It’s less about working day and night than working on the right things. I used to determine when I needed a break by when I was too sick to work. It’s an effective stopping rule but not particularly well thought out.
Working Day and Night
“Working yourself to death is a highly regarded form of suicide.”
Frans Hiddema
I took the day off. I read Paolo Bacigalupi‘s “The Windup Girl” and had a couple of long phone calls with folks I hadn’t spoken with in a while. Bacigalupi’s novel has a complex plot with a rich set of believable characters. It is set in a coherent dystopian future, one that I found plausible, though unlikely, but very thought-provoking. He has other short stories set in the same future, collected in “Pump Six and Other Stories” that I had read earlier. I picked up both books last weekend on my first foray in more than a year into an actual bookstore–made out of brick and mortar with wood bookshelves.
There are different ways to take a break:
- get a good night’s sleep
- take a nap
- meditate/pray
- take a vacation
- read a good book
- volunteer your time
I work with technology startups around the globe. Demands are incessant: someone is always up, sending e-mail, and your computer is always ready to work. When I worked as a furniture mover, picking up heavy objects and moving them without getting hurt, I was physically tired at the end of the day. Even with an overtime assignment, no one expected me to work more than ten or eleven hours a day. But mental work, knowledge work, and creative collaboration leave me tired in a different way.
I am not sure how to develop an internal circuit breaker. I used to work until I became sick. Now I no longer pull all-nighters and make a point of taking a short walk every hour or two to get a break from sitting and staring at my PC. But fundamentally, there are few days when I feel like I have done enough.
Strangely, today was one such day, even though I did almost no work.
“The right track takes detours.”
Frans Hiddema
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Image Credit: “Empty Road in a mysterious foggy landscape” © Stan Drets (Licensed from 123RF). I selected this because working day and night leaves you in a perpetual fog.