I am not rich, just a regular person. I've slept as much as I've wanted all my life. Haven't used an alarm in over 10 yrs ( except when I've had to a catch a flight ect) .
It has constantly puzzled my why people are sleep deprived. why?
A lot of it has been studied and while there's some blue-light nonsense (not so much nonsense as heavily misinterpreted by the health blogosphere), there is evidence that a vast proportion of the human population is suffering from circadian rhythm disruption of some sort. This is especially prevalent in populations living with heavy noise and light pollution, AKA urban residents.
There are studies somewhere that if you ship people out to camp in remote areas with only fire as a light source, their circadian rhythms almost always realign within a few nights.
Furthermore, the genetics that determine how light-sensitive one's circadian rhythms were never selected against because it really didn't affect survivability except at the very far ends. Event then, Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome might have been allowed to remain around because it produced night-watchers that contributed to the survival of the pack. The result is there is a very large spectrum of light-sensitivity fairly well distributed amongst the human population.
All this adds up to: Very few people are not light sensitive, and a majority of it display varying degrees. So much so, difficulty maintaining a natural sleep pattern is considered the norm and not many people question it anymore.
I suspect a considerable portion can be attributed to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Whether it's that new Netflix show, some snapchat celebrity, watching the news, getting stuck in a Wikipedia hole, or going out with people after working 11 hours. People will burn hours a day on these things.
My wife is guilty of the Netflix and News descriptors mentioned above. I avoid the news and prefer to read but I still get stuck in the "one more chapter" hole.
I am curious to know the breakdown of sleeping habits based on some simple personality distinguishers like introvert vs extrovert.
I wish I were you. I am incapable of sleeping without some sort of aid (alcohol, weed, utter exhaustion from extremely strenuous exercise).
I'm pretty sure it partially has to do with my environment (living in NY, which is loud and full of light, even at night).
But also some people are simply lighter sleepers than others. No one in my family is ever able to stay asleep longer than 5am, and all of us are very light sleepers.
My boyfriend is able to fall asleep and stay asleep WITHOUT being blackout drunk. I am amazed by this.
I just moved to NY myself a few weeks ago, and am generally a pretty light sleeper. I didn't have trouble falling asleep, but I had trouble with waking up at 4AM, as soon as sunlight really started coming in. Luckily, the solution was easy - $100 or so gets a set of blackout curtains that can just about make the place pitch black in direct sunlight. Apparently New Yorkers are oddly averse to curtains for some reason...
Noise is a little tougher. Luckily, my place is pretty well insulated. But white noise like fans and such and earplugs can help a lot.
Why not just get up at 4am? Its a very quiet time of the day to get work done and it lets you feel smarmily 'ahead' of everyone else (disclaimer: I don't actually get up at this time).
I can't stand not getting 8+ hours of sleep. So I usually do, save for when I get a new game, go out to see a movie (rarely), or some other special event.
I don't understand people who constantly deprive themselves of sleep, willingly.
Even if I were dead tired and had zero caffeine in the day, I wouldn't be able to stay asleep for 8+ hours. I WISH. I'll go to bed at 10pm and lie awake until 3am. And then maybe I'll fall asleep until 5am when my alarm goes off.
Well, kids can affect your schedule. When small, they wake very early and can't be left unsupervised. With two working adults in the household, the logical thing is for one to handle early duties, one late. Want to talk to your spouse uninterrupted? It may be at 9:30 pm after one rose at 5:30 am. Then add in anything else that may be going on in life, and eight hours sleep might not be doable during the week.
I honestly think this is changing, it seems that people are becoming better at letting others know that they need/want to reduce their workload to avoid exhaustion or burnout.
When I talk to people about wanting to work reduced hours, take a teaching job, or whatever is required to lower my stress level, I get nothing but encouragement. Working one self into the ground is starting to be seen as something stupid people do. Being able to take action before becoming exhausted is what smart and empowered people do. At least that's the impression that I get.
Where I see the remaining issue it the lack of accountability for businesses. If a company push employees to exhaustion that should have hard repercussions than just gaining a reputation as a horrible place to work.
I'd love to reduce my workload and avoid exhaustion and burnout. But the simple fact is, for me, and I would assume most workers, doing so would mean inevitably slipping out of the middle class. My 50-60 hour weeks barely let me afford to live a 2-hour commute away from work. I don't know where I'd even live if I worked/made less.
I know people who aren't working to burnout levels. They're not doing great. Living paycheck to paycheck and in tiny cramped apartments. Not ready for that lifestyle, myself.
...and I know people who aren't working to burnout levels who are doing just fine, so YMMV. Typically these people make deliberate lifestyle choices (avoiding car ownership, renting near work instead of owning far away from work, using the time they don't spend commuting to cook more, etc.) combined with reasonable financial choices.
They also tend to have less traditional employment (e.g. consulting / freelancing instead of W-2), giving them more "time flexibility" (which is different from more time, and somewhat orthogonal), "space flexibility" (e.g. don't need to commute, can blend travel and work as desired), and "situation flexibility" (e.g. freedom to switch clients / employers, or to turn down high-paying high-stress work in favor of lower-paying lower-stress work).
Finally, most people in this category are also much better at saying no, communicating clear expectations around deadlines, identifying the right problems to solve, and negotiating raises than most people.
It sounds like you want it both ways: you want to reduce your workload without giving anything up or learning the skills that make that possible. You're right - it doesn't work that way, and you have to decide what you want more. Personally, I'd take the added time in a pinch.
Are you making enough to pay your rent if you have to stay home or quit your job completely if you burnout? I understand the problem, I really do, but no one is going to reward you for working yourself into the ground.
If you have 60 hours a week, plus 4 hours of transport everyday, you have 16 work day. I feel bad for you, I really do, because those kinds of hours makes people sink or kills them. Some people handle it better than other of cause, but you can't have much of a life with those kinds of hours.
I'm not in anyway qualified to advise people like you. Personally though, I'd quit my job and move. But I'm in a welfare state, there's someone that will look after me if I'm unemployed, I won't end up without a roof over my head.
I really hope you'll be okay. No one should work themself to exhaustion, and waste their life like that.
Thanks I guess, but my comment was not a cry for help or a solicitation of advise--it was simply an example to put forward against the article's (presumed) central premise:
> To say that you’re exhausted is to telegraph that you’re important, in demand, and successful. It’s akin to the humblebrag of ruefully describing yourself as “so busy”
I don't think exhaustion telegraphs any such thing. It's not something people are proud of and want to sustain. Instead, it's unfortunate normalcy for workers in 2016. People would gladly give up their exhaustion if they could.
> When I talk to people about wanting to work reduced hours, take a teaching job, or whatever is required to lower my stress level, I get nothing but encouragement.
I guess that this depends a lot on the society that you're in. While it's a good thing, it's unfortunately that this doesn't really hold in various parts of the world.
Are you getting positive encouragement from wanting to work reduced hours, or looking for ways to reduce your stress level? Because 'I'm looking to lower my stress level' seems like one of those phrases that no one is going criticize.
Sometimes I suspect if this is not planned by media and corporations to get more from their employees....
I mean how can you defend the point of burnout and depression as a status symbol?
I read here that on Facebook if you work after 5pm you have to do it hidden away from others.. because it means something is not ok, either the estimation, you are not communicating problems or VP/board/president/whoever want to exploit you.
Janis Buck has been kind enough to share his experiences with burnout is shedding light on a rarely talked about problem. I applaud him and encourage every hard working human to heed his advice.
It's a problem that you think it's a rarely talked-about problem. You can't go two weeks on HN without a post from a founder or startup employee "breaking the silence" on their burnout, getting up-voted to the front page and getting hundreds of "me too" replies.
Why do we continue to think burnout and depression are unique problems? Why do we keep letting it happen to ourselves? We style ourselves as so smart, yet we continue to make the same mistakes, over and over again, and act like it's a new problem each time.
>>Why do we continue to think burnout and depression are unique problems? Why do we keep letting it happen to ourselves?
The answer is very simple: productivity + youthful optimism.
The fact of the matter is that productivity — that feeling of "getting shit done" — feels good. Being smart doesn't help. On the contrary, it makes things worse, because smart people find clever ways to multiply their productivity, and their sense of pride for doing so contributes to the pleasure and satisfaction they get from their work.
Now combine this with the fact that software engineers tend to be young. Young people can endure longer work hours — they tend to not have families and kids to worry about and their bodies can take more punishment. They also tend to be idealists and really optimistic about their chances of actually making a difference in the world. These two factors can cause them to justify insane work hours, even if they are aware of the dangers of burnout and depression.
I think the problem is even a little more subtle. The thing a programmer should ultimately aim for is to automate themselves out. But there are two strong disincentives to doing so. One is economic - they don't participate as a stakeholder equally unless they're cofounders.
The other is a disincentive to improve. By this I mean that becoming a better programmer means taking on deeper challenges and solving increasingly obscure concerns and constantly reaching a point where no IRC channel nor Stack Overflow thread can help you. This takes you out of flow. It's not fun to work right up at the limit of your ability, you have no hope of bullshitting through that level of difficulty in crunch mode, and developing those skills alienates other programmers who are not burdened by the demons you have fought. Plus the majority of software businesses have arranged themselves around making some use of fresh, mediocre coding talent, so going too deep and too specialized can make you less hireable!.
So it works out that prevention with good engineering can grow discouraged in favor of all nighters.
> he thing a programmer should ultimately aim for is to automate themselves out.
This is something I ferociously agree and disagree on at the same time.
1. Yes automating labour inputs is the key to growth. Always has been. That is the point in your favour.
2. But paradoxically once you have automated your labour input you grok no further efficiency gains. Why would you when you've reached '100%' efficiency?
This is a bit counterintuitive. Here is a toy example; suppose I manufacture hammers at HammerCo Corp. One day I manage to automate all labour relating to the manufacture of hammers. I am rich and successful as competitors die off.
Then suddenly I myself go bankrupt because a new competitor introduces hydraulic or pneumatic hammers onto the marketplace in which I had my niche. I have no expertise to counter the move and cannot defend against it. You don't comprehend you were in a local maxima.
When a worker closely observes a technological process he or she is involved in they might notice details (or going the other way, general rules) that would not be noticed by causal observers. This leads to creative insight that coupled with capital can allow the invention of new designs and ultimately technologies.
I guess the same thing is true of programming. If you abstract too much (something we've been doing for some time now with frameworks/libraries etc) you lose the thread.
I'm sure somebody else has thought of this before and given it a name.
> Plus the majority of software businesses have arranged themselves around making some use of fresh, mediocre coding talent, so going too deep and too specialized can make you less hireable!.
So many people get institutionalized into mediocrity. If they don't get you at school, they'll get you at work. Very few people manage to escape those traps.
>It's not fun to work right up at the limit of your ability, you have no hope of bullshitting through that level of difficulty
This isn't just for programmers. Pretty much any occupation where you're routinely in a situation where you are responsible for making decisions based on incomplete information or with a large element of chance/luck affecting the outcome will wear you down fairly quickly.
President, pope, EMT, infantryman in foxhole, cartel kingpin (and other criminals who make enough money to be "noticed" by authorities) etc., to name a few.
> The answer is very simple: productivity + youthful optimism.
Culture also plays an important role. In the U.S., work ethics largely trumps work-life balance, and the threat of being perceived (or seeing oneself) as a slacker spurs you to work long hours or take very few holidays. It also relieves some anxiety, as in, "I work hard, at least they can't take that away".
But there is a high price to pay for it, and burnouts or massive regrets later in life are parts of that price.
I think though we are moving in the opposite direction, or at least trying to - there was an Ask HN about what prevents companies for hiring programmers to work shorter hours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12161693
There's a great book catering to people just like who you described (me included) - "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy?" I'm part way through it and it's been helpful.
