Environment makes a huge difference for me: recently bought myself one of those SAD lamps and switched to working 08:00-16:00 rather than 09:00-17:00 and my general mood has increased 10x; leading to a significant productivity/motivation boost.
I'm not saying that a new lamp will fix your problems but try to be mindful of your working environment and conditions and see what changes you can make to make yourself generally more comfortable.
Other examples include finding a way to further compartmentalise your work, for instance by becoming uncontactable on your work channels outside of work hours.
Further, improve your general health: drink more water and less coffee, make sure you see the sun for at least half an hour a day, take vitamins, socialise more, do more exercise; all the usual health-nutjob advice in as large a dose as you can stand - all of these things have tangible effects on mood which is a huge player in motivation.
You said sleep has a big impact so try getting really strict about your bed time and waking up on time. Try anything and everything and don't be put off when 90% of the new habits you try to cultivate don't stick. You'll figure out what is important to maintaining your mental health by experimentation and observation.
Concentrated mindfulness and a rigid attitude towards work/life separation have done more for my executive dysfunction than any revolutionary to-do list app or task organising framework.
Maybe, but a private right to land owership doesn't exist either. Just because someone built a farm there two hundred years ago they got to sell it to someone who sold it to someone who sold it to my landlord? I'm fine with someone owning a building they built, but they should have to rent the land from the public at market rates.
Im pretty sure if you look up the laws, that is exactly how private land ownership rights work.
I get that you are trying to make a normative statement of how you think things should work, but it doesn't help to deny the reality you live in.
I'm open to the idea that a different model of land rights would lead to different outcomes, after all, how couldn't it. however, I am not so sure that government ownership of all land would have the positive outcomes you do, at least not in terms of affordability. Would everyone be subject to eviction from their homes by a higher bidder? What happens to homes people built and improvements they have made when they are evicted?
What if those most able to pay high land rent are corporate land lords who can most effectively extract wealth from tenants?
Indeed, I'm talking about what I philosophically believe should be (Georgism)
You're right, those are all legitimate issues that would have to be addressed carefully. A key part of that would be redistribution of the revenues to the people.
My understanding of Georgism is that the revenue would be used to support the government services.
Is there a subset of Georgism which focuses on the redistributive element?
My main concern with Georgism + redistribution is that I think it would generate a feedback loop where the government captures all production value, not dissimilar to Marxism.
If you take the view that rights are granted by society and not inherent then you are technically correct that rights don't really exist. But then neither does money or law. This kind of nihilistic reductivism isn't particularly useful.
What I mean by "rights" are those that are taken to be so by common consensus - e.g. those in the European Convention on Human Rights, which includes the right to life; to deny someone shelter is to threaten that right.
To withhold shelter from people and then rent it back to them is a racket, plain and simple: safety in return for money, underwritten by a threat of violence.
I thought the whole deal with this society thing was a collective endeavour for the common good; structures that hold private interest above common good seem blatantly counter-productive.
>If you take the view that rights are granted by society and not inherent then you are technically correct that rights don't really exist. But then neither does money or law. This kind of nihilistic reductivism isn't particularly useful.
If you take the view that rights are granted by society, then money, law, and property rights DO exist.
I get that you are saying that you want something, but it doesn't exist in either the current defacto social sense, or in inherent moral sense.
>I thought the whole deal with this society thing was a collective endeavor for the common good; structures that hold private interest above common good seem blatantly counter-productive.
I think this is where your position differs with mine, and that, and that generally held by world. Society is not and has never been a collective endeavor for the common good. It is merely a system to prevent people from murdering each other, enslaving them, and taking their things. In one sense, the common good is served in that it prevents lawless anarchy, but few societies have ever bought into the utilitarian view where maximizing the common good is the primary goal.
As the only person on my team who routinely documents my work (or at least who does so in a place visible to others), I definitely agree. I get very tired of people asking me things about my work where the reply is "it's in the docs, please check here: <link>." Makes me feel like a directory.
as someone who often would like to read documentation but have to end up asking the owner where it is like you describe
My problem is that there are too many pages that may or may not be relevant/and/or up-to-date, I want to know if there is a better way? I can't just read every document the company has on the topic in vain hopes for the answer. For example, I recently started working on my company's mobile app - noone has looked at it in a few months so its an ideal candidate for this kind of knowledge.
Despite that, I didn't go to confluence, because 99% of the stuff on there is half-finished drafts, and stuff aimed at our b2b customers, so I don't hold much hope in finding a solution to something which in principle ought to be very simple, like setting up my dev environment. In this case, the original project lead is no longer with the company, I had to ask a couple people who worked with it in the past, and it turns out they no longer knew how, and the documentation which had been written both didn't include it (it was customer-facing) and was also so out-of-date as to be irrelevant. I have no doubt that whatever developer made the app stopped writing documentation because they felt nobody would read it if they did! it's a self-reinforcing cycle.
I guess the only answer, as some others have mentioned, is a predictable organization system for the documentation, which crucially is actually taught to newcomers.
There are two sides to the coin with not being able to find things - sometimes it is, as you say, because you are bad at searching for things, but sometimes things haven't been made in an easily searchable way. To name just three:
- sections with ambiguous names;
- multiple sections with the same name; or
- information is split across separate sections/pages.
Worst case is that there is detailed documentation but it's all in the comments of twenty different Jira tickets.
I do agree that user docs and dev docs should be separated though, as should specifications and development logs.
> I guess the only answer, as some others have mentioned, is a predictable organization system for the documentation, which crucially is actually taught to newcomers.
Precisely - just as you'd on-board new hires with information about codes of practise for development (code styles, nuances of internal git practice, etc.) you ought to at least have a "Contribution Guidelines" or similar doc that sets out how to structure and record information in the docs.
Designers to design, draughtspeople to draught, archivists to archive.
Engineering entails a lot of secretarial work that has been "streamlined" by expecting engineers to do it themselves rather than employing professional secretaries to do so. The end result is that it is often left un-done.
The "enforcers" you talk about are basically secretaries, no? Trained individuals with enough understanding of the work at hand to record and file it in a context-aware manner.
Reminds me of the "surgical team" model from The Mythical Man Month [1] wherein there is a suite of people provided to every engineer to minimise their work outside of design and implementation. (At least that's how I remember it, it's a few years since I read it)
For sure! Why can't it be "we have updated/created X policy, please find it here: <link to document in policy repository>" ? Is that so much harder?
Most document management systems have a notification system built-in so that you can automatically email your all-staff mailing list when there is an update. It's very much a solved problem.
My current workplace culture (at least in the HW dept) is much more towards zero-documentation than anything I have experienced before and it has been a nightmare as a relatively new employee.
I waste so much time in reviews because I have done something non-standard despite having checked the standards docs but it turns out the standards have changed and no one bothered to update the docs. We don't even write specifications for products before we start work on them; if I make some architectural changes during the design, there is nowhere to record it. Drives me insane.
IMO there are two things that should be documented about any project:
1. The product itself: at least its interfaces, features and general architecture
2. The process of design: what changes were made vs the original spec, why, and when
If you want to know anything contained in that set of information here, you have to know who worked on the project so you can ask them about it, and then they have to be able to remember. It's not uncommon that changes are suggested and discussed multiple times within a project, or that changes are made but the reasons why are forgotten before the project is even complete.
I often joke that projects here are more "observed" than managed.
Exactly as you say - emails/meetings are ideal tools for discussion and decision making but for lasting records, you need documentation.
CW: gore in header image, about one page long. PgDn gets it out of view on a 1080p screen
Posted on HN a while back. It's slightly bleak in outlook but it was what finally pushed me to take serious steps to reduce my presence online. Got rid of all my apps that weren't strictly for comms and deleted most of my socials accounts. I already feel better for the change.
Basically he makes the argument (I think slightly tongue in cheek) that Twitter is analogous to a certain understanding of the Christian Hell, in that it's not a form of suffering you're condemned to, but a form of suffering you actively seek out. More deep social media commentary, but there's also some interesting tidbits in there about different theories of Hell, from ancient Chinese grave inscriptions to CS Lewis.
"Everyone acts as if the problem with Twitter is the other people, and the agony of having to look at their terrible opinions, but they keep saying the truth. Hellsite hellsite hellsite. The problem is you. The problem with Twitter is that you are a demon in Hell."
Interestingly it has prompted some reflection on my part about the whole remote vs on-site work debate: my entire contact with my colleagues with the exception of rare days on-site is via the internet. This makes me wonder about how the continued lack of genuine, regular face-to-face interaction will affect the business long-term; I already feel a distinct social divide between those of us who were at the company long term pre-WFH vs those of us (including me) who joined afterwards.
I definitely notice I engage significantly more with project that require me to communicate more with my colleagues and I can only imagine how that is amplified if I was actually in the same room as them (I entered the workforce in late 2020 and have never worked full-time in an office longer than summer internships).
The same goes for hobbies - things such as outdoor persuits with an in-person social aspect (e.g. caving, cycling, climbing etc) are millions of times more fulfilling for me than those that are equally social but online only (e.g. weekly video games and TTRPG night with my university friends).
Particularly eye-opening for me because I have very much grown up online and I guess I just didn't notice the difference between socialising online vs in person until I began to socialise online significantly more than in-person.
So yeah this article really inspired some introspection on my part! As you said: good to recognise distraction vs engagement; artificial vs organic.
>> I entered the workforce in late 2020 and have never worked full-time in an office longer than summer internships
I don’t mean to dismiss your point entirely. Even as someone who prefers WFH I can’t deny there are some benefits to the office. However the grass is always greener. Pre-Covid my days in the office involved sitting at my desk, working alone. A short lunch with colleagues. More sitting at my desk working alone, occasionally jumping on a Zoom meeting. A lot of the time people are just getting things done and collaboration is minimal. Moving this back in office actually doesn’t make much difference, you’re just alone in a group setting. Obviously this doesn’t apply to everyone and all jobs but I feel it’s applicable to a lot of tech work.
That is a very reasonable point and I have been trying hard to be objective and avoid "grass is greener" thinking.
From the short periods when I have worked in offices in-person, you are correct that the lion's share of the time is spent working alone on projects just as it is when working from home. However, where I did internships, I made friends among my colleagues and would eat lunch with them (and Fridays everyone went to the pub for a longer lunch); further, people would talk to each other in passing while we were working and there was a distinct feeling of "collective enterprise" and solidarity that helped to push through the inevitable tedious aspects of the work. Even though the socialisation wasn't often at all work-related, it made the work easier and more enjoyable. I do accept that this argument is dependant on working in a company whose social culture is suited to you, which is not easy to find.
All that said, there is nothing that can compare to WFH for "deep work," where you know what you are doing and just need time to get on with it withoug anyone breathing down your neck. For that reason, I don't think I could ever work full-time on-site and would always aim for a balanced hybrid model, if given the choice.
I guess a lot of it comes down to solitude vs loneliness: the line between the two can be distressingly thin.
Personally I underestimated the effect of small, on the surface unimportant, human interactions. I love being alone and I recharge from solitude. But the small encounters at the coffee machine or just smiling to a colleague is still human interactions where another human being recognises you and you have a brief connection.
During covid and WFH I did not have those and that had a noticably negative impact on my mental wellbeing. Even to the point that I thought everyone else was the culprit and if only I had to deal less with people then it would get better. But that was not the case.
WFH is of course different if you have a family around you, but I still think that there is an important factor in seeing other people even if it feels superficial. That was at least my own conclusion.
> I wholeheartedly agree with his underlying message, that all of it is just distractions, that may keep you from living.
For me, it's the opposite. The internet is my life. It's the only way in which I may live in the first place.
I have autism, ADHD, and DID, which prevent me from expressing myself properly in Real Life. However, I can express myself extremely well over the internet, with close friends, and do things that you can't do in real life (multimedia and such).
While I believe some parts of the internet can be just distractions, in particular social media like TikTok and Twitter, some parts are so, so important to me, like Discord, which I use to talk to friends. And it's not important because I'm distracting myself or subjecting myself to torture. It's important to me because it keeps me in contact with other real people that I get to talk to instantly every single day and express myself in exactly the way that I want.
It doesn't bother me particularly and I must admit I barely noticed it (hence no original CW) but there is more to other people than I could ever understand; if I can take thirty seconds of my time to prevent someone seeing something that makes them uncomfortable (especially given it is not exactly expected in this context), why not do so?
It costs me so little and could benefit others so much, the same as most other good manners in our culture, like saying "please," and "thank you."
It sounds like you think the painting's age means that it no longer has power, or at least, not power enough to warrant a content-warning. I would beg to differ, and argue that the fact that it still has the power to shock is what makes it "world-renowned".
This experience relies on there being other people of your age or others who have the same attitudes to online socialisation. I am the only person in my department younger than thirty and we all work fully remote; I feel a distinct genrational barrier when talking to colleagues online that is not at all present in person.
In order for employment to be stable over the long-run, the productive employee has to create more value for the employer than they receive. (Employers have all kinds of overheads, unproductive employees, and friction/loss that has to be covered in order for the employer to not run out of money.)
I hope (and work to ensure) that my employer gets an over-unity multiple of value from me and my team’s work. That keeps everyone happy over the long run.
Oh yeah for sure I am not disputing that this is the way that the system works - the whole thing rests on the compromise point between the employer's margin and the employee's wage. Both need each other to some degree and so a compromise is reached which is the market value of labour.
That said, other models of system are available - worker coops and other models of employee-owned business can and do exist. They have their own merits and flaws though - nothing in this world is perfect.
Make it a worker-owned coop; the productive worker still has to create more value than they get paid unless someone else is continually putting money into the coop.
I agree with you in some ways and disagree in others. In yet more ways, I am undecided. However, I am convinced that this is probably not the best setting for a discussion like this that will achieve anything more than raising people's blood pressure - I hope you'll agree with me on that.
I am using the investors’ assets to amplify the value of my work, and they are bearing all the risk for me. It would be unethical not to compensate them.
> I'm not even close to the age to worry about work-life balance.
What age is that? I am in my early twenties and work-life balance is one of the most influential things on my day-to-day mental state. A couple of days in a row of working overtime or having to commute to the office and my mood and productivity both nosedive noticably.
I'm not saying that a new lamp will fix your problems but try to be mindful of your working environment and conditions and see what changes you can make to make yourself generally more comfortable.
Other examples include finding a way to further compartmentalise your work, for instance by becoming uncontactable on your work channels outside of work hours.
Further, improve your general health: drink more water and less coffee, make sure you see the sun for at least half an hour a day, take vitamins, socialise more, do more exercise; all the usual health-nutjob advice in as large a dose as you can stand - all of these things have tangible effects on mood which is a huge player in motivation.
You said sleep has a big impact so try getting really strict about your bed time and waking up on time. Try anything and everything and don't be put off when 90% of the new habits you try to cultivate don't stick. You'll figure out what is important to maintaining your mental health by experimentation and observation.
Concentrated mindfulness and a rigid attitude towards work/life separation have done more for my executive dysfunction than any revolutionary to-do list app or task organising framework.