
Taking back Mondays and Tuesdays (2019) - tobr
https://about.wtf.studio/mondays/
======
ChrisMarshallNY
I like this blog.

As a "semi-retired old dude," I have been absolutely reveling in the
productivity I have achieved, working at home. It's been awesome.

It isn't just because I'm working at home. I suspect that a lot of it is
because I'm working _alone._

I was a manager for a long time, and quickly realized that "team overhead" was
the true enemy of productivity. This includes things like Slack convos, and
water-cooler chats.

It's a long topic, but all sorts of things are required to enable a good team
integration; especially if we need to have a bunch of less-experienced team
members on board. I was fortunate to lead a team of very experienced
engineers. We shared a vocabulary and a common vision, so a great deal of
"basic" overhead was avoided.

The (big) downside of working alone, is that I need to keep the scope of my
projects reasonable. I can get a lot more done than most lone developers, but
it's still a great deal less than what can be accomplished by a tight team.

As long as we have teams, we'll have overhead challenges.

~~~
quietbritishjim
I think it is well accepted that the larger the team/company, the greater the
inefficiency, and one person is the most efficient is all. But that it's only
productivity _per person_ , not the total amount produced. At the end of the
day, some products (be they software, cars, or whatever) are complex enough
that you need more than one person working on it. Even if that means moving
from a signs person to a team of (say) four when your only wanted to double
the amount of work done.

Still, I can see why returning to working on one-person projects where you get
loads done would be really satisfying.

~~~
treis
>But that it's only productivity per person, not the total amount produced.

I'm not sure that's true because of differing expertise, bouncing ideas off
someone, and help in getting unstuck. I'm guessing productivity peaks in a
team of 3-5.

~~~
lonelappde
Do you believe that Google or Microsoft would be more successful in aggregate
as 10000 5person startups?

~~~
treis
No, because some projects are big enough where they can't be done by a 3
person team. If Google takes 100,000 developer hours to write, it would take a
3 person team 15+ years to create. But you can't take 50 developers working
2,000 hours and get it done in a year. You need something like 100 developers
because they are half as efficient when working in that big of a group.

------
ravenstine
Focus is woefully undervalued, I think. I haven't had a single job as a
software engineer that didn't have a constant background of distractions and
interruption that prevented work from getting done. My current job is great,
but its biggest issue is the sheer amount of interruption and poor
organization of information that makes it difficult to get work done in a
timely way. When I have to switch contexts frequently, for lack of a less
cliche term, it takes even more time for me to get back up to speed with where
I'd left off. Some people are clearly better at this than others, but I'd bet
that those who can handle context switching well would still do even better
under a system that valued focus. I don't think this really has much to do
with introversion(which everyone has a different definition of and, in my
experience, everyone claims they are, making the term worthless IMO).

This last weekend I did something that I normally refuse to do, which was to
catch up on work. I still dedicated most of my time towards non-work, yet
being able to work without interruption was not only a breath of fresh air but
seemed to allow me to get more done in the same amount of time.

My guess as to why organizations don't care about focus is that they value the
perception of "getting things done"; when engineers that need focus are
frequently interrupted by the process, they'll shift to getting smaller tasks
done first so that management will know that they're working on something.
Organizations will tend to tolerate a more complex task taking longer than
estimated, but in my experience are less tolerant of engineers not pushing
lines of code for days because they're taking time to implement said complex
task in a good way. In essence, it's a spin on "butts in seats", except it
creates the illusion of productivity when in reality it could mean counter-
productivity.

I'm not exactly sure that having the process wall people off from interrupting
each other is necessarily a good thing. What would be better is a good
planning process that limits unnecessary change combined with a working
culture that values focus.

EDIT: I'm _not_ talking about legitimate interruptions like when someone needs
help or wants to pair program. I'm talking about interruptions that are either
environment related or are a result of process failure(e.g. new tasks and
course corrections frequently added to the pile because of poor planning).
Although I can imagine some would want to limit "good interruptions" to a
window, if possible.

~~~
chrisbennet
I think that open offices are great - for my competition. :-)

One advantages of being the "little independent consultant" is that I can
control my environment. I think you can reduce a geniuses output by a fair
percentage just by adding distractions (like all sitting at the same table as
your colleagues).

~~~
criddell
For some kinds of work, open offices are the most expensive type.

------
timerol
> This does not mean I don’t want to be around people, I very much do. I love
> collaboration, whiteboard sessions, small brainstorms, midday team coffees,
> and happy hour drinks. These things build community, make the work better,
> and are definitely needed.

So no meetings, but still yes to the constant small interruptions that you
can't plan around? Uh, okay. I think I'd rather have the reverse, though.
Something like: On Monday only talk to me if we have a meeting planned.

~~~
stetrain
Not sure how multiple people working on a shared task needing to collaborate /
whiteboard / discuss what they're doing qualifies as constant small
interruptions.

In theory happy hour drinks and coffee breaks are things that happen when
people aren't in the middle of productive working anyway.

------
supdatecron
That awful yellow background ruined the reading experience, and then hurt my
eyes after I switched pages to a white background :(

~~~
oefrha
Plus it’s the most janky site I’ve encountered in a while (reading on an
iPad). Hijacking scrolling on a goddamn blog — thanks for the creativity.

~~~
wbazant
I like that people's personal sites don't have to be optimised for pleasing
users and hence have so much variety to them, it's the one bit of the old
internet that we still have with us

~~~
sk0g
I feel like scroll hijacking is a recent thing, or at least I've started
noticing it a lot more in the last few years. It's honestly so jarring 90% of
the time, that my initial instinct is to reassess how badly I want to read the
content!

I do not have a problem with it for full page scrolls though, which I know a
lot of people hate. Or that one page that showcases the scale of the solar
system by forcing you to scroll for ages!

~~~
oefrha
IIRC parallax scrolling on the web became a thing roughly a decade ago.
Initially only the cool kids were doing it, and the reaction was usually:
cool, didn’t know you could do that on a web page. Fast forward a couple
years, everyone and their mom is doing it for all kinds of wrong reasons (like
in this case it’s used to load the previous/next article — if I want more I
can click on a prev/next link, thanks) with crappy implementations, it’s
tiring and hostile.

------
chasedehan
I wholly like the idea and is one that I preach and do my utter best to
follow.

As context, my company is 95% remote in engineering (I'm a remote manager with
some IC responsibilities). Of course, there is some of that internal pressure
of making sure I am able to respond to slack in a timely manner. SO, I
continually stress to take the deep work breaks and do everything I can to
make sure that my team is protected from meetings or other outside requests.

Some explicit things we do as a team. \- Have 3 standing meetings, M/W/F for
30 minutes each. We are fluid with these times making sure that they work for
everyone and are blocked next to other commitments. We also change the context
of the "standups" to incorporate planning/retros, etc \- Thursdays are
explicit "no meeting days" I fight back hard against anyone who tries to put
engineers on my team in a meeting on Thursday. Unfortunately, I as a manager
sometimes have no choice but to accept a meeting \- Tuesdays are recommended
no meeting days \- It is ok to turn off slack/email. We all have each others
phone numbers and will text if it is something actually urgent, which it
almost never is. \- Our team is measured by how much we hit our deadlines,
which we have input into how those deadlines are set

This is one of the best and most productive work environments I have ever been
in -- it would be extremely difficult for me to move back to any office,
especially an open one where productivity is proxied by seat time.

------
TaylorAlexander
It’s a nice blog. I recently switched to a four day work week, which _really_
takes back Mondays. I thought that’s what the author was going to say. I also
only work 4-6 hour days, so it’s a 20 hour work week. I bill a tech rate but
hourly. It’s enough to pay the bills (35yo, no family).

I’d really like to see our conversations about the work week move towards a
total reduction in hours. It has been life changing for me to work this
schedule. Sometimes I think about working a normal job again, but I couldn’t
stand the hours.

Has anyone else here worked a shorter week regularly or considered it?

~~~
dpc_pw
I worked 4 days (8 hours though) for a year, and it was just great. It is one
day, but it makes you feel like half of your week is off (3 days of weekend, 4
days of work).

I also think that politically speaking, lowering standard working hours would
create a much needed inflation, boosted consumption and employment at minor
cost of material well being, so it's an interesting policy to pursue.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Yeah the perpetual three day weekends is a game changer.

And I agree this plays in to politics well. Reduced working hours would boost
employment among other things. I’ve heard in some countries you can
unilaterally declare how many hours you want to work and your employer is
obliged to accept. I don’t know the details, but if it works it would be
wonderful to have that here.

------
DanTheManPR
I saw the John Cleese video about creativity years ago, and it completely
changed my perspective for the better about how to actually achieve creative
results reliably. In particular, I found very valuable the insight that you
need to screw around in a focused way for a somewhat long period of time to
really start the process. A 15 minute brainstorming session doesn't cut it.

~~~
ptaffs
I thoroughly recommend watching the John Cleese video. As you say, these are
instructions on carving out some time (90 minutes) for creative thinking and
better decision making; [https://youtu.be/bC-gBeQYHls](https://youtu.be/bC-
gBeQYHls)

------
exdsq
Yellow is a great colour for many things but the background of a blog post?
Not sold!

~~~
autarch
Here's a blob of JavaScript I use as a bookmark to quickly clean up hard-to-
read colors:

javascript: (function() { function R(w) { try { var d = w.document, j, i, t,
T, N, b, r = 1, C; for (j = 0; t = ["object", "embed", "applet", "iframe"][j];
++j) { T = d.getElementsByTagName(t); for (i = T.length - 1; (i + 1) && (N =
T[i]); --i) if (j != 3 || !R((C = N.contentWindow) ? C :
N.contentDocument.defaultView)) { b = d.createElement("div"); b.style.width =
N.width; b.style.height = N.height; b.innerHTML = "<del>" \+ (j == 3 ? "third-
party " \+ t : t) + "</del>"; N.parentNode.replaceChild(b, N); } } } catch (E)
{ r = 0 } return r } R(self); var i, x; for (i = 0; x = frames[i]; ++i) R(x)
})(); javascript: (function() { var newSS, styles = '* { background: #f9f9f9 !
important; color: black !important; text-shadow: none !important } :link,
:link * { color: #0000EE !important } :visited, :visited * { color: #551A8B
!important }'; if (document.createStyleSheet) {
document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'" \+ styles + "'"); } else { newSS =
document.createElement('link'); newSS.rel = 'stylesheet'; newSS.href =
'data:text/css,' \+ escape(styles);
document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(newSS); } })();
javascript: (function() { var d = document; function K(N, w) { var nn =
d.createElement(w), C = N.childNodes, i; for (i = C.length - 1; i >= 0; --i)
nn.insertBefore(C[i], nn.childNodes[0]); N.parentNode.replaceChild(nn, N); }
function Z(t, w) { var T = document.getElementsByTagName(t), j; for (j =
T.length - 1; j >= 0; --j) K(T[j], w); } Z("blink", "span"); Z("marquee",
"div"); })(); javascript: (function() { var H = ["mouseover", "mouseout",
"unload", "resize"], o = window.opera; if (document.addEventListener / _MOZ_ /
&& !o) for (j in H) document.addEventListener(H[j], function(e) {
e.stopPropagation(); }, true); else if (window.captureEvents / _NS4_ / && !o)
{ document.captureEvents(-1 / _ALL_ / ); for (j in H) window["on" \+ H[j]] =
null; } else / _IE_ / { function R(N) { var i, x; for (j in H) if (N["on" \+
H[j]] / _NOT TEXTNODE_ / ) N["on" \+ H[j]] = null; for (i = 0; x =
N.childNodes[i]; ++i) R(x); } R(document); } })(); javascript: (function() {
var c, tID, iID; tID = setTimeout(function() {}, 0); for (c = 1; c < 1000 && c
<= tID; ++c) clearTimeout(tID - c); iID = setInterval(function() {}, 1000);
for (c = 0; c < 1000 && c <= iID; ++c) clearInterval(iID - c); })();

I did not write this and I do not remember where I got it from.

There's also the Just Read extension
([https://justread.link/](https://justread.link/)), which is quite nice.

~~~
robocat
@autach FYI: 1. posting opaque blobs of code is a faux pas or even rude on
most fora; 2. * characters are eaten by HN comments (converted to italics) -
use code formatting; 3. That is some hideous old code (NN4 compatible!, uses
setInterval, setting innerHTML is a security bad smell), etc.

------
matt2000
In case you're not able to declare certain days off limits, I suggest a
strategy that has worked for me in the past: schedule your work time. If you
need two days to work on something, fill those two days on your calendar. It
can be broken up into smaller segments (I sometimes do it in 3 hour chunks),
or just the whole day. This causes an important psychological change when
someone tries to book a meeting, they can see your time on the calendar and
will need to ask you to make space for their meeting. This is a lot different
than seeing a wide open, empty day. It forces consideration of the tradeoffs.
If you work in a thoughtful company, this is usually enough to get you some
space to work in a more focused way.

------
bachmeier
Although this is primarily about "creative" work, the same is at least as true
for mind-numbing administrative work, for two reasons:

1\. If you don't really care that much for what you're doing (you have a
worthless report due in three days) it's not as easy to get back in the zone
as when you're doing something important.

2\. You're happy to be distracted when doing something you don't care about.
That makes sense - the distraction is most likely more important than what
you're doing, so you're happy to have the excuse to meet with someone or
answer an email.

And no, not all administrative work qualifies as creative. It's generally
metawork that at best is necessary for your employer to continue to operate.
Nobody cares how well you do it.

------
somesortofsystm
I do something like this already.

I still go to the office on Monday and Tuesday, and Wednesday, but I'm tuned
out. I'm in Do-Mode. On Thursday, its build and demo and test, so I snap out
of it and put things together for a releasable build.

Friday, fix bugs, do a new release for the test user to play with over the
weekend.

Now, none of this is firm - break the rule if needed. But, generally, this
helps keep a fat chunk of attention all the way up front, weekend->Thursday,
that makes the magic happen.

Oddly enough, done right, it means Friday can be a slack day too.

------
tacheiordache
It doesn’t load on my phone. Outline doesn’t work either so I guess the
content is not important enough for the author to make it availabe for their
readers..

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
> It doesn’t load on my phone

> I guess the content is not important enough

What a gross way to assess a person's creative expression.

A lot of times, simply reaching out to an author and _asking_ them to make
their "content," available in your preferred manner is all it takes. Other
times, the author, exercising their artistic merit, may say "hell no," to you,
or perhaps "don't call my life's work 'content' you unsophisticated dweeb."

Who are you to judge something's worth based upon how easily you personally
are able to consume it?

~~~
tacheiordache
AndrewUnmuted, I am digging the article but I had to access it on my desktop.
It's still not working on my phone and that was a comment of frustration and
that happens to all of us. I am not calling anyone unsophisticated dweeb and
that was really uncalled for.

------
lbj
Its interesting, that he centers on him being a 'creative person' and thus he
needs a 3-day-meeting-week to function. Im more an engineer, and I keep a
strict 2-day-meeting-week to operate at peak effeciency.

------
grumple
I strongly suggest fixing the readability of your blog on larger monitors.
Everything gets huge and unreadably large, including images.

------
carapace
Blank page with JS disabled, and no Reader Mode.

------
purerandomness
Thank god Frefox Reader View exists.

For the same reason browser vendors abolished the <marquee> and <blink> tags,
this kind of unreadable color schemes should be reset by default by browsers,
just like autoplaying videos, and pop-ups are suppressed.

The Gopher renaissance can't arrive fast enough.

~~~
lostgame
Yellow and black is unreadable? It works for me.

~~~
xaedes
After all the gray on white text color schemes in the "modern web" my eyes
where really pleasured by the high contrast and big font.

------
therealmarv
I like the domain, haha! But cannot read the article because my eyes are
bleeding from the yellow bright background color and huge fonts.

