As I’m working through how to come out of burn out and not repeat this cycle again; the thought occurred to me that I need to slow down…way down. The statement, “you’re burning the candle at both ends” has been quite true for me for several years now. Today though, while driving around and enjoying the scenery, a light bulb went off in my head. This may seem completely obvious to everyone else, keeping with the candle analogy, you can rebuild a candle but you can’t do it while you’re still burning it. Here’s to calling it quits on work by 10pm at night. The 1am-3am quitting hours are not possible if I want to live a normal life in this time zone.
Further proof that 12 hour days aren’t productive boons, news made it here that Sweden is looking to move to a 6-hour work day. Fast Company covered it with their article, “Why Sweden is Shifting to a 6-Hour Workday.” I can whole-heartedly agree my brain really only has about 6 hours of full-time coding in it per day, add in meetings and other distractions and that starts to shrink. The other factor they bring up is the need to keep learning and to exercise. As we have increasingly sedentary jobs, it becomes even more important to schedule time to exercise, it’s not going to happen as part of your day if you’re a web worker (excluding those with treadmill desks).
The more rested I am, the more optimistic, energized and excited I am for the work I do. The more I exercise, the more the cobwebs get cleaned out and my anxiety fades away.
In the end, slow down. As David Allen has said, “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.”
Slowing down along the Pemigewasset River with a neutral density filter and 20 second exposure.
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