Oh god please don’t. You may feel like you are superhuman but you aren’t and this will creep up to bite you in ways you don’t yet comprehend. For instance, all that time coding leaves little time for family. All that time coding leaves little time for your physical health. I guarantee you if you keep this schedule another 2-5 years you will burn out. Please don’t do this to yourself. 60hrs max and then go outside. Go do something in your community. Find a mate. Live.
Yep. I was one of those people who thought I was immune to being human.
I had various friends who were a little older who told me to cool my jets. I didn’t listen, because YOU DON’T KNOW ME!
I did burn out and became extremely depressed.
My priorities have now shifted so that I care more about spending time with my friends and family. I realized I’m probably just as productive, if not more than I used to be. Maybe it’s because I was spending more cycles percolating on the problem instead of trying to bludgeon my way through.
I don’t know if OP will heed this advice. I know if I went back in time a decade and told my younger self to slow down, my younger self wouldn’t listen. It might just be something you have to experience and learn the hard way :(
Yeah I just say 60 hours max of “working”. Whether it’s coding, answering emails, reading docs, reviewing pr’s. At 60 hours I shut it all down to just watching videos.
That's fine. They're 28. I also wrote a lot of code in my 20s and was pretty happy.
Turned out that I only enjoyed writing so much code because I hadn't discovered things that would ultimately be more fulfilling to me, like developing a real social life and meeting better women. And once I developed a better balance because of that, I also discovered I liked to write, go on runs, listen to audiobooks, cooking, live on a beach, surfing, idk—all sorts of things.
It's just the ebb and flow of life and self discovery. They're at the age where these things started to change for me. But it's a good sign that they are trying to convince themself with this sort of post—the crack is forming. ;)
I had the same experience just about. I was pretty social in my 20s but also spent many many days writing code for ~15 hours. Now, at 33, I would much rather do things away from my computer such as working out, going for a walk, kayaking, etc. and spending time with my girlfriend and close friends.
Ah wasn't expecting this old thing to pop up again. By far the most contentious article I've written; people ranging from "hey if that's you and you're happy then great" to people feeling like it's a personal attack on them. I'd encourage an open mind.
Anywho-it's closer to 3.5 years now that I've done this, maybe I'll do an update at 4 years.
The 2.5 year initial duration (when I posted that article) was like working two full-time jobs, 100h/week, almost solely writing code.
Past year has been more like 85h/week, my dayjob has required more time (48h -> ~60h week), with much less of that time at work being /writing code/; and ~25h/week going to my gamedev passion projects, of which a good chunk has also gone to helping others with their code/issues.
The -15h/week 'loss' has gone to caring for pets, and a gentle touch more travel/sleep/gardening. Doing well and enjoying my life, still.
Don't listen to the naysayers. You're doing great! It's funny to see people chastising you for not having a balance, when the modern society is constantly pounding on you to read, exercise, meditate, write, play, travel, socialize, cook and what not. Is that balance? Trying to do hundred different things, jumping from one thing to another, and still feeling inadequate. It takes serious guts to commit yourself to one thing and I am sure you'll go very far few years from now.
When I was in my 20s, I was a machine. Honestly, I could simply not understand why people would take time off of work.
Now, some 20 years later, I get physically exhausted around 6 months after the last extended vacation. Of course I don't mean to a point where I couldn't function properly any more, but I do feel way tired and low on energy.
> I regret nothing. If I die this way, I’d go out happy.
To me that's what it is really all about, if this person is happy who am I to judge? It's obsession in a search for greatness, not for me but I can definitely see how it could be fulfilling in itself.
How do you know if you're truly happy? That you're working on something not because you feel the need to prove something, battle your insecurities, but rather because you want to do something meaningful?
I'm genuinely curious. Many highly-driven people seem to be insecure and egocentric and in the moment, even long periods, fuelling their ego makes them think they're happy. But if you feel happy for many years (assuming eventually this feeling fades), who's to judge that you weren't happy before?
Maybe it all depends on the person, and people can have their pathologies and subconscious desires to better their social status by justifying hustle as working to build interesting products. But maybe that's not it, and the inner motivation is something else?
Personally I'd say that happiness is such an ill-defined state that it's not a topic that can be debated a lot. A more objective term might be satisfied.
The author is satisfied by his life and does not yearn for something else. Maybe that's as close as you can get?
"No regret" -- its easier said than done. Dying is one thing, but accumulating 10 different health conditions for life is not going to be pleasant, and will potentially give lot of time to start regretting.
People are free to do whatever they want, but doesn't mean people can't express their opinion on that.
Sure but the article really seems to imply that he's not neglecting himself, just optimizing his schedule completely to code all the time.
> I run 6 miles many days of the week to keep healthy. I do it while writing code, using a standing desk treadmill.
Realistically just with that sentence he likely more active than the average person. On top of that:
> I get groceries delivered, I’d rather spend the time coding.
I make sure I have deep technical problems I need to think through and solve, and solve it while I am making meals, eating, or doing chores.
Seems to imply that he is cooking his meals and not ordering junk food instead of cooking.
I'm not saying working 100hrs/week is a good idea, but aside from the lack of romantic relationship, his life seems overall balanced.
Good for this person. Seriously. I have a friend like this and he is happy as heck.
For everyone else: don’t beat yourself up. Most people can crank through a max of 20-30 hours of deep intellectual work a week. You are still a wonderful and successful person, even if this other person can sustain 100 deep work hours.
Umh... What about a case of ~7-10...? Like, don't get me wrong, I know I am doing way too little, and I am working on improving this, but at times, certain limitations regarding this... I just can't help but beat myself up.
I don't think this is very uncommon. I know a lot of people seem to spend a lot of their waking hours generally "ruminating" on their coding work but only 5-10 actually sat down and implementing the solutions at the keyboard.
I also know people who can happily be constantly coding for 8 hours a day like it's a stream of consciousness, but I don't think that's everyone.
I really think it has a lot to do with the situation and expectations. And probably you as well. I think it’s completely plausible to deliver expected value in 7 hours, though you are probably looking at either a very meeting heavy role or just a bit more of a chill role. 1/3 of the code written, but written fit to purpose, performant and with high quality is still outstanding value. Many, many employees at your organization deliver zero or negative net value.
I'd live like this if I could. I did it for a good 5 years, and then my hands just stopped working. I tried coding by voice for a while, that lasted for a year, then I lost my voice. Now I code for at most an hour a day, until the pain sets in and my fingers become too weak to press the keys, and I spend the rest of my hours on other things. I wish I had diversified my hobbies more when I was younger. But I'd also rather spend 8 hours a day coding for a lifetime, than 16 hours a day for just a few years, and then it's over. I have so many projects in my backlog that will never get built. Not sure why I'm even saying all this. Take care of your health.
I admire the author. He seems to have the focus, work ethic, and vision of someone ten years older. However, I think the thing to realize is this lifestyle necessitates a healthy existence: physical health, financially healthy, healthy relationships with friends and family, a healthy mental state.
Don't take those for granted. As you get older they require more investment in order to sustain you. I'm only 41 and it already feels like properly taking care of myself is at least 10h/week (workouts + cooking healthy food) atop of 8h/day of sleep.
I think the thing I'd be most concerned about is the large amount of time spent on-keyboard and RSI.
I think the big difference between this person and me is the sign of the slope on that "happiness while coding" graph. The older I've gotten (and I'm a bit older than them) the less I've felt the need to always be creating something intellectually.
I'm very happy that people like them exist though, I have friends who are similar but their chosen pursuits are mathematics or physics and it seems to bring them a similar amount of fulfillment.
I have work and personal coding. And even in those, I have several projects under each category. In C#, python, Javascript, Swift, old-school C/C++, etc. Games, websites, CRUD apps, various "toys", etc. Stuff that is in maintenance, being designed, building infrastructure, implementing, etc.
If one thing bothers me, I move to something else. If I'm grooving on something, I keep at it.
Now, I don't have the time to dedicate to it like this guy does. Having other people put demands on your time does that. Last night, I had to finish playing Mario+Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, because our son thinks I'm his personal on-demand Twitch stream.
But when I was kicking it by myself, yeah, that's how I'd do. I think the key is removing the obligation for a large part of it. At any point while I was "casually" programming outside of school/work, I could stop. I could go and play video games, or watch a movie, or hang out with friends. I had the choice. The only pressure to finish any piece of code was the pressure of being close to being done with it.
Maybe this can work. I certainly wouldn't do this myself, but unlike what many others think I don't think this must necessarily result in burnout.
I have experienced burnout and I have experienced working a lot more than when I burned out without any problems.
I'm am fairly convinced that in the majority of the cases it isn't the work load that burns someone out, it is when one put in lots of efforts and realizes it it doesn't matter at all.
Or more succinctly, as mentioned in a story that was posted a few days ago:
> [...] when we become locked in a cycle of caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes. [1]
> I'm am fairly convinced that in the majority of the cases it isn't the work load that burns someone out, it is when one put in lots of efforts and realizes it it doesn't matter at all
Absolutely. And that's why having a balance in life is important: it spreads your involvement more uniformly around your activities and lessens their impact on your overall life/health. Having it concentrated on one point can feel great when things go your way, but it will come crashing down once they don't.
Seems strange, unsustainable, exaggerated and unhealthy.
Treadmill 6miles while coding? I run a 20 min 5k (3.01 mi) which is a fast pace for most. 40 mins would be excellent for 6 miles, but alas I can't keep the pace and would probably land around 50 mins. Arguable how much coding is getting done in that 1h and makes me feel like this time slot is just for show. That's without stretching for warmup or cooldown.
30m for caring for 9 cats while only spending 30m for showering and eating in the morning? That's a strange set of priorities, but then again so is the whole post. No comment on nine felines.
30m for food, not accounting for prep+cleaning afterwards? What are they eating? Doubtful it's something actually nutritious and if so, it was prepped by someone else and cleaned by someone else.
Good luck keeping that up with a partner and/or actual responsibilities like taking care of aging family.
Don’t want a partner? Sure.. we’ll hear from you in a few years. Probably complaining how they are hard to find.
I say go for it. You are young, this means nothing. If you were 40 I would be impressed.
Not only will age slow you down, but you will also care a lot less. Why work yourself to death? Oh, you’ll have some snappy answer now, but again, let’s talk in 5-10 years.
Edit: I came off way too negative. Sorry. I feel like talking you out of this because this lifestyle has consequences. But it is your life, go for it! Sorry about the neg.
I don’t think burnout is actually associated with working hard. There are many concrete examples but are all generally under the umbrella of not having a clear and compelling vision to work toward. The vacuum created by which usually includes creating process and bureaucracy which amplifies the problem for motivated people. It is fine for folks who are fine with playing the game and collecting a paycheck - some people think that this is literally all there is to work.
I'm not gonna judge the author, but it's quite distant from the perfect life I'd imagine, personally I wouldn't trade my health for 2 more lines of code.
I actually really like this. As long as you’re enjoying yourself I think that’s fine. And when you do (if you ever) feel the incoming burnout you can simply stop.
I feel like coding is the perfect thing to get addicted to because there’s a material result at the end. Unlike reading books or dining out with coding there’s a public record of all that you’ve done, plus it’s useful to the world, plus it’s a self promotion tool to show that you’re a capable programmer.
I have done that and more, it lead to burn out after 4 years or so.
And yes there is a part where you feel different etc. And burn out is tough, it takes a lot of time to recover, it is kind like constantly pushing heavy and the gym and then get a severe injury. But burnout is more like mental and emotional exhaustion.
It is extremely hard to get out of that state, so I would rather have a alow gradual progress with some frustrations and delays than the risk of a total burnout.
Unlike the author, I think I waste far too much time preparing to program. I'll spend days planning, procrastinating, & agonizing over the "perfect" approach to whatever problem/project I'm working on. It's only recently that I've noticed how much it affects me, even after years of experience. If you're reading this & have overcome a similar issue, how'd you do it?
You can do this at 27, but you won't be able to do it at 35. Time and age have a tendency to beat people like this into submission the hard way at some point.
When you're young, the amount of sheer shit you can push through using force of will is enormous. It starts going down as you age.
But hey, at least he's not pretentious. Many people spend the same amount of time watching mindless TV or doing far less productive things.
I love coding, too, and have routinely spent 100h+ per week writing code.
The thing I'll caution is that the market rewards outcomes, not effort. On a daily basis I write less code now than I did when I was younger, but when I do write code it's with more urgency and intensity -- it's usually when I deeply understand the reward function for solving a specific business or customer problem.
I dont understand why he posted about this? He knows it's divisive. Is it a humble brag because he views himself as different? It seems like he's okay with it. Why tell anyone?
I don't want to live or work with such obsessive people. You can work 150 hours a week if you want, I don't think anyone cares. Just keep yourself away from people.
I like the way the author put it. It felt like it was directly addressed to me, and to the people in this thread. The last illustration was a lovely touch.
its your life, but if you really want to code 100hrs a week, start your own company! that kind of drive should at least be directed to your own benefit
