Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity

http://thewebivore.com/go-the-fuck-home-my-ignite-talk

by pselle • 14 years ago

151 54 14 years ago

Video from the "Go The Fuck Home" Ignite Philly presentation.

cgshaw• 14 years ago

Stress is probably the worst thing that can happen to you when trying to start. Crushes your immune system and get you sick. Prevents creativity, hell keeps you from doing even mundane and simple tasks well. Makes you hell to interact with your peers, friends and family.

People are always preaching at us to work until our faces fall off, but that's just not sustainable nor productive.

RandallBrown• 14 years ago

It's amazing how few people get this.

I just started a new job and everyone is telling me how much everyone here works. I look at the products we make and the deadlines that are set and they aren't any bigger or more agressive than anywhere else that I worked.

It has just always been a part of this companies culture I guess, but I don't see the need to sit in my office for 8 extra hours a week when all I'll end up doing is bullshitting on the Internet.

danudey2• 14 years ago

At my job, I used to stay late. I'd stay until 10 PM some nights and be super productive. Except I realized that I was dicking around until 5 PM and then being super productive for five hours after most (non-tech) people had gone home. I was staying up late, waking up late, being useless for most of the morning, taking long lunches, and not getting much done.

Now I get up every morning, I get to work around 8:30. I spend about an hour in the morning getting my work sorted out, getting my head together, figuring out my tasks for the day, and then being productive until 5 PM, then leaving. I've been more productive, I've been more accessible to coworkers with different schedules, I'm enjoying my job more, and more importantly, I'm enjoying life more. I'm not tired all day, I'm not useless when I get home, I'm not up late for no good reason.

Working a fixed, reasonable schedule (with occasional exceptions) has been such a huge boost to my productivity that even people I don't work directly with have commented to my manager on how much of a difference it's made.

The hardest part, as she mentions in her talk, is leaving even though my manager is still here, and still working on things, but when I realized that I stopped being very productive at about 4:30 anyway, I figured that was a good reason to tap out and go home.

Try it. It works.

nullflux• 14 years ago

Yes.

In many cases, I don't think it has anything to do with employees wanting to be there. The problem I've found is that most managers (and VCs) I've met seem to think that if you aren't devoting your life to your code monastery, you aren't productive and you aren't dedicated. Startups place an enormous amount of value on "ass in seat" time even though sometimes being in the seat isn't often the productive thing to do. There is a horribly mistaken belief that the more you sit at work, the more you get done, and if someone else is sitting there longer than you, they're a "better" employee. It's perception, not reality.

If we really want to go the fuck home, managers need to drastically change what they think "productive" is in a knowledge industry. Writing code is not like being on a factory line. The motions are not repetitive and you are required to be creative. I think I'm as productive in a 30 hour week as I am on a 60 hour one: in the latter case, I'm spending too much time spinning on overhead or burned out and playing Portal.

hkyeti• 14 years ago

what's up with all the swearing? this trend of swearing as linkbait is getting pretty lame.

danielhunt2• 14 years ago

I see absolutely nothing wrong with swearing. I actually have more of an issue with the automatic disapproval than a healthy spread of profanities.

coderdude6• 14 years ago

I doubt it's an automatic disapproval. It's annoying because swearing is used as linkbait all the time.

tobych• 14 years ago

The way I understand it, ignorant of the psychology of swearing but having had to think about it since arriving here from the UK, is that if you're swearing, you're breaking a taboo that people assume you understand, so if you break it, they guess that you've lost your ability to keep your cool, and that because of that they fear you might punch them or shoot them. Which it seems, to me, most people, rightly or wrongly, believe happens quite often here in the US.

j_baker7• 14 years ago

Swearing serves a purpose: to express strong emotion. In this case, the author is expressing that it's really important to take breaks. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

docgnome2• 14 years ago

The problem I have with this is nicely illustrated by a (possibly apocryphal) story about John Steinbeck. He wrote to a college paper that was printing an entire page of the word "FUCK" He asked them to stop, not because it was offensive, but because it was devaluing the word. Swearing only serves to get a strong emotional reaction when it's uncommon.

neilmiddleton2• 14 years ago

The trend of swearing needlessly is getting a bit old period. Regardless of personal opinions it's not particularly professional…

PakG1• 14 years ago

Although I never swear, I can understand when someone I respect swears. It means that they are dead serious about what they are saying. They don't swear lightly, nor frequently. When I hear them swear, I better be taking them seriously, because it means they're upset. I don't lose any respect for them over it, because again, they don't do it lightly, nor frequently. They only do it when they want to make a serious, serious point.

famousactress2• 14 years ago

I love swearing. I also actually agree with the OP. It's getting a little old. Some of the presentations I'm seeing really feel a little patronizing linkbait. But you know what I really can't stand? The word professional, used in this context. What does that even mean? I find it such an obnoxious term when used to suggest that the privilege of working comes at the cost of subscribing to some universal etiquette.

mtoddh• 14 years ago

Agreed - my guess is it's getting harder and harder to grab people's attention and swearing is an effective way to 'shock' some people into noticing your headline.

TylerE• 14 years ago

What's worse, it _reduces the value of the swear_. When I swear, I mean it.

telent• 14 years ago

> not particularly professional…

I am reminded of http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-...

danudey2• 14 years ago

I don't think it really counts as link bait if it's in the title of a presentation you gave in person to a live crowd.

shepbook• 14 years ago

I do think it's relevant to use as it is the title of her talk, as someone else mentioned.

I have more of an issue with people who take an issue with swearing. How does a word become a "curse word". It's an arbitrary assignment by society. Regular use of a particular word in a situation with negative emotions that conditions a response when used in conversation again... are we no better than Pavlov's dog?

People who are offended by swearing... well... it's their own fucking problem. :P

m_for_monkey• 14 years ago

"How does a word become a "curse word". It's an arbitrary assignment by society."

Not true. We specifically make it a taboo, ie. a word that's not supposed to be said by anyone at any occasion, and after that, from time to time, we brake this taboo. But beware, if you use a swearword too frequently, it will lose its power.

bryanlarsen• 14 years ago

3 comments about the article. 19 (now 20) about the swearing in the title. Including the swear may have been good for the author, but it's definitely bad for Hacker News.

gyardley• 14 years ago

It's just an intensive. Probably the most innocuous use of the word 'fuck' there is.

If English had standard intensive forms, and we could add additional intensity just by tweaking a word ending, we wouldn't have this issue. But we don't.

Normally I think unnecessary swearing is lame too, but I'm having trouble figuring out a better way to intensify 'go home'. 'Go the heck home' is corny, 'seriously, go home' lacks the same punch, and 'GO HOME!' is just ugly.

I wish I knew how and when 'the fuck' became the intensive of choice after an imperative. Now that'd be interesting.

ctdonath2• 14 years ago

Innocuous perhaps, but the real time net-nanny filters installed by IT don't know or care. I can't read the article because of the proliferation of blacklisted words. I can't even read the Hacker News comments about it because of all the discussion using the opportunity to use such blacklisted words. Had to switch to my own personal system & ISP just to make this comment. Whatever the quality of the article, however salient his point, a lot of people are blocked from reading it - never mind poignant commentary getting lost amid all the blather over whether or not a four letter word should be used.

"Go home" doesn't need an intensive on par with cursing or copulation.

Duff• 14 years ago

It's a gimmick to attract attention. It's the verbal equivalent of Ozzy Osborne biting the head off of a bird on TV, except lamer.

3am• 14 years ago

I felt the same way, fwiw, and I'm glad you mentioned it. I considere it an immature form of attention-getting, and counterproductive (I don't need to click through to read someone's opinion on work schedules from someone who isn't mature enough to express themselves without swearing)

rickmb2• 14 years ago

This trend of people complaining about the perfectly innocent and common use of swearing is getting pretty lame.

Especially combined with the unfounded accusation that there is some kind of deliberate, manipulative intent behind it. What on earth makes you think this is intended as linkbait? Nobody ever uses swear words where you're from?

zszugyi• 14 years ago

I think the title is inspired by the children book "Go the f* to sleep".

jh3• 14 years ago

Personally, I find it more annoying to see so many "my business I hacked up over the weekend" and "look at my startup that I created in 20 hours" posts. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure I see way more of these kinds of posts than I do ones that contain expletives.

In fact, I would prefer a page full of posts with titles that contain 'fuck' rather than an entire page of posts about copycat blogging platforms or 'my weekend project, now app, now "business," made with rails and coffebonemongodb.js'.

Well, that came out of no where.

Time to read the OPs post.

/rant (which was supposed to be in reply to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771670)

Edit: I definitely agree with the video and wish everyone worked like that. The part about the managers leading the team by going home on time is true too.

jsaxton86• 14 years ago

To me, the most interesting part of this video was the graph of worker efficiency as a function of hours worked per week, which can be found here as part of a fascinating study: http://cmdept.unl.edu/drb/Reading/overtime1.htm

Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity

Related Stories