So I don't know if anybody's noticed, but I've been on the forum slightly less in the past few days. I still probably checked the forum everyday, but I still think the frequency was slightly less...

Anyway, I wanted to see what people thought about a situation I'm having at my job. About 9 months ago, I changed jobs for some personal reasons - I'm a software engineer, by the way. When I started out, for the first couple of months, I think that I was running at 100% effort. I think I surprised some people, and did a very good job at work.

After awhile, the feeling of having a new job wore off a little bit, and I feel like I got a little bit "burnt out". I started getting a little pessimistic about my job, and I think the quality of what I produced at work went down a little bit.

Well, it's been a few more months now, and I want to get back into working in "100% mode". What concerns me is getting burnt out again. Also, during the time I would say that I was "burnt out", I produced some software that I'm not proud of. I mean, it works, but I think I could have done a much better job. I don't like doing that kind of work.

My wife suggested trying to work in "80% mode" so that I would be less likely to get burnt out. But it's hard for me to think this way. I feel like I have an on/off switch. When the switch is on, I run full sprint ahead at trying to get something done. But when the switch is off, I don't perform nearly as well. It's hard for me to keep the switch on all the time, though.

Has anybody had experience with this type of behavior? How can I operate at 100% 100% of the time?

I guess this type of thought could also relate to go, but I put it in the off topic section, because my concern stems from my experiences at work.

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be immersed

I believe that first of all you need to consider whether 100% really describes your initial period. Starting a new job should be quite exciting (hopefully!). As a result though you may have been operating in '120%' mode without really thinking about it. Coming down off the high of the 'honeymoon period' is not at all unusual. Now that you know the company better, can you imagine a stable state that will carry you through the next say five years doing work that you are proud of yet providing the time necessary to take care of and enjoy you family as well? If the effort necessary to create the work you imagine leaves you without enough time for family (not to mention the riff raff at L19) then perhaps you are indeed stuck in some form of 100+% mode. Balance is everything. Think about it, talk to you wife about it, and if you like, come back anytime for more brainless drivel!

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

If you can even occassionally do something you are proud of, you're still doing better than 90% of the people in that industry. I have vast periods of my life (years) where I look back and think I didn't accomplish much. But I don't think the problem is not working hard enough. The problem was sticking with dead-end situations with false optimism for too long.

You're not getting manic when you are in this "100% mode" are you?

In the end, you may find it's wiser to listen to you wife. If all works out, she'll be with you longer than any job will.

My first thought was, "How is 100% possible, when 100% represents the maximum achievable effort?", but then in response to this thought, I can consider, "120% of what?". Perhaps the basis for which I compute the percentage mode does not need to be "maximum achievable effort", but something more constrained than that.

Thanks for this thought. It gives me something to ponder.

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be immersed

How can you ascertain this?



Yes, I agree.

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be immersed

You can't.

What works for me is to put in a lot of effort until I notice I'm fraying around the edges, then take two weeks of vacation to recharge. Of course, working in Germany and having 30 vacation days/year helps with this (it's my belief that for mental work like computer programming, something like 40 days vacation would lead to optimal productivity, counted over the whole year, but you'll never convince employers of this).

Only true if you get the balance right! In a situation like this be really concerned about the possibility that the she might decide that it's not worth the effort to outlast the job!

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

Think of your body as a bank. If you were a plowman, you might be depositing 3000 kcalories of food in your body every day, and withdrawing 3000 kcalories of work. That would be 100% effort (along that budget constraint). If something came up and you missed your lunch, you'd be running a huge energy deficit. If you were tending power looms in a dark satanic mill, you would be starting out with ten fingers, and over the course of your career you would run a small but unavoidable finger-deficit. Muscles, tendons, nerves, sleep, knowledge, fingers (and, as ez4u adds, social connections) -- all of these things can (to some extent) be banked up, and they can be expended and depleted. The maximum attainable level of work in the short-term (your 100%) ends up being less than the maximum attainable level of work in the long-term (ez4u's 100%).

The clinical defnition looks something like this, but of course you shouldn't self-diagnose:


To be classed as a manic episode, while the disturbed mood is present at least three (or four if only irritability is present) of the following must have been consistently prominent: grand or extravagant style, or expanded self-esteem; reduced need of sleep (e.g. three hours may be sufficient); talks more often and feels the urge to talk longer; ideas flit through the mind in quick succession, or thoughts race and preoccupy the person; over indulgence in enjoyable behaviors with high risk of a negative outcome (e.g., extravagant shopping, sexual adventures or improbable commercial schemes)

The things I've seen people do are: start lots of ambitious projects simultaneously, brag a lot, over-sexualize, spend too much, etc. The main reason why people have a hard time judging this for themselves is that someone who is experiencing this feels absolutely awesome while it is happening. They really feel productive, and sometimes actually are, but there's a wrecklessness about it that they tend not to notice until much later. If you notice people saying to you things like: "But - and I am only saying this because I care - there are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market today that are just as tasty as the real thing," then that might be a sign.

I'm only a little worried because sometimes you show up here demonstrating the other side of this, which is seriously low self-esteem. I've had my own life ripped apart by depressive episodes and my mother is bipolar so I'm a little sensitive to it. But hey, I'm not your doctor. It's your life. I'm just saying that feeling like 100% may not always be a feeling you can trust.

This advice makes a lot of sense, and seems quite doable to me. It's hard for me to consistently operate "partially doing my best", so it would make sense to try my hardest for as long as possible, then take a break, then go at it again. It seems quite feasible to do this. Thanks for the advice.

Now, if I can only get that 40 days of vacation...

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be immersed

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. I don't distrust my wife, if that's what you're suggesting.

In regard to balance, I think that it's a good idea, but somewhat difficult. If I want to "do my best" at something, in a simplistic way of thinking, I think of it as an optimization problem. How can I maximize what I do in a particular area of life? So in this sense, it seems difficult to really "balance", because optimization, by definition, would be going to the extreme.

But when I think of your earlier quote about giving 120%... Then it makes me think of the problem not as one of optimizing a particular area of life, but rather optimizing a number of areas of life. In this sense, given an optimal solution to the problem of life, looking at any one particular subarea of life may not appear to be optimized locally. But it does make sense that this is consistent with the idea of optimizing life in general.

In other words, maybe what I feel to be 100% effort at my job is really 120% optimization in regard to life in general. Maybe it's not good to give that 120%, and work only deserves a subset of what I feel it should, sometimes.

The problem then becomes one of looking at my life from the big picture, not looking at a subsection and trying to optimize it, but trying to find balance and an optimal solution to life on a large scale. I don't know if I'm good at that. But I guess approaching the problem starts with prioritizing what's important in life. Maybe I should find out how important work is to me, and try to give an appropriate amount of effort for the value that I put on it... It could also be related to the go board. Giving "120%" in a local area of the board may not be best for the overall global situation. Maybe a certain local area only needs 80%, whereas this ties into giving 100% globally... I guess.

I guess that's what is meant by balance...(?) That's how I understand it right now.

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be immersed

Good analogy.




Thanks for the tip.

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be immersed

Thanks for the explanation, snorri. It's interesting that you mention that you feel I have low self-esteem, because I haven't felt this myself. However, just yesterday one of my coworkers said that I made "overly self-deprecating" comments about myself. Maybe I should see a doctor sometime. Or, maybe it's nothing to worry about.

Anyway, I do feel guilty sometimes when I feel I haven't done my best at something. And I suppose that does happen often, since I often feel that I haven't given "100%" in a particular subsection of life.

It might be the case that it all comes down to what ez4u keeps reiterating: balance. It's something that I don't quite get, I think, but it seems important.

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be immersed

I've observed that usually there is a relationship between the schedule and the overall quality of the product. Super aggressive release schedules rarely foster the kind of top notch quality a person can really take pride in.

Trying to understand market forces is a little deeper issue. Sometimes the "80% product today" is a big winner over the "99% product one month from now". So, if we're being perfectly rational, sometimes quality isn't the most important metric.

...Just to come at this from a different angle.

have you ever run a marathon race? you can not sprint throughout the entire race, or you'll never finish. you have to pace yourself

not sprinting throughout the race does not meam you are not giving it your "all". it just means your looking at the bigger picture -- the end goal, the long haul.

have you never read "The Tortoise and the Hare"?

To echo what others have said -- you can't be operating at full tilt all the time...If you do have trouble finding a middle ground (either you're going all out, or doing just enough), perhaps you can find a way to prioritize. I can't speak for certain about your job, but every job I've ever had would have a mix of task that vastly ranged in importance/quality required...If you can separate which tasks are going to have long-term/important vs which tasks are transient/ you can try to focus your best effort on things that will be highly visible and remembered, and then "just get by" on the tasks that are "ad-hoc solutions that need to get us to the weekend." Sometimes you need a beautiful weld, other times it's ok to just wrap it with duct tape and keep moving (=

At any rate, this type of approach might let you keep your energy for the tasks that really require it, instead of wasting it on something that will no longer be relevant the next day.

What were you doing differently between the time you were running 100% and the time you were burnt out? Were you working more hours at work, or spending more of your time at work focused on the task at hand (less forums, gossip and webcomics?) Or was it something more subjective about how you were working?

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Occupy Babel!

Lol.
I think there are different kinds of people. The slow and steady work at 70-80% all the time. Then there are those like you (and me) who work in spurts.
For me it is like that: when I am interested in my job (as now) I work 120% for a few weeks, then need to step back and relax for a week or so. Call in sick, whatever... call it working at 80% with a day off. Then I am ready to go 120% again for the next few weeks... Early on I have had the same questions you do now, but at some point I decided simply not to force it - this is how I operate and this is how, in the long run, I am the most productive. I am in a very fortunate position that I can actually afford to work like that being the only software engineer in the company with just a few contractors to push around. My boss is very understanding since she sees I am not really slacking off - just working in a pattern.

From my previous job, this was not very acceptable. I never really worked at 120% (was not very interested in what I was doing), so my peaks and valleys were more like 100% and 60%... the problem I have encountered was that once I went for a few weeks at 100%, this was what was 'acceptable' and expected of me, and the week when I needed to slack off was highly frowned upon and caused me a lot of grief.

So I guess it depends on the work environment if you can afford to have burnouts like that or not.

Bottom Line>
The question you should ask yourself, ultimately, is if you are worth your money. If you think that, in the long run, you are giving all that you can give, and all other pattern would lower your productivity, then you're doing it right, even if your bosses are unhappy. But then again - your job depends on your bosses, so you have to be careful there. Maybe talk to your boss about it if you have this kind of relationship. Otherwise, you need to smudge.

Hope that helps.

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- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!

I think that there are a couple of factors:
1.) I think that I was more focused on the work at hand - I still used this forum, for example, but at more scheduled intervals. Sometimes I wouldn't use the forum at all, but when I did, it wasn't for a long period of time. As I was new to the project, I spent a lot of time getting up to speed with how things worked.

2.) I think that I made more of an effort to be precisely correct in everything that I did. Since that time, I feel like I've been somewhat influenced by others on the team, perhaps in a negative way. There is pressure to get something done quickly, and because of that pressure, sometimes I neglect to incorporate some precision. It's hard for me to say if this is a bad thing, because sometimes I get hung up on being precise about a detail that does not really matter in the long run. But I do feel it's worth it to be more precise than you think you need to be, sometimes.

3.) I think I felt that I had more ambition.

Sometimes I feel that the effort I put into the work that I did near the beginning of my employment was only partially recognized, so I may have been slightly discouraged.

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be immersed

Thanks for your response. I have long felt that some of the more labor-intensive jobs in society should pay more than they do. I worked as a roofer for one summer, and it was much more difficult than any programming job that I've ever had.

On the other hand, I guess some money is paid since not everybody knows some particular knowledge.

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be immersed