I know I personally like to keep the opinion people have that I am overworked, whether I actually work hard or procrastinate - it's just a really convenient social shield, not only against failure but also against random requests from people. When people notice you have too much free time, for some reason they feel obliged to start inventing things for you to do.
I think it's an alternative to just saying "no". Some people are assertive and can simply refuse a request. Personally, I find assertiveness very cognitively taxing, not to mention socially, so maintaining a bubble of "he's constantly working on something" impression helps. It's probably not the most ethical approach, but it's a coping strategy.
As for self-deprecation of your work, I know I've been guilty of this at times to cover for stress and lack of motivation. It would be true that the particular piece of work is not the best thing I can do (and I can always point to examples of a better work), but fortunately people immediately assume (without me having to suggest anything) that's because of being tired, or new, or something, and not because I am having trouble finding the motivation to pursue a task at 100% of effectiveness. This buys me necessary time to sort my motivations out and hopefully regain the energy to do a better work next time.
You just oppened my eyes. Being a programmer from Spain I receive an average of 2-3 project proposals for free from friends and acquaintances per week. To friends I normally explain why not, but to acquaintances it's way easier to say I don't have time than to explain why I don't think it's a good idea or that I just don't want to work for them for free, which is expected for side projects or internships in here. Now I'm also experimenting with asking for how much when it's work-like and some people just back off.
Then from time to time an awesome project with shared workloads comes and I magically find the time to do it (;
> To friends I normally explain why not, but to acquaintances it's way easier to say I don't have time than to explain why I don't think it's a good idea or that I just don't want to work for them for free (...)
I've noticed that things can also loop around when you're dealing with family. Just recently I received a proposal from a next of kin for basically making an Android app for equity (i.e. for free). He's younger and I recognize this as a temporary fascination with the startup world ("If everyone buys it for $2, the app will make millions (PLN)!") and I don't want to shut down his dreams (he'll get over it soon by himself), so I can't just say no. Fortunately, I have a convenient excuse of being stuck in China for the next month or so - therefore I'm absolutely busy and have no time!
(OTOH if he still wants that when I get back I'll probably go for it - the app is simple, and who knows? Maybe it will earn some cash, which will be a valuable experience for both of us.)
By the way, should I start tagging those comments as #HNTherapy or something?
I drop some shields down for people close to me. But then again, I used to be so bad at assertiveness that I've been burned by people very close to me who assumed my time is free and can be wasted on anything at all.
I see people all the time quite convincingly saying (with a friendly, disarming smile) "oh no, it's no problem at all!" when in fact it is a problem, they don't want to do whatever it is, internally they're distressed. But social conventions (of varying power depending on the culture they grew up in) are forcing them to say "yes", and do it convincingly.
It's actually easier if someone demands a favor and they are obviously rude/inconsiderate about it; it's more "okay" to respond to rudeness with a refusal or excuse.
But some people are unable to say "no" to polite requests for assistance even when they have to lie to accept convincingly. Even if it's hugely inconvenient for them, and only of minimal benefit to the asker. So they say "yes", and probably do whatever it is, and then will try to find a way to avoid the asker in future (don't pick up their calls, etc).
There's some argument that everyone would benefit from a more "American" (ideal, not always real) and more direct approach -- e.g., someone asks "would it be easy for you to..." and you answer "sorry, no", and no one is upset. But this is next to impossible in some cultures, and there's also value in (if you're the asker) putting more thought into how you can value other peoples' time more accurately.
>I think it's an alternative to just saying "no". Some people are assertive and can simply refuse a request. Personally, I find assertiveness very cognitively taxing
And this is where too little sleep helps: it makes you aggressive and lowers your barrier to verbally whack someone over the head. I know my superiors treat me more carefully since I am constantly sleep-deprived due to kids.
> The loser usually takes the imagined moral high ground by sticking to his Code of Honor, a made-up set of personal rules that tells him which moves he can and cannot do. Of course, the rules of the game itself dictate which moves a player can and cannot make, so the Code of Honor is superfluous and counterproductive toward winning. [...] This type of player is trying desperately to remain a “winner” any way possible. If you catch him amidst a sea of losses, you’ll notice that his Code will undergo strange contortions so that he may still define himself, somehow, as a “winner.”
Working long hours, showing people unfinished prototypes, etc. are such "Codes of Honor." For the people who work under such rules, even if their output stinks, they can still feel like keeping to their Code has made them a "winner."
Even if, y'know, the ROI on their time and effort was effectively zero.
This is one of the many things that starcraft taught me. If my goal is to be better, there is little point in placing blame on anything except what is under my control.
If the opponent uses a strategy that seems unfair, then I should use that strategy.
If they are using a high risk strategy, instead of saying that they are just gambling and being mad at them I should instead become better at finding out if they are going to take that path and deal with it.
When it comes to improvement it is self defeating to say that anything out of your control was the problem. If that was in fact the case you shouldn't have let that situtation arise. If someone else is constantly causing a problem for you then you need to create a situation where they can't cause you problems anymore. Be that improve their abilities, isolate yourself from them or be good enough to solve that problem.
Then again I never quite made it to the grandmasters league.
As a European, this article intrigues me. In most European industries, overwork isn't at all celebrated as much as in the US (from what I can tell reading HN).
But this article's reasoning makes sense. So do we have different social shields in place? If I work 8-ish hours a day and screw up, what's my excuse? I can't completely figure this one out.
I can see mentalities like this - less strict working hours, work related communication continuing after work hours, etc - creeping up rapidly in Europe / my world though. I have some colleagues that go home mid-afternoon (to pick up the kids from work), but then work for a couple hours more in the evening. That makes it appear to me (and, more importantly, my boss) that they work longer hours, which causes some performance anxiety.
Me, I prefer to work 9-5. It's boring, but it's sustainable and does not cause me stress about whether I'm working the 40 hours / week my contract tells me to do.
> If I work 8-ish hours a day and screw up, what's my excuse?
Personally, I don't use an excuse. I just fix the problem, which is typically more useful than having an excuse.
Being able to work without an excuse required me to realize that I am human, and even under perfect conditions, I'm going to screw up. I put as many safety barriers around my work as I can to help prevent it (code linters, static analysis, testing, etc), but it still happens. Accepting that it can happen, and moving on when it does happen seems to work pretty well for me.
As another European I concur. Moreover I'm British but I left to live in "continental Europe" over a decade ago, so I've seen some of the Anglo, Anglo-Saxon and the southern European models.
When I worked in the UK, many businesses had a work environment that steered towards the US model, but 9am - 5:30pm was the norm. More flexible working hours are starting to be more common, but statistically the total hours worked is very static over the last decade. [1]
On the other hand, here in Germany the concept of "Feierabend" is sacrosanct. Feierabend is the word Germans use to describe the time after work (and the point at which they "clock off"). Germans start work earlier than in the UK, but many finish around 4:30pm or even earlier on a Friday.
That being said, the productive hours of work here in Germany appears to be different (possibly just observer bias). They seem to get a lot done in those hours. I see less meetings and less general chit-chat throughout the day. In the UK I would often experience the collection of people around the coffee machine discussing last night's TV programs. I've never seen that kind of thing here.
Spain was a completely different experience. People didn't appear to work so much, but that was simply because initially I didn't realise that many people have two jobs, with siesta parked in the middle. They often start earlier and finish late in the evening. The statistics show that Spain (and Greece more so) have a higher number of hours worked annually than Germany (and the UK).
From an economic perspective though, those extra hours haven't traditionally produced growth in the same way as the Germans have. That's not to say that the Germans are particularly more productive (I think that is rather hard to quantify and there are many more factors in play than just being "productive"), but in terms of pure economic success, Spain and Greece are certainly well behind their northern European partners.
A lot of that is also due to the kind of economies these countries have though. Germany produces things for export and benefits greatly from a depressed Euro and has done so for the last 15 years. Spain and Greece do not have such economies, and have been hit with the triple punch of economic depression, reduced EU financial support and forced austerity. It is like taking a heroin addict (EU grant money) and forcing him to go cold turkey, but also removing all the furniture in the room and leaving him with a cold concrete floor and walls and leaving one barred window that overlooks a methadone clinic day centre.
As a german, what I often see in older generations is the attitude that work is not something you enjoy. You endure it. Suck it up and drudge. This implies you have a Feierabend after work, where you can do what you enjoy.
Younger generations have a different attitude, which I assume is spilling over from the US: Follow your passion. Find work you love to do. This implies you love to work longer hours.
In my city (Lyon, France) we look down at the rich people. So much that every time I go to a start-up pitch session, I hear words like "My goal is NOT to enrich myself, it's to serve the community" and the people make choices accordingly, such as belonging to a cooperative and not earning dividends, etc. It seems like an obligatory language to gain the support of the society in order to do our business. A striking example: my coworking space is awesome and the founders don't get dividends for it, apart from having a free office.
That's a very peculiar perspective to say the least. However I don't think it makes much sense TBH. Nobody would lower his/her expectation of the work just because that guy said he worked so hard and didn't even sleep much in the past several months. On the contrary, the more likely thought is that "you've worked so hard and sacrificed a lot already, then the work you've done must be awesome, otherwise you're really even more of a fail." If the guy said that he just did a random side project for 1 hour per day, then the expectation would indeed be much lower. So I can't see myself agreeing with the author's line of reasoning. Pointing out that people sometimes would like "freedom to fail" for more personal projects is a good point, and a wish to lower expectations of others is indeed commonly seen in many occasions (reasonable/moderate or not), but this attribution of reason seems quite arbitrary.
In any case, overworking and sleep deprivation are definitely bad. No matter what the reason behind them and what actions to be taken, they should not be an acceptable norm for any sane person. That's for sure.
Excellent article. I have always been fascinated with how conscious / subconscious brain works and deeper I dig stranger things are there to observe. Almost all that appears on the surface is not what it seems after analysis. We are all actors, whether willing to admit or not. "You are not really John" http://www.wimp.com/goodactor/
Actually, author's observation is bullseye. Self-sabotage to lower bosses' expectation is the reason of the crappy look of the modern Internet visual environment, and who knows for how much of its guts.
Oh, on my work computer WinXP + Chrome I end up with a "This webpage is not available ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH" (though looking at the ssltest result, I should tell this to Cloudflare)
I know I personally like to keep the opinion people have that I am overworked, whether I actually work hard or procrastinate - it's just a really convenient social shield, not only against failure but also against random requests from people. When people notice you have too much free time, for some reason they feel obliged to start inventing things for you to do.
I think it's an alternative to just saying "no". Some people are assertive and can simply refuse a request. Personally, I find assertiveness very cognitively taxing, not to mention socially, so maintaining a bubble of "he's constantly working on something" impression helps. It's probably not the most ethical approach, but it's a coping strategy.
As for self-deprecation of your work, I know I've been guilty of this at times to cover for stress and lack of motivation. It would be true that the particular piece of work is not the best thing I can do (and I can always point to examples of a better work), but fortunately people immediately assume (without me having to suggest anything) that's because of being tired, or new, or something, and not because I am having trouble finding the motivation to pursue a task at 100% of effectiveness. This buys me necessary time to sort my motivations out and hopefully regain the energy to do a better work next time.