Thanks for writing this up â Iâm really interested in answers to this and have signed up for notifications to comments on this post because I want to see what others say.
I find it hard to talk about âworking harderâ in the abstract, but if I think of interventions that would make the average EA work more hours I think of things like: surrounding themselves by people who work hard, customizing light sources to keep their energy going throughout the day, removing distractions from their environment, exercising and regulating sleep well, etc. I would guess that these interventions would make the average EA more productive, not less.
(nb: there are also âhard workâ interventions that seem more dubious to me, e.g. âfeel bad about yourself for not having worked enoughâ or âabuse stimulantsâ.)
One specific point: Iâm not sure I agree regarding the benefits of âfresh perspectiveâ. It can sometimes happen that I come back from vacation and realize a clever solution that I missed, but usually me having lost context on a project makes my performance worse, not better.
Maybe youâre suspicious of this claim, but if I think if you convinced me that JP working more hours was good on the margin, I could do some things to make it happen. Like have one saturday a month be a workday, say. That wouldnât involve doing broadly useful life-improvements.
On âfresh perspectiveâ, Iâm not actually that confident in the claim and donât really want to defend it. I agree I usually take a while after a long vacation to get context back, which especially matters in programming. But I think (?) some of my best product ideas come after being away for a while.
Also you could imagine that the real benefit of being away for a while is not that youâre not thinking about work, but rather that you mightâve met different people and had different experiences, which might give you a different perspective.
I see. My model is something like: working uses up some mental resource, and that resource being diminished presents as âitâs hard for you to work more hours without some sort of lifestyle change.â If you can work more hours without a lifestyle change, that seems to me like evidence your mental resources arenât diminished, and therefore I would predict you to be more productive if you worked more hours.
As you say, the most productive form of work might not be programming, but instead talking to random users etc.
Thanks for writing this up â Iâm really interested in answers to this and have signed up for notifications to comments on this post because I want to see what others say.
I find it hard to talk about âworking harderâ in the abstract, but if I think of interventions that would make the average EA work more hours I think of things like: surrounding themselves by people who work hard, customizing light sources to keep their energy going throughout the day, removing distractions from their environment, exercising and regulating sleep well, etc. I would guess that these interventions would make the average EA more productive, not less.
(nb: there are also âhard workâ interventions that seem more dubious to me, e.g. âfeel bad about yourself for not having worked enoughâ or âabuse stimulantsâ.)
One specific point: Iâm not sure I agree regarding the benefits of âfresh perspectiveâ. It can sometimes happen that I come back from vacation and realize a clever solution that I missed, but usually me having lost context on a project makes my performance worse, not better.
Maybe youâre suspicious of this claim, but if I think if you convinced me that JP working more hours was good on the margin, I could do some things to make it happen. Like have one saturday a month be a workday, say. That wouldnât involve doing broadly useful life-improvements.
On âfresh perspectiveâ, Iâm not actually that confident in the claim and donât really want to defend it. I agree I usually take a while after a long vacation to get context back, which especially matters in programming. But I think (?) some of my best product ideas come after being away for a while.
Also you could imagine that the real benefit of being away for a while is not that youâre not thinking about work, but rather that you mightâve met different people and had different experiences, which might give you a different perspective.
I see. My model is something like: working uses up some mental resource, and that resource being diminished presents as âitâs hard for you to work more hours without some sort of lifestyle change.â If you can work more hours without a lifestyle change, that seems to me like evidence your mental resources arenât diminished, and therefore I would predict you to be more productive if you worked more hours.
As you say, the most productive form of work might not be programming, but instead talking to random users etc.