social media and news websites on your work computer so youโre not tempted to check them during the day.
The more efficiently you can work during normal business hours, the less youโll need to work after hours.
Preventing burnout for programmers (medium.com/@karolisram)
How to Prevent or Recover from Developer Burnout (dev.to/actitime)
83% of Developers Suffer From Burnout, Haystack Analytics Study Finds (usehaystack.io)
Sometimes, youโll find yourself working on a problem towards the end of the day and itโll feel like youโre making good progress. Youโll want to keep the momentum going and will feel like working a little late to wrap things up. Youโve almost got your code working; just a few more lines of code and everything should compile without errors.
At some point, you need to find a good stopping point and just call it a day. For your own sake, itโs better to close up your laptop and unplug at the end of the workday. You can always pick up where you left off tomorrow, or next week, so donโt put too much pressure on finishing a task before heading home for the night. The work will always be there tomorrow.
Itโs a marathon, not a sprint, so you need to set stopping points and take breaks from the computer. Good software takes years to build, so youโre never going to get it all done in one day or one week. Rome wasnโt built in a day, as they say.