I’ve noticed an unusual thing about myself that I never realized before, and am just curious if anybody else is like this… or has experienced something similar among employees:
Tell me you have a project, what you want done, even give me a deadline… I find I will work my ass off on that project, even 12-18 hours per day, and not give two thoughts about it.
Give me that same project, what you want done, but with the deadline you also tell me what hours I HAVE to work… and I’m tired, bored, and find myself wanting to go home hours before the time I am supposed to be getting off work. I also don’t put in near as much effort as I should.
This is a flaw that sucks, especially in a world where normal business operates between certain hours, which you are expected to participate; however, I’m finding it’s not necessarily a flaw. It’s just the way I operate. I’m just glad I’m in an industry where that ‘flaw’ works to my advantage. I don’t have problems with authority, and this isn’t even about being self-employed (which I am). I just have always pushed myself harder when I feel like somebody else isn’t the one constantly doing all the pushing…
One of the big things I truly enjoy about working for Xojo Inc
Hours we must be around are rarely dictated
There are some circumstances where they are - release days, conferences, but most days they’re not
[quote=237710:@Norman Palardy]One of the big things I truly enjoy about working for Xojo Inc
Hours we must be around are rarely dictated
There are some circumstances where they are - release days, conferences, but most days they’re not[/quote]
And yet it seems we often work 16hr days, 6-7 days a week…
This is what a lot of self-employed workers like me do, since my computer goes where I go. I always apologize by saying that my work is my hobby. . Developing software ALWAYS takes longer than calculated, even with Xojo. It’s hard to keep on track, if there is one anyway, as long as the deadline is not close. So some pressure is needed to be productive and difference the must-have’s from nice-to-haves.
Think humans are not made for being productive in just a time-frame from 9 AM till 5 PM, especially not when they have to be creative and think about “why”, “what” and “how”.
And sometimes it’s good to ask yourself the question “why me ?” , since you cannot be good in everything and you can achieve more grouping the right expertise together just for the time of the job. For example: As a developer you will need somebody to test your deliverables according to the requirements from time to time, or are you going to use the end-user as the ginny pig ? From time to time you enjoy the benefits of working independent whereever you want, other times you hate working long hours and feel alone. Think the ideal is somewhere in the middle, and this forum contributes to that …
That is true also for fixing things around the house, repairing something, or tending the garden. The mind tends to jump to the result, but hard reality requires all the boxes checked before things happen.
One company I worked for many years ago had mostly unregulated hours for the engineers. Then, for some reason, the management decided that there wasn’t enough work getting done with the engineers coming at odd hours and leaving whenever they wanted to. So management mandated that all engineers had to work 55 hours a week. Most of us didn’t know what to do with the extra free time. Of course, productivity went down and management quietly dropped the issue after a month or so.
my problem is: I can’t tell, when my “creative programming phase” is. Sometimes it’s in the evening, then I do programming till midnight, sometimes it’s in the morning… then I wake up early and postpone any other appointments. These phases do not correlate with regular 8 to 5 working hours/days.
For me, it depends on so many thing. If it’s fixing someone else’s spaghetti on an hourly rate, I find it extremely hard to motivate myself.
And I confess that if the customer doesn’t know what he wants and I’m working with horrible functional specs, I just smack something together just to meet the deadline and wait for the changes they want.
My main problem is to ‘get started’. Once I’m in ‘the zone’, I cannot stop. It’s just the daily struggle to get the diesel running.
And if it’s a fun project of my own, I always go way over the specs and keep adding functionality that doesn’t make sense.
I do all of my best writing first thing in the morning. No idea why. Then I’m most product programming-wise in late morning and then late afternoon. I’m not a morning person but if I happen to wake up really early (think before 6 AM) I tend to be really productive until about the time I’d normally get up.
Haha in german we have a term for this: “Lustbetont” translated it would be something like “lust-driven” - these ae the projects or jobs you like most and do first
. Developing software ALWAYS takes longer than calculated, even with Xojo. It’s hard to keep on track, if there is one anyway, as long as the deadline is not close. So some pressure is needed to be productive and difference the must-have’s from nice-to-haves.