The issue with work life balance is not about the work. It's about the agency. If I'm a programmer like John Carmack, and I want to work all night because I'm engaged and invested in the code I'm writing, I rest when I'm exhausted, then that's great. When John did his best work, it's not like he had a boss forcing him to do it. He was doing it himself, and not even forcing himself, he wanted to. Now lets say that you want to be a world class athlete and go to the Olympics. This is the same thing. You'll push yourself, but not force yourself, because you're struggling to reach your goal of being the best, going to the olympics. But now lets imagine the world class athlete again. You might be aware that a lot of olympic athletes end up working boring jobs. They work in food service, accounting, etc. These people have a lot of stuff to do to train. But is it good for them to then take double shifts at their restaurant, or work overtime at their accounting firm? You might say that yeah, the athlete isn't aligned with the accounting job. So lets go back to the John Carmack example. Lets say John didn't found id software and instead got a job working as a programmer in a larger corporate modern game studio. Instead fast inverse square root functions to speed up doom computation he instead is forced to program to spec of a lead who is categorically dull. Maybe he is learning, but since he doesn't have the agency to be self directed, he can barely grow. When he goes home at night, maybe he works on his hobby projects. When he has to work overtime at his job, he loses out on that self-directed time. So because of this, the issue with work life balance is not about "work". Lots of hobbies in other circumstances can be considered "work", but because you call them hobbies, they get found on the "life" side of the work life equation. Becoming an olympic athlete is not a hobby, but it's also not their day job. Work life balance is about how much you can control. You get to be an olympic athlete because you can control it. If you were forced to work 14 hour shifts 7 days a week at a fast food place, you would not have the required work life balance to become an olympic athlete. So what happens when you are in a situation where you have autonomy to work and the fruit of your work can make a living for you? Well, in that case you are fully on the "life" side of work life balance as long as you are in pursuit of what is important to you. But when you get money involved, it gets easy to focus on money and comfort and safety. When you start to work out of fear, or when you start to work in response to other people's demands, you can quickly fall into the pattern that is not self directed. The work I do, I could do after hours because I enjoy it. A problem with this is that not all of it is engaging, not all of it causes me to grow, a lot of it is very dull and frustrating because I'm solving problems that other people created for themselves. If I make a habit of doing this after hours, it sets expectations for other people that I they can demand that I do their stupid things. Now my work isn't entirely doing stupid things, but some of it is, and if I didn't set boundaries, my evenings would easily fill up with stupid things. In the evening, I do personal work, similar to my work. I do a lot of programming on my own, a lot of investigation, a lot of research. I can only do this because I set boundaries at work. I think this is the difference. Right now, jonathan is in a position where his "work" is self directed. So it's not really work in the same way. When he gets exhausted, he can sleep. When he is interested in another concept, he can explore it. He is not stuck making enterprise middleware, he's making his own programming language and building game engines. There is another side of this that can impact people like him, and that is where the work is driven by fear, and because of this you don't do things that are healthy for you. If you are not washing, not eating healthily, not sleeping, and you're doing it not because you're just entranced by the work, but because you are terrified that if you don't something bad will happen to you, and this lasts an extended period of time, it's bad, not just because it's unhealthy, but also because it will make you learn more slowly and work more poorly. Work life balance isn't about working too hard. It's about ensuring you have the available time and energy to do the things that are important to you. When the stuff you call work is the stuff that is important to you, then work life balance is satisfied. This basically only happens if you're independently self sufficient or maybe self employed. Most people don't relate to that, but rather relate to an employee employer relationship where you don't work towards your goals, but to your employer's. In this case, work life balance is about ensuring you have that self directed time. If you want your employees to feel this way as an employer, you need to not just let them do the thing that they love, but give them control over it and ironically give them the capacity to set boundaries.
Excellent summary. I fully agree with what Jonathan is saying, and I'm passionate about dev work and could do it all day long, but I'm paid well and come from a reasonably comfortable family so was well educated. Taking the example of the child olympic athlete, a majority of those children come from wealthy backgrounds and have the actual option/agency to pursue it full time (parents paying for training/having time to take them to training etc). While not impossible it is far more unlikely for a poor kid to reach the same level. Take one look at actors/musicians for another example.
Work life balance for "you" might be actual balance. But for a lot of the people on the internet, its a rather odd and fascinating twisted monster of complacency and laziness mixed with passive aggressive philosophies like "quiet quitting" where the person doing the job "barely" does the minimum. The original term was meant for people who worked so hard that they had no actual life outside of work... thus they needed more of a life outside work to maintain balance in the their lives. Now it seems that a lot of people have gotten this new idea that they can barely put any effort into "work" and just do the bare minimum and that is how they want to keep their balance... sort of shifted heavily toward the "Life" side, and with much less work. Or, work just the minimum hours required and do only the bare amount necessary for the job without putting effort into the job. And that is "OK" in that it barely gets them by... but as Jonathan said, those people cannot actually compete or even make anything close to the same income as those that actually work harder. And when the time for a company comes where it needs to lose a few employees because times are tough, the first ones to go will be the ones barely skating by.
These are all good points, however a lot of people do think that work life balance applies to their own self directed work as well. It's also very misleading to claim that people who work a ton on their own stuff like Carmac, "do it because they like it". The vast majority of high performers feel resistance when trying to work as much as they do, as everyone does, and use some sort of system or habitualization to overcome this (from Grit and Deep Work). Even Jon Blow, who doesn't seem to have a strict regimen or anything still uses meditative techniques to get himself to work longer. It's true in the sense that they like the results of working that much, but people hear things like this and think they're just wake up and naturally feel like working 60 hours a week, which isn't the case. It's the people that criticize this type of mindset, where you value pushing yourself to work more than you want to, that Jon is arguing against. He thinks others forcing you to work is a bad thing.
To a degree, John probably did force himself, but he had the drive to do it, because he derived happiness from it at an early age. Neurochemistry is complicated, because it becomes a nature/nurture question.
This is important - quality is a component being skimmed over here, we're presuming this is x hours of quality work being done. There are jobs where you can work 60 hours and do precisely nothing useful.
Some thoughts in no particular order: 1) programming is physically taxing. bad posture and lack of exercise tend to compound pretty fast into actual health problems. ignore your body at your own peril. 2) breaks and downtime are important for your mental well-being, concentration and ability to think creatively. smashing your head against a brick wall for hours can be extremely unproductive considering some of the best solutions come to you while showering, taking a walk, sitting in a cafe, etc. 3) not every project / aspect of your work is equally important. it is just as or even more important to be able to identify the 20% of work that gives you 80% of the profits and then maybe move on the the next thing, or at least be aware your time and energy are finite and prioritizing is key. 4) family, friends, etc. are not background decoration in your life If you can balance all of these effectively, by all means work 100 hour weeks on your passion projects. God knows I have done it at many points in my life. Just remember real productivity is not a function of how many hours you clock in, but how many PRODUCTIVE hours you clock in.
That's if your goal in life is to get rich. My goal is to be happy. I am truly lucky, blessed, whatever you want to call it, but I LOVE my job. That means I don't work an hour a day when I'm coding. Now when I'm going to meetings, or answering emails, that's where the work comes in, but I try to limit that to less than 3 hours a day as a principle. Otherwise I'll never get anything done :). When I get home I code - often. I don't necessarily code on work stuff, but I code on my personal projects which makes me happy. Work stuff sometimes makes me happy too - remember I love my job - so I'll even code on work stuff at home. For me learning is a big part of that, and the reason why I love this job so much. I love learning new things, and being challenged by learning new things, and in the software development business it's a constant learning process - unless you are stuck in a rut.
"work-life balance" is oppressor speak. work is an essential part of life. It's just that most "work" is subordinating yourself to a master who controls everything you do i.e. having a "job". Real work is creative and self directed. The term "work" has been made synonymous with slavery and now we lack the language to even express the notion.
Completely disagree. My work is creative and self directed and all the ills ppl bitch about apply to it just as well. Also there's much more risk involved and I need to waste my own self-control for scheduling instead of some manager or director spending it on me. When I think about "easy way out" - it is actually that "oppression" of agreeing to work for a wage. Then someone else would get the "privilege" of direction and I would have delimited tasks and get the "drudgery" of applying skills to solve them and get satisfaction and money from it. Obviously I'm choosing it, so I do prefer it. I do want this challenge. But it's not like you get your own project started and realistic way of achieving it, and now you are just overflowing with motivation and happiness whenever you sit to work on it because "no master is enslaving you anymore".
My problem with Jonathan Blow is that like many people in tech, he's gotten pretty advanced by learning on his own. The blind spot I see over and over again in his thinking (and sometimes in his games as well) is a lack of knowledge and context outside of that field. Tech people (of which I am one) think, "Well, I'm an intelligent person, surely by sitting around and thinking about this issue deeply, I will arrive at the correct conclusion," even when you're saying things that are 100% wrong because they lack any context or knowledge from other domains like history, philosophy, or art. At 15:03 he declares that "work-life balance" is some modern invention because he's placing it in the context of "people on social media say this," as though there aren't incredibly famous schools of thought such as the Tao Te Ching, the American Trancendentalist movement, the poetry of Rumi, or even the concept of the Sabbath as a day on which you should not perform work are all just a handful of a massive number of historical precedents. I have been a professional programmer for 15-20 years, and I have seen coders spend countless hours bouncing the same ideas around their own head about technology and society rather than pick up a goddamn book that is about society rather than technology.
He never said you shouldn’t rest. Sabbath is a rest. When did he say you had to work every day? He said that someone working 60h a week will be more skilled than someone working 30h a week. And the developers you see spending a lot of time while achieving nothing is another matter. It’s all the IT developers doing OOP shit, clean code, MVC vs MVVM architecture battle, etc which he addresses in other videos. They avoid learning the fundamental skills of programming and keep themselves busy in pointless arguments and refacto. Obviously spending time isn’t enough if you waste it on stupid stuff. You talk about bias but playing dumb by stating or assuming stuff he doesn’t think is no better.
His life is not making games. He puts on this facade of being some veteran grizzled dev who programmed 8bit NES games, but if you actually look at his career he's done very little. He did a little trivial contracting work in the 90s (all worthless stuff that never went anywhere), and then he did two indie games. He's a lightweight and a charlatan.
@@bobsaget9182 lol wow, you really went hard. His 2 games are not too impressive, they are games that can be built with unity in less than 3 months. However, you have to give him credit for building his own engine, that stuff is very difficult to do.
Most people don't care about their job. There's not that much meaningful work to do. Most of it is non-sense for the sake of it. Carmack and Blow work for themselves on their own projects for their own personal success.
The concept of work-life balance, if it has any legitimacy, is actually about one thing and one thing only: ownership. And I don't mean "ownership" as in "your boss gives you the 'autonomy' to make your own decisions and then he still owns all the work you produce". I mean ownership as in actual property-rights ownership. "Work" is the stuff you do as villein to enrich your liege lord/employer. "Life" is the stuff you own yourself. The only reason to produce code for a wage, that someone else is going to own the IP rights to, is if you need to pay rent and groceries and your heating bill, but haven't accumulated enough capital to work for yourself. I.e. you are basically a villein who hasn't earned enough to purchase your way out of your oath of fealty and become a freeman. John Carmack didn't work 80 hours a week to produce someone else's intellectual property and enrich someone else. He worked 0 hours per week producing intellectual property for others. He was the co-founder of id. He had ownership over everything he produced. Every single hour of labor he exerted was directly benefiting and enriching himself. Unless you are being paid untold sums of money to do it, no one in the West should ever work more than 40 hours a week for an employer. Is your wage going to make you as wealthy as producing and owning Doom? No? Then don't work as hard for your employer as John Carmack did for himself. The goal is working 0 hours for the benefit of someone else. Jonathan owns Braid outright, and he founded Thekla. He worked very briefly as a software developer for an employer after he dropped out of Berkeley, and he was terrible at it and hated it, and then founded his own games company with a friend. Essentially his entire working career he has never worked for an employer. Blow works 0 hours for an employer, that's 40 hours less than the "work life balance" people he's criticizing. His ratio of work to life balance is 0% work, 100% life, and that is the ideal ratio for a human being. If every hour you spend on labor is directly benefiting you, and you have property ownership rights over every line of code you write, then why in the hell wouldn't you work 80 hours a week or more?
This is very well put and I almost completely agree. There is also a problem in corporate environments that increasing your work output does not linearly increase your pay, nor does slacking necessarily decrease it, although that can also be true for projects you do own.
I sense strong feelings of a lack of control over one's life. A bit of resentment. Etc. Work == Effort. Doesn't matter if it is for someone else, purely for yourself, whether or not it is making you any money. Work is time, patience, diligence and dedication. What he means by work, isn't just your job. It is the amount of time and energy you spend on continually trying to improve yourself, skills, etc. Work is an abstract class. When you've got too much of an outside mental framework that shapes and informs all of your opinions, as determined by the ideas of someone else, you end up having to clumsily shoehorn all of that ideology into unrelated, more universal discussions. You could literally go to a hippie commune in 1967 and the odds are that a discussion just like this could still be had, in a situation entirely removed from your idea of what constitutes work or a work environment.
I think very few people even really strive to belong to the best, and those who do, are working all the time automatically without thinking much about it, because the interest in the work keeps you going.
Watch the Lex Friedman podcast with Carmack. Carmack never remotely did any some sort of "olympic training". The dude barely woke up before noon throughout most of his life. He's 52 now and he's saying he's "trying to push his schedule back to wake up at 8am", had been waking up at 10am even in his late 40's. He talks about how he'd roll into the office at 2pm half the time at id. Yeah he'd nerd out until late at night drinking diet coke, but not because he was "working hard", because he was doing everything for himself on whatever he was interested in. This is no olympic athlete, this is just somebody who his whole life got to work on absolutely whatever the hell he wanted that he was interested in himself. His entire life he has worked for himself enriching himself, on whatever schedule he wants. Work means the stuff you do for an employer, life means the stuff you do for yourself, and by that token Carmack has never had any "work-life balance", he's been 100% his own life. He's never had to work a job for an employer, he's always been lucky enough to work for solely for his own benefit and his own interests. In his 20's that was for himself at id which he owned, now at Occulus it's making millions and millions to be given totally free reign as a consulting CTO, again in practice working just for himself. I don't know when Blow wakes up, but Blow is the same. The dude has barely worked a day in his life for an employer. He dropped out of college. He quit his real programming job and started a games company almost immediately to do just what he was interested in. His whole career has been 0% work 100% his own life and his own interests. That is the ideal work-life balance: 0% work for other people, 100% everything for yourself and your own company that you own.
working hard did not worked for me. Wasted 10 years to figure that out. Instead I`ll aim, to do something I enjoy and at the same time which is paid for
No need to take it so literally xd. For majority of people thats the case. People like mozart are outliers in this case. For majority of people work is nothing but a responsibility, they do it to be able to live. Not everyone finds their passion on something that they can monetize.@dootie8285
Everybody does, even when it is mental rather than physical effort. There is already a lot of evidence that most people benefit from intermittent periods of practice rather than practicing something for hours on end.
I like how he talks mad shit about flash cards and then you have John Carmack on the Lex Fridman podcast admitting that he's using them to learn better.
There's a lot of good advice and truth here. "Work harder = more skill" is mostly true, and I think that's the key point here. I think that the idea that "work harder = more money" AS A LINEAR FUNCTION or better than linear (mentioned after the halfway point) is just plainly misguided though. That's just not how it works a lot of the time. That would be exceedingly fair, and life isn't fair. So I think you definitely need to differentiate between different outputs, and not just treat money(work hrs), skill(work hrs), or whatever else as equivalent functions. There's also just lots of factors besides hard work, including shifting economic conditions etc when it comes to some of these like money. I think the real issue is that people use all these functions as excuses not to try or work hard, and that's not good.
I see your point, however people who do spend a lot of time improving their skills also tend to make a lot more money than those that don't. Working harder doesn't mean more money, but being more valuable by having useful skills does (which seems to be what Jon was getting at).
"Work harder = more money" is absolutely true when the identity of the person is a constant. It is not true between different people though, for a ton of reasons.
It’s not linear my dude in the real world. Complain about it as much as you want but it won’t change. This is the problem with the redpill sigma grind mindset, thinking doing xyz will guarantee xyz and then being mad and lashing out and blaming society because the result didn’t match your expectations. It’s a type of entitlement just as bad as people expecting things when not putting the work in. The world has never been nor will ever be meritocratic. Goodness and hard work and following the rules sometimes are not rewarded. Deal with it
no we should not deal with it, the system has to change, the idea that we should reward some and punish others for things they have nothing to do with (their genes, epigenetics and circumstances) is insane and has nothing to do with the actual world as it is. A person cannot deserve anything more than anyone else.
Important thing to note here is Jonathan Blow doesn't have a family. Maybe I'm wrong about that but I've never heard him talk about his wife or kids and google doesn't say anything about it.
@@dimitarzitosanski3105 According to history, they mainly regulated all the work relating to the kids to the wives since most women have historically been stay-at-home housewives. So, no, they didn't really subscribe to "work-life-balance" even then.
*It's common sense when technology blew up work life boundaries got blurred , you can get email , messages call in personal time , that's how idea originated, timing pf it exactly coincides with advent of emails , internet popularity*
Im not sure if the analogy works with olympic atheletes. Most of them do not train for more than a few hours a day, simply because doing more results in overtraining which will make your body deteriorate. Many even have jobs next to their training.
I get your point, but I don't think this is accurate for a lot of athletes. Top cyclists like armstrong back in the day would have training sessions that last about 5-6 hours. Similarly, most of the top climbers spend 4-6 hours a day working routes, and another 2-3 on training and conditioning. Most sport training seems to follow this cycle, ie a few hours physical training on top of many hours of technical practice. A better example would've been esports, since overtraining isn't a risk there. That's a field where most of the top performers do train 70-80+ hours a week.
"Long hours of work is how you get good" is not true. Only sometimes long hours can improve results, but there are many other factors (learning new perspectives, information, sharing experiences, resetting your thought flow to make you think in new ways, etc.). Long hours are a way to get more things done when you know exactly what you're doing and are at peak form.
I'm convinced that if I got married and had a kid back in my late teens/early twenties, (currently 25) I wouldn't have learnt how to program at all, at least at a competent level because it already takes me forever to really master a concept as a bachelor. Lmao.
The English and the Americans are singing about 16 hour work days, doing 16 hour work days, and then in the end the Germans with the 8 hour work days are producing the cars 2 times cheaper and everything works. Just because the Anglo-American culture by design produces bad technical experts doesn't mean that all countries should work 16 hours to match a German's 8 hour work day. (The Anglo-American culture assumes that intellect is the most important quality of a technical professional, but in reality it's the 3rd or 4th most important and the Germans know this.)
@@titanicisshit1647 In my experience, this is how I would rank them: 1 - communication. Communicating your own ideas & facilitating others to communicate theirs. That means actually LISTENING to people & not being afraid to admit if you don't understand. (The Anglo-American staple is to enjoy the sound of your own voice over everything) 2 - teamwork. The success of the project is more important than your personal success. Anglo-Americans go to work to stand out. They don't care about the project. Germans go to work so that the project succeeds. 3 - systems thinking and multi-discipline knowledge. This seems to be especially important for programmers. Engineers and physicist tend to develop this quality early. But in my experience, programmers are a lot more close minded & don't study other fields nearly as much. This is a pity because some of the greatest ideas in math, physics, etc. came from studying other fields. Also, a lot of SW projects fail because of factors unrelated to the code (psychology, business, etc.). Sorry for the long post and I hope you find it interesting!
here is my take: I don't care about my employer's problems. I have tried to find some meaning in those tasks but at the end of the day they all feel superficial to me. Its simple transactional to be, you buy my dev time, simple, no culture bullshit, plain old transaction. So I don't feel right when I have to work over time, instead I feel very bad about it. And overwork is a norm in my country (India) that too without fair compensation. I can put my being into work if I find it meaningful but they can never be someone else's ideas. Not average ones.
I really really disagree with that definition of burnout. You can be a total success, but the crunch and deadlines to get there can be mentally exhausting to the point of burnout even if you love what you do. One of the consequences of burnout is that you stop enjoying the work you previously enjoyed, so "just enjoy work and be successful" is backward. And also, repeated short breaks and spaced repetition make sense, it has been scientifically tested and proven to help with productivity and learning for just about everyone. "Psychological muscles" is not even a thing that exists, it's at best a myth, just as "training willpower" is just a myth that has been disproven with the same types of long-term experiments that gave rise to the theory of willpower in the first place. It seems like Jon is convinced that "You can work long hours if you just do it", I say that's BS and instead "You can work long hours if you dedicate your life to it". If you build your job around your passion/interest, build yourself and your life to support your work maximally, and not working past the point of mental fatigue (like you do when you have crunch, crushing deadlines, etc. ), you will work maximally. If you just work more just to be able to work more, you WILL burn out. Also, if you are living a healthy lifestyle you can put in more dedicated hours where your mind is focused because you have the energy to do so. Build your life around your work. The tradeoff thing makes sense, but the tradeoff is less like "Either you put in the hours or you travel", and more like "If you build your life around the fun things you want to do in life, you cannot build your life around your work, and you then cannot be maximally productive ever". All the great inventors of history dedicated their life to their work, they did not just "work more". The "dedicated their lives to" part cannot be understated.
@@weirddingus4620 Yeah, I've heard the Mike Rowe take on that, not sure what to make of it yet. I've seen people who can be super excited and creative when doing anything they set their mind to, and I've seen the opposite. The Polgar twins experiment is also a really interesting take on passion. Go to these twins and say that their passion for chess does not exist because passion does not exist, and they will laugh in your face. But also, their passion for chess was completely manufactured by their parents as a (sort of) scientific experiment. Look up the Polgar twins experiment for more on that. I dunno man, it's weird. Passion definitely exists IMO, but you can become passionate about anything if you know how to do it.
I started as a junior engineer 5 years ago, fresh from college. I worked very hard and put like 60-70 hrs a week for at least 2 years. Not because I was forced, but because I enjoyed it and loved it. The team I started with had a senior and 2 mid level engineers. Five years after, I am above them in position and knowledge. I’m not with that team anymore, I moved to another team when I outgrew it. I don’t work as hard anymore, but I do take extra time every week to keep learning. About 5-10 hrs. I’m pretty sure my old teammates didn’t put not even an extra hour. That’s the difference. Hard work pays off. If you enjoy it, it doesn’t feel like working, and it’s a long term investment in yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise
As a counterpoint to this: Work-life balance isn't laziness. It's discipline. Sure, you can work 100-hr weeks on making a game but if you don't have the self-discipline to look after yourself you'll inevitably damage your mental and physical health, which then leads to reduced work because you are burnt-out.
I agree that if you want to be the best at anything sacrifices have to be made. Work life balance attempts to educate and prevent us from waking up having made the wrong decision. Every decision is fine as long as you are aware of the consequences. The work life balance theory just serves as an alternative. I do not see anything wrong with it.
There's no guarantee you'll ever be the best. The focus shouldn't be on "being the best" but being as good as you want to be since that's a more intrinsic metric.
@@weirddingus4620 That is part of the risk analysis and consequences equation. Also working towards "being the best" is probably more likely to get you closer at being the best than having a mindset of "I am never going to be the best". Be the best or die trying. In the end if you really can honestly live by those words your whole life, it does not matter if you reach the ultimate goal or not, because you tried, you gave your best and there is nothing else you could have done to it. That is how some people see it.
Another topic not often brought up is that of specialization vs interdisciplinary career paths. I could see some people easily interpreting this video as being only applicable to a specialized career since the only example we see from the video for enjoying your work is when you're dedicated to one discipline, but taking breaks from one discipline to work on another can allow both productivity and provide breaks. I wouldn't say that this is the most efficient way of working and interdisciplinary careers aren't as likely to be world class performers as was stated in the video, but I do find that overspecialization is a thing, and even though they might not be considered breaks as in periods of not working, I think having varied interests and a diverse schedule can lead to a more balanced skillset for certain people and can keep you from plateauing or getting stuck in a rut.
Kinda similar to the discussion on multitasking and how it affects productivity now that I think about it. Though not quite the same at larger time scales, the way both mutlitasking and interdisciplinary experience affects one's ability to see the big picture and introduce changes in perspective is valuable enough to be notable I think.
Spaced repetition is a great tool. Don't understand his criticism, since using SRS does not imply studies only x minutes or y hours. I did SRS-based studying sometimes for several hours a day during intensive language courses. Without it I probably would have wasted lots of those hours...
I think it's pretty obvious that not all work is created equal either. Some tasks are quite simple, routine, or make room for multitasking. As a programmer, your work can span so many disciplines that your "work" can easily be "fun." While we're at it, I even believe that doing something that subjectively feels difficult, pointless, or unpleasant may even be a direct source of exhaustion. With that said, there is some evidence that most people who attempt to work longer hours actually so much less work done per-hour that they would accomplish more if they spent less time on it. People who think this way also unfailingly refuse to believe that they are too tired to be productive.
Of course work is good and important. That’s why it’s called work/life balance and not “don’t work just life”. There is a benefit to experiencing life outside your work.
I get it what he's saying, but I disagree. His case and the John Carmack is that both are the owners of the company, so yeah, if they put long hours on work they will get more stuff done and probably will get more money. But if I'm a simple employee, long hours will not result in exponentially more money or even in me getting better at my job as a whole, because I could be working long hours to do stuff that I already know and not in stuff that would improve my skills. And this topic doesn't even apply for mundane jobs, like, you wouldn't be a better receptionist if you work 12 hours a day instead of 8. As a side note, his point about long work hours blur when he talks about works hours as a programmer, like, I work 9-5 but on my free time I do side projects to improve my skills, so I think that would include in my work hours as a whole, but in not my main job, so that work on my free time would be considered part of the work-life balance?
man, stfu and use your brain instead of acting like his on the spot thoughts are a published research paper and trying to dissect each statement for any flaw.
@@weirddingus4620 It's a common thing on the web for people to completely miss the point of a statement, and instead focus on nitpicking. They act like every statement should cover every possible use case. It's just plain mental laziness.
I think there are decreasing gains as you work past a certain amount, but if you solely want to optimise for becoming a good programmer; I think that your solution is correct!
Sure. But if you’re driven by a desire to produce something, you can just stop when you’re tired and resume when you are rested. As opposed to being chained to “working” for a set period of time when you aren’t productive anyway.
I'm a weird hybrid between overwork and clocking out early because my actual passions aren't necessarily profitable, so I go in and do the boring soulcrushing job that I'm somehow good at and make lots of money from, then clock out and overwork myself on my unprofitable passions. With that out of the way: I think that everyone has their own personal work-life balance that makes sense to them at any given time because not everyone is passionate about profitable things, but that can also change over time. The people who get to do their passion as a job are the lucky ones. For my current stage in life, clocking out of my job on time is extremely important, but I'm hoping to eventually fix that and find my unicorn job that I will voluntarily work on for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Love love love this! I recently hid away from my current job for a week (actually I'm still in that period of hiding away from my job). I gave no one any real notice to speak of. I made no excuses or justifications. I just hid. I hit some kind of emotional/psychological/physical limit in the weeks leading up to that point with multiple (very serious) family crises outside of work and a job that is just a grind which I don't find fulfilling - quite the opposite actually - I tell people it's slowly eating my soul. I'm always learning outside of work, relentlessly. I have a few ideas I'm passionate about investing in which will require a significant degree of learning and diving deep into unfamiliar technical territory (which I love). I've also noticed over the years that I'm usually most passionate and curious when I'm *not* working (after a few days of downtime typically). I also earn a lot of money (by most people's standards) and have definitely sold out for that in recent years, and yet I'm wrestling with a decision to take 1 year off (knowing that I can easily afford many years of time off work if I really want to do that). It doesn't make sense that this is such a difficult decision for me, but it is. I love your take on this Jon. Thanks for being so "no BS" and honest. Seeing this video is timely and has given me somet things to think about. Really appreciate the wisdom and honesty.
12:30 - Idk about that... and I'm kind of surprised JB said that. Economists want to think and talk as if things like "salaries" or "sales" is as simple as "5x the work equals 5x the profits", but it's definitely not that simple in practice. I don't mean to bash Notch or anything, but there's definitely indie developers that worked harder than Notch and make a fraction of a fraction of money. Luck plays a huge role when it comes to how much money you make, both in terms of someone in the workforce and someone running their own business.
@@Nors2Ka Yea Notch didn't just randomly stumble upon the idea either, and even if he did, it resonated enough with him, that he made something with it of high value. You can "work hard" at the gym every day, but you'll never get minecraft out of that. There is such a thing as having good judgement too. Those indie-devs are working on more niché things, and the market is more saturated now, less low-hanging fruits, so to say. If you think those things are luck, then so be it, I just think that what people chalk up to luck, has far more subtleties to it. Luck is to a large extent just the capacity and willingness to grab opportunities in front of you.
I think "working hard" for him does not mean just crunching the hours (which is of course a given) but also trying to come up with new, original solutions to old problems, which is something that is sorely missing from the indie scene unfortunately. Jon made two games that have been wildly successful because they are original and unique and with a concept refined to a T, even if they aren't for everyone. Both of these games came out after a long trial and error process in the concept phase. Most modern games are just "find what works, and slap a new gimmick on to freshen it up", which is hardly even in the same league of effort, and is making the whole industry stale. I have seen posts by people in tears because they have mortgaged their house and worked long days for years to make a tower defense game... I don't mean to be mean, but if you believe a game that is the same as hundreds of others flooding the market today will make you financially independent you're going down the wrong path.
@@fullmontis "worked long days for years to make a tower defense game". Yea. No one promised that thickheaded effort in any direction was going to lead to success, yet this is the strawman that many people attack, instead of thinking about why so many people seemingly work so hard, yet get so little in return (both in terms of status, money and meaning). If what you're working on isn't meaningful to yourself on some deep level, that keeps you thinking about it and playing with it in your mind even when you aren't working, then it's probably not going to be particularly interesting to a person that didn't invest a lot of their life into it.
@@fullmontis I think "working hard" for him does not mean just crunching the hours... You're essentially rewriting what was in the video inorder to defend what JB said. There was a VERY clear focus on "putting in the hours" throughout the entire video and the sentiment of "everyone who is successful is successful because they put in the hours and everyone that complains just doesn't put in enough hours" is the main problem I had. Granted JB is kind of being put on the spot, and I'm sure he's had a to deal with haters trying to discredit his efforts. I'm not taking what he said as a hard stance on the topic or anything, but still... that sentiment feels overly simplistic.
I actually do get more done at 35 hours a week then 50, because I'm doing interesting and creative work. If I'm always at the computer writing code, then I'll get stuck. I have to step away, do other things, and then come back, and when I come back I'll have a new perspective on something on which I was stuck, or just an idea for a better/faster way to do things. I've been doing this for years and have just found that creative problem-solving requires regular breaks, and it's when I work too hard without breaks that I go down a wrong path or do ineffective work. I might produce more quantity that way, but less quality, and if that continues then the overall product will be worse.
Jonathan missed the saddening realization that a lot of jobs exists because the employers themselves don't want to do it, many times it is because the jobs are denigrating, exhausting, boring, unethical, unfulfilling or non-educational (or even worse they create bad habbits.)
"Productivity" is overrated. Health is where it's at. Of course it's a balance, but life isn't fair and your inputs will most often not be matched to outputs by your employer. Jon is in a unique situation though where it's his own projects that he works on, and that's where his hypothesis may be true.
You apparently understood nothing of what he said in the video. You're just regressing the discussion to that superficial, work-life balance framing. Saying "productivity is overrated" is ignoring that some people find their work, or the act of working by itself, or the idea of developing their skills, meaningful.
@@franciscofarias6385 No; I am misunderstood. The thesis of my idea is that your health and your productivity are positively correlated. People focus too much on being "productive", when in reality they would get much more done in the same amount of time if they were just healthier. The pinnacle of every human is firing on all cylinders while healthy-- that's how you get to be able to work 60 hour weeks in the first place. Not just physical health, either, but mental, emotional, spiritual. That is what self-actualization looks like. Not working yourself like a dog until you suffer a serious health problem. Then you can't do anything.
@@franciscofarias6385 It's possible Jonathan misunderstands what work/life balance means, possibly because he's never worked a normal job before. It's all about not overworking for your company. Spending your free time improving your craft because you love your craft *requires* work life balance. Are there people who may out work you for a promotion? Yes, but it's also usually the kind of culture you wouldn't want to work for as it promotes putting work over your personal goals (family, personal projects and development, etc). Good managers nip that in the bud, you don't want a rat race to the bottom culture where the most desperate worker willing to put in extra hours to please the boss gets rewarded. That's a easy way to lose good talent that don't need to work overtime to get shit done
I mostly agree with his points here, except that how hard you work does not necessarily translate into success (i.e. working 5x more than someone else doesn't mean you'll eventually get paid 5x more). In my experience, yes, you'll likely get better at whatever it is you're doing if you work 5x more than the average person. However, the rewards are not guaranteed to be linear. Hard work is typically necessary for success, but not a predictor. But he's absolutely right that if you are complaining that somebody else who worked harder is having more success, well that's on you. If you want to work less, that's totally cool, but don't complain if somebody who worked harder and more hours is more skilled than you.
Blow's description of work in the past and the evolution of work-life balance is pretty ahistoric. Workers were clamouring for the invention of the weekend in the 1800s, and Jewish people have been taking the Sabbath for millennia. Not to mention his idea that hunter gatherers were "working" constantly is weird: there's evidence of humans taking part in leisure activity as far back as recorded history goes. He also misses the fact that our current conception of paid emlpoyment - where someone owns and purchases your time rather than an output - is a modern invention. In feudal society, serfs were given land and their production was taxed, but they weren't filling out time cards. The commodification of time is an invention of the 20th century, and the concept of work-life balance is a response to our current work environment.
when people talk about work life balance. they mean working for someone else. working 80 hours a week for EA is exploitation not grinding. im working 40 hours a week, then spending another 30 hours working on an indie game and i couldn't be happier. because i plan on profiting from my own work.
For me work & life balance thing is actually about trying to not work or think about work all the time and have some time for real rest, because without real rest it's pretty hard to work effectievly, and the problem is that it's pretty hard to split those things, especially when you work from home, and you really like your work. For me this problem is very relevant
I think you should never feel like you have to work 12 hrs a day, you should feel like you want to work 12 hrs. When it’s thrust upon you either by direct force or by peer pressure that’s not a good environment, but companies need to create environments where it’s ok to work 12 hrs a day but it’s not required to keep your job. I think it’s hard though to see reality that the person who works 12 hrs a day is likely to be the one who has more doors open to move on and up (it’s not always case but it does help)
Here's my thing, I do agree, but I wonder how is his relationship with his kids and family. You can never get that time back, while it's amazing to master a skill. Time with loved ones is forever lost. But I'm guilty of the same, but I get both sides of the argument.
3h of fun and flow state > 12h of forced grind. The more you do the former, the longer you can manage, but breaks and taking care of your physical and mental health is a prerequisite for that
JB knows that most programming jobs are bullshit. At those actively working to excess on SOLID CRUD Bullshit web applications isn’t going to make one a better programmer. In fact, considering arbitrary and nonsensical code reviews and “best practices” at these places, more time spent at this kind of work is detrimental to improvement and one who desires improvement should be looking at saving energy for actual programming outside of work.
If your passion in life is programming then 60+ hours spent on programming is not a problem. Even if you have a job working for someone else, that's 40 hours a week for your employer plus 20 hours a week on developing your own passion. Of course you still need work life balance: you still need to devote time to your family if you have one, your health and spiritual development, etc. If you're working just for someone else though, and you're doing 60 hours a week, that's a problem. Even if you're being paid fairly enough to work 60 hours a week for your employer, the things you're doing just on behalf of your employer are probably not particularly challenging or contributing to your self improvement as a programmer. If you're just working for someone else and you have no serious stake in your employer or no serious control over direction, if you are going to spend an extra 20 hours a week toward your job/career, you should be spending it on moving your career toward independence or more creative control. Don't grind 60 hours for your employer: put in the 40 hours and then spend 20 hours a week developing your own projects and your own company, or developing new skills to take you somewhere else where you will have more control.
He’s just stating the facts. You could still be pretty good with work life balance, but obviously people who spend more time on something will be better than you
The reason those people don't come into the discussion is because they're the exception. The vast majority of people do whatever work they do because they have to do something to earn a living. Yes, they might like their job, but in most cases they will not get any significant reward for putting more time into their employer's projects. And that's the key part of the work/life balance discussion. Given the choice your employer will happily use up more of your time without paying you. That's where this all originated - the typical employer paying as little as they can get away with then demanding overtime with the threat of firing anyone who doesn't comply.
What I'm surprised about is how he tackles the topic from whole angles, which is a mark for a good and intelligent human being who is aware of what he sais and not just living on autopilot
Something to consider for anyone reading this. Yes at a technical level time spent = greater skill. Its the identical principle of weight lifting. Time under tension produces growth. If you are only interested in technical mastery that is one thing, but producing art through games? That requires vision. A lack of life experience reflects an uninspired vision. To create great works of art one must live a work of art
Olympic athletes compete for the goal that they set themselves. Work forces goals of other people onto you. I program at my job but I also program at home, first one I hate second one I don't. One feels and is work that will just go into pockets of higher-ups because meritocracy doesn't exist anymore.
I agree with a lot of what Blow is saying here, but the idea that "work-life balance" is a new concept is questionable at best. The struggle for improved working conditions in the modern world dates back to the Industrial Revolution. As early as 1866, there were calls for an 8-hour work day in the US, and this was codified for US government workers in 1869. The Haymarket Riot developed around the struggle for the 8-hour workday in Illinois. Blow is trying to give the impression that "work-life balance" is a new obsession by fluffy, white-collar dilettantes, merely because the term itself is fairly new. But the concept underlying the term "work-life balance" has been a focus of struggle for centuries now, and these struggles have been carried out largely by working-class, salt-of-the-earth laborers. I do, however, 100% agree with Blow's view on there being dignity and value in work. I think a lot about the culture in Japan of passing the family business down to the oldest child, and how it's kind of expected that a skill that was cultivated for decades by each preceding owner will be taken up by them and passed down to their oldest child as well. I like the idea of making a skilled craft one's life work, and just kind of focusing on and developing that, and taking pride in it. This can definitely enrich a person's life. What I think Blow fails to address is that the nature of this system we inhabit is unfortunately to extinguish this kind of labor. An individual who hones a craft over a lifetime is simply too indispensable to be allowed to exist. So tasks get broken down and mechanized to the point where one needs relatively little skill to carry out any one part of the process. And the skilled practitioners can't keep up with the hundredfold increase in efficiency brought about by these changes, so they fade away and disappear over time. Given this economic/labor atmosphere in which we reside, I don't think it's unreasonable for people to increasingly feel that work is a burden separate from their lives. There is less and less, after all, to feel proud of. So of course it makes sense for people to start breaking it down into a this-and-that paradigm of "work over here," and "life over there." We can of course try to perform psychological magic and try to rethink our way into a "healthier" perspective, but that's just a band-aid, a temporary coping mechanism at best. At some point, we must recognize that the problem is systemic and stop blaming individuals for engaging the dysfunction on its own terms.
boy I've never seen Blow be so obviously wrong on something. How is pomodoro and anki a get rich scheme? He rants every day about how hardware have better and better design and yet software design is still like it was in the 90 and somehow he doesn't realize the obvious fact that we have better methods for learning that what we had as hunter gatherers... Nope, you slam your head against a book, "just train it like a muscle." Talking about that, in our early days, Sapiens worked LESS than we currently do. If someone wants to work more for more money, I am all for it. But 99% of the people talking about these issues say something more along the lines of "huh, I work 37.5 hours a week and yet most of my salary goes into my apartment, one which is cheap for my area". It seems as if Blow understands this and yet is fixed on a niche part of that sentiment which are hard Marxist or believe that work doesn't make you an expert. Maybe I am naïf, But i think most people know that Carmack wouldnt be anywhere without extreme amounts of work hours.. Again, the concept that humans should be fine with less than 40 hours a week is one held before words.
Jonathan Blow actively practices meditation, so I don't think he intends to suggest that people learn or focus best without applying any technique. I think he specifically dislikes pomodoro for some unclear reasons.
The hard truth is that yes, if you want to be not-mediocre at anything, you have to pursue it obsessively and for a long time. And even then, a lot of it comes down to innate talent. So it's a long, bitter road with only uncertain chances of reward. However, this video may be misleading if one concludes that paid employment is always the way to do this. In many environments, employers want mediocrity and will go out of their way to punish excellence - in the form of firing, micromanagement, bullying, etc. A priority in the contemporary business environment is to keep workers from getting leverage. If someone does better-than-average work, they become less replaceable, and they can negotiate for more. If you are in a job where excellence is tolerated or even encouraged, then you are very lucky.
Well it's not just contemporary. Employers (or masters as Adam Smith called them) have always sought to prevent employees from gaining leverage. Even if you do better than average work you can't negotiate for more because there is a lot of semi-collusion that goes on to keep pay suppressed. You don't have to pursue something obsessively to avoid being mediocre either.
I think there's something to be said for "how" someone works, in the sense that you can work a certain way where you are learning and improving your skills. Or another way where you are just completing assigned tasks to acceptable levels and not really push yourself to do anything new. I believe that if you are passionately driven to increase a skill or knowledge, you aren't exactly "working" in the sense that being passionately engaged in something is enjoyable or even thrilling. Where as simply completing assigned tasks while not learning anything or trying to tie it into your learning process is just soulcrushing. But this is everyone's personal responsibility. I think you should endeavor to make sure that your activity remains beneficial to yourself. And I think it's normal to encounter situations where that is not the case. But that is when you need to take charge and seek to change that situation for your own sake
I understand what you mean. And I do work way more than 40 hrs week (just not for my employer). BUT, I still believe you have to set boundaries to protect your health and family time. Otherwise you'll risk ending up being a fat lonely developer. Even though I really love programming, I still need to remind about this myself.
Problem with modern day "hard work" is that it has turned into some douchebag manager forcing you to work friday nights so you can get some shittiy feature out for no reason other than to make this manager look good. People will work hard and more than they have to if the work they're doing directly benefits them. Doing mindless bullshit that you know has absolutely no urgency other than a made up target deadline is what causes burnout. In modern day society theres little reason to honestly work hard. You do just enough to not get fired ala Office Space. Sure there will be periods where you feel extra motivated, maybe a new job, maybe a competitive spirit, but ultimately everyone will regress to doing just enough a not any more. The hardness of our work does not matter as much as politics and knowing the right people.
What's missing is a discussion of the fact that you could work 100+hours a week and still not be the best programmer in the world. The real skill is in finding the thing in life that you can pour your soul into AND HAVE IT PAY OFF. Some people are down for that search.
What perplexes me that it seems that he has done absolutely zero research on this subject. You *do* need to put in the hours to get good, yes, but what matters is the 'intentionality' that you do it with. Just spending 80 hours a week copy-pasting solutions from Stack Overflow will just make you an old, tired, jaded, self-righteouts but still low-skilled programmer.
@@Milan____ ...But if you pay attention to him he expresses the same sentiment. He mentions that your brain needs to feel tired from thought-intensive deliberate work. What you're trying to imply he said is something that he has already implicitly rejected, if you watch this whole video. How are you missing this?
@@AtmoStk I see your point, and I appreciate you clarifying this, but why would I watch the whole video when I already am irritated and feel like he's full of crap by the third of it? Time is valuable.
When people say that in previous centuries people worked 3 days a week, or worked hard only half year, they don't realize how hard is actually to survive, if you lived in village you understand that there is no division between work and free time. You always have stuff to do at home, prepare firewood, feed animals, bring water from well and other really physically hard things which are not considered work, they worked not only in field, but at home. Our generation is really first generation which have opportunity to work less. I totally agree with this speech, you must be realistic about your choices and trade-offs, if you want to be great and if greatness is thing which brings meaning to your life, you have no other option but work hard. For me personally it's better to make not so much money and not to be greatest professional, but to have more free time for family, travels and hobbies. But that's a choice and it has cons as well as pros and not to be disappointed you must understand them =)
So it was basically better than most people's lives today. The majority still have to do work at home. Repairs, cleaning, cooking and so on. Except now for most of those people they also have to work at least forty hours plus another ten hours commuting per week.
17:40 it really seems like a case of they are just obligated to spent 250 days working for their lords profit. While forgetting the remaining days are available to work for themselves. Make a bed, fix the roof, make some coins, purchase something. The work that makes their life more worth living.
The important part is the beginning. You guys make games for a living, and are passionate about that. How many people do you think are passionate about making a storefront for Kroger, or making an app for interacting with your bank? Some. But not many.
I love the man, tho I think that in this conversation he's missing a fairly important point which is having time for your family and people that are close to you. It's just not possible to work 12 h a day and still maintain close relationships with the people you love at least in my opinion. And to stay mentally and physically healthy. So not committing all your day to work isn't just being lazy. It's way more complex than that and I think that Jonathan misses a lot of factors in his conversation and leaving them out of the conversation seems a bit odd. Of course, I don't deny that his point of view may be perfect for his particular situation, tho I don't think that that's the case for most people. He ignores a lot of factors here and I find the way he reacts to this subject really strange. It's really funny to me because I really love his work and talks and here I just completely disagree with his behaviour and the way he approaches the subject
You missed the point completely. It does not matter what your excuse is for not putting in the "crazy" hours, there's always going to be someone who will put those hours in regardless and he will most likely get ahead of you. You don't have to feel bad about it, just acknowledge the facts. If you CAN decide between watching netflix or doing more work, you can choose the work and get ahead of those who decide to chill and watch netflix. Then again, some people need that relaxation of watching netflix in order to do more work without collapsing and losing even more time overall, but there are people who don't need the netflix relaxation and who do not collapse from continuous working. Naturally those people will get shit more done. All he is saying don't listen to these vague rules or recommendations about what's a proper time to work per week. Everyone should decide that themselves depending on what is their personal situation and what they value in life. Your reasons of not working 12 hours a day because of family are very valid. You value your family more than doing more work, but you COULD abandon your family and focus on work only. Some "psycho" will do just that, and he may be better than you at the things he spends his time on.
@@meanmole3212 sure, you have very valid points. Still I totally understand what he meant, but it's just not the first time I hear a tech/gamedev guru talk about not being lazy and spending all your time working. I think that the family/relations matters should then be also discussed as they are really important and many people especially in tech fields have a tendency to have problems with social interactions, at least from my experience. I wouldn't call relationship matters sth that you can skip and that makes you lazy. It's a critical matter that relates to many people in IT and to me it's too often left undiscussed. That's just my opinion and I stand by it. But thanks for sharing your point of view on it. We can have a different opinion on the matter, that doesn't mean that I've missed the point completely :)
@@macieksozanski9723 I think the question of how family relationships affect programmer's well-being and performance is a different discussion. Furthermore, I must have missed the part where choosing family over work effort was considered laziness. It's not laziness, it's just a neutral choice. However, there's nothing you can do to robots like John Carmack who willingly choose to do more work instead of spending time on social relationships compared to other programmers. It's not like we are going to prohibit those individuals from working more than others so that they do not learn to be masters of their trade faster than others. At least I hope not...
The only reason people find this contentious it that A.) they feel the statement is some judgement about their worth (if I don't work a lot, I won't be great, therefore I'm not as valuable as another person who does) - pure ego. If you take the statement at it's face, it shouldn't be a judgment about you, just your level of skill. B.) People who talk a lot about work/life balance have never experienced dedicating themselves to something they're passionate about. They think work is something that gets in the way of their free time. If something is a passion, the drive to continue to do it will be pretty limitless and you want to live and breathe it. If you say that's true and you want free time, then I'd argue you haven't really found that drive. You don't HAVE to have it, it's just something that people who have it understand. C.) You can absolutely spend a lot of time working and spend time with your family. If you're truly driven about something, you'll find creative ways to do both. You may not advance as fast as someone who completely ignores their family, but you CAN still be just as great. Sean Murray, creator of No Man's Sky, literally created an entire game universe while being married and having a young kid. He was on a team of like 2 people.
I think you missed Jonathan's point. He clearly stated that one is not better than the other. You want to work 4 hours a day and still be as good as someone who works 12 hours a day. That's impossible and not how the real world works. Feel free to spend time with your family, but don't guilt trip / gas light others who want to dedicate their life to their craft.
i think, it doesnt have anything to do with the hours put in, you can learn the basics of any language in a couple of hours, its the exposure to certain problems that makes the appearent nature of lesser problems quite obvious that propells learning forward. its all about the exposure and people shield guarding you from certain experiences can actually stunt your joy and growth in general. life begets life, if you want to create, start with your life.
If this guy works so hard and it goes so well for him then why has he released so few projects? And if this is to make him happy then why is he so grumpy all the time? And why is he called blow if he sucks so much?
Back in 3000 BC the idea of "Work-life Balance" was called "Keeping the Sabbath". So, if you take at least one day off a week, that's the ancient's idea of the appropriate balance.
He talks about the people who didn't work as hard , they got demolished . Why are you taking the jews in 3000 bc as an example ?they got conquered,deported,enslaved ,again and again by people who didn't keep the sabbath and there was no negotiating like the phonecians on the coast who could obtain limited independance because they were useless and didn't work on the sabbath
12:23 Working 5 times longer may not get you 5x as much money as someone working a regular 9-5 job. It's more likely that they'll get a 10% increase in salary so long as "the company is MY LIFE. Please notice me, Senpai!" Now if that person wanted to make their own company and get the money to delegate their thousands of tasks to different people, I'm okay with that. They just need to acknowledge that they need to work smarter BEFORE working harder.
"Through almost none of human history did anyone has any idea of work-lif balance." - yea, humans also used to die at 50 back in the days, if they not wealthy enough. Judging something by the virtue of it being "new idea" is just stupid. Almost all modern medical equipment is "new" and was invented in the last 50 years - you wouldn't use it just cause it's new? You are working in an IT field, that was literally non existent 100 years ago and somehow you can't fathom the fact that "new things" can be good...
Totally true JB. I had the chance to work for Elon Musk, but decided I would rather spend more time with my family than work 60hr weeks on something super cool. All the best for those who do, and I'm glad I have the option instead of being an indentured serf who has to work the hours just to feed his family.
I usetoo code for 12 hours a day, i usetoo practice videography 10-12 hours a day, and i usetoo produce music 10-12 hours a day. I got good at all three of those things in different sections of my life so far. Work life balance is an absolute joke
You can all agree or disagree. But the best people in their fields have one thing in common: they work a lot. How many hours do you think Einstein, Newton, Galileo, and the rest of geniuses work? A lot. Because they loved it. Geniuses are not only born, they are also created. You need both, the aptitude and the hard work.
context matters. this conversation cannot exist is a vacume. its like saying:"dogs bad". Yeah dogs can be great, but i dont wanna see one in the kitchen of a restaraunt i dine in. I'm very confused what the rant is about tbh.
I do not believe it is possible to put in more then 4 hours a day of PURE working time a day. I am 35 currently. Before 30 - I was able to work for 4 hours a day of pure time, but later at 35 my lower back started to hurt and now the most I may put into sitting before computer is 3h a day of pure time…
@Dootie what do you call “complete nonsense”? Also - what do you do for living? What is your age? Do you understand the concept of “pure working time” vs “dirty working time”?
@Dootie it seems you are a bot. You ignored all my questions. Also if I look at your profile it also seems to me as an artificial personeless profile. So if you do not want to conduct 2-way conversation, then I would consider you as a bot.
Ohhh silly me, I thought I'd need a day job to survive because of indie market saturation. The answer was to be born earlier so I could post my games on XBLA instead of Itch like Jon Blow did! Why didn't I just think to do that!? Then I could be the guy who gets to brag about knowing better than everyone else.
When successful people do their "life balance" they often select activities very carefully. So even in time off, they do things that leave mental space to ruminate. Things like walks get you away from the screen, but they think more on the problem they have. I would say going to the gym covers this too.
The issue with work life balance is not about the work. It's about the agency. If I'm a programmer like John Carmack, and I want to work all night because I'm engaged and invested in the code I'm writing, I rest when I'm exhausted, then that's great. When John did his best work, it's not like he had a boss forcing him to do it. He was doing it himself, and not even forcing himself, he wanted to.
Now lets say that you want to be a world class athlete and go to the Olympics. This is the same thing. You'll push yourself, but not force yourself, because you're struggling to reach your goal of being the best, going to the olympics.
But now lets imagine the world class athlete again. You might be aware that a lot of olympic athletes end up working boring jobs. They work in food service, accounting, etc. These people have a lot of stuff to do to train. But is it good for them to then take double shifts at their restaurant, or work overtime at their accounting firm?
You might say that yeah, the athlete isn't aligned with the accounting job. So lets go back to the John Carmack example. Lets say John didn't found id software and instead got a job working as a programmer in a larger corporate modern game studio. Instead fast inverse square root functions to speed up doom computation he instead is forced to program to spec of a lead who is categorically dull. Maybe he is learning, but since he doesn't have the agency to be self directed, he can barely grow. When he goes home at night, maybe he works on his hobby projects. When he has to work overtime at his job, he loses out on that self-directed time.
So because of this, the issue with work life balance is not about "work". Lots of hobbies in other circumstances can be considered "work", but because you call them hobbies, they get found on the "life" side of the work life equation. Becoming an olympic athlete is not a hobby, but it's also not their day job. Work life balance is about how much you can control. You get to be an olympic athlete because you can control it. If you were forced to work 14 hour shifts 7 days a week at a fast food place, you would not have the required work life balance to become an olympic athlete.
So what happens when you are in a situation where you have autonomy to work and the fruit of your work can make a living for you? Well, in that case you are fully on the "life" side of work life balance as long as you are in pursuit of what is important to you. But when you get money involved, it gets easy to focus on money and comfort and safety. When you start to work out of fear, or when you start to work in response to other people's demands, you can quickly fall into the pattern that is not self directed.
The work I do, I could do after hours because I enjoy it. A problem with this is that not all of it is engaging, not all of it causes me to grow, a lot of it is very dull and frustrating because I'm solving problems that other people created for themselves. If I make a habit of doing this after hours, it sets expectations for other people that I they can demand that I do their stupid things. Now my work isn't entirely doing stupid things, but some of it is, and if I didn't set boundaries, my evenings would easily fill up with stupid things.
In the evening, I do personal work, similar to my work. I do a lot of programming on my own, a lot of investigation, a lot of research. I can only do this because I set boundaries at work. I think this is the difference. Right now, jonathan is in a position where his "work" is self directed. So it's not really work in the same way. When he gets exhausted, he can sleep. When he is interested in another concept, he can explore it. He is not stuck making enterprise middleware, he's making his own programming language and building game engines.
There is another side of this that can impact people like him, and that is where the work is driven by fear, and because of this you don't do things that are healthy for you. If you are not washing, not eating healthily, not sleeping, and you're doing it not because you're just entranced by the work, but because you are terrified that if you don't something bad will happen to you, and this lasts an extended period of time, it's bad, not just because it's unhealthy, but also because it will make you learn more slowly and work more poorly.
Work life balance isn't about working too hard. It's about ensuring you have the available time and energy to do the things that are important to you. When the stuff you call work is the stuff that is important to you, then work life balance is satisfied. This basically only happens if you're independently self sufficient or maybe self employed. Most people don't relate to that, but rather relate to an employee employer relationship where you don't work towards your goals, but to your employer's. In this case, work life balance is about ensuring you have that self directed time. If you want your employees to feel this way as an employer, you need to not just let them do the thing that they love, but give them control over it and ironically give them the capacity to set boundaries.
Excellent summary. I fully agree with what Jonathan is saying, and I'm passionate about dev work and could do it all day long, but I'm paid well and come from a reasonably comfortable family so was well educated. Taking the example of the child olympic athlete, a majority of those children come from wealthy backgrounds and have the actual option/agency to pursue it full time (parents paying for training/having time to take them to training etc). While not impossible it is far more unlikely for a poor kid to reach the same level. Take one look at actors/musicians for another example.
Maybe if you spent less time justifying your laziness and more time working you'd be better off.
Work life balance for "you" might be actual balance. But for a lot of the people on the internet, its a rather odd and fascinating twisted monster of complacency and laziness mixed with passive aggressive philosophies like "quiet quitting" where the person doing the job "barely" does the minimum. The original term was meant for people who worked so hard that they had no actual life outside of work... thus they needed more of a life outside work to maintain balance in the their lives. Now it seems that a lot of people have gotten this new idea that they can barely put any effort into "work" and just do the bare minimum and that is how they want to keep their balance... sort of shifted heavily toward the "Life" side, and with much less work. Or, work just the minimum hours required and do only the bare amount necessary for the job without putting effort into the job.
And that is "OK" in that it barely gets them by... but as Jonathan said, those people cannot actually compete or even make anything close to the same income as those that actually work harder. And when the time for a company comes where it needs to lose a few employees because times are tough, the first ones to go will be the ones barely skating by.
These are all good points, however a lot of people do think that work life balance applies to their own self directed work as well.
It's also very misleading to claim that people who work a ton on their own stuff like Carmac, "do it because they like it". The vast majority of high performers feel resistance when trying to work as much as they do, as everyone does, and use some sort of system or habitualization to overcome this (from Grit and Deep Work). Even Jon Blow, who doesn't seem to have a strict regimen or anything still uses meditative techniques to get himself to work longer. It's true in the sense that they like the results of working that much, but people hear things like this and think they're just wake up and naturally feel like working 60 hours a week, which isn't the case.
It's the people that criticize this type of mindset, where you value pushing yourself to work more than you want to, that Jon is arguing against. He thinks others forcing you to work is a bad thing.
To a degree, John probably did force himself, but he had the drive to do it, because he derived happiness from it at an early age. Neurochemistry is complicated, because it becomes a nature/nurture question.
I work a 40 hour week as a programmer yet I learn more about programming in my free time than at work.
This is important - quality is a component being skimmed over here, we're presuming this is x hours of quality work being done. There are jobs where you can work 60 hours and do precisely nothing useful.
Most programming jobs you can spend years doing nothing useful, and learn little of value.
@@RussTeeTromboneexactly, unless you are in a team that produces work that is challenging to you, spending more hours is a waste of time.
work is not for learning
Some thoughts in no particular order:
1) programming is physically taxing. bad posture and lack of exercise tend to compound pretty fast into actual health problems. ignore your body at your own peril.
2) breaks and downtime are important for your mental well-being, concentration and ability to think creatively. smashing your head against a brick wall for hours can be extremely unproductive considering some of the best solutions come to you while showering, taking a walk, sitting in a cafe, etc.
3) not every project / aspect of your work is equally important. it is just as or even more important to be able to identify the 20% of work that gives you 80% of the profits and then maybe move on the the next thing, or at least be aware your time and energy are finite and prioritizing is key.
4) family, friends, etc. are not background decoration in your life
If you can balance all of these effectively, by all means work 100 hour weeks on your passion projects. God knows I have done it at many points in my life. Just remember real productivity is not a function of how many hours you clock in, but how many PRODUCTIVE hours you clock in.
4) He's explaining how to get good at something,you can shame people who love what they do all you want ,doesn't matter to them
enjoy being average
@@bossgd100 ???????
That's if your goal in life is to get rich. My goal is to be happy. I am truly lucky, blessed, whatever you want to call it, but I LOVE my job. That means I don't work an hour a day when I'm coding. Now when I'm going to meetings, or answering emails, that's where the work comes in, but I try to limit that to less than 3 hours a day as a principle. Otherwise I'll never get anything done :). When I get home I code - often. I don't necessarily code on work stuff, but I code on my personal projects which makes me happy. Work stuff sometimes makes me happy too - remember I love my job - so I'll even code on work stuff at home. For me learning is a big part of that, and the reason why I love this job so much. I love learning new things, and being challenged by learning new things, and in the software development business it's a constant learning process - unless you are stuck in a rut.
@@bossgd100 Enjoy health issues and a failing relationship? You can have it all, with balance, my naive boot licker friend.
"work-life balance" is oppressor speak. work is an essential part of life. It's just that most "work" is subordinating yourself to a master who controls everything you do i.e. having a "job". Real work is creative and self directed. The term "work" has been made synonymous with slavery and now we lack the language to even express the notion.
Completely disagree. My work is creative and self directed and all the ills ppl bitch about apply to it just as well. Also there's much more risk involved and I need to waste my own self-control for scheduling instead of some manager or director spending it on me. When I think about "easy way out" - it is actually that "oppression" of agreeing to work for a wage. Then someone else would get the "privilege" of direction and I would have delimited tasks and get the "drudgery" of applying skills to solve them and get satisfaction and money from it.
Obviously I'm choosing it, so I do prefer it. I do want this challenge. But it's not like you get your own project started and realistic way of achieving it, and now you are just overflowing with motivation and happiness whenever you sit to work on it because "no master is enslaving you anymore".
In Russian word for work (работа) literally starts with slave (раб)
My problem with Jonathan Blow is that like many people in tech, he's gotten pretty advanced by learning on his own. The blind spot I see over and over again in his thinking (and sometimes in his games as well) is a lack of knowledge and context outside of that field. Tech people (of which I am one) think, "Well, I'm an intelligent person, surely by sitting around and thinking about this issue deeply, I will arrive at the correct conclusion," even when you're saying things that are 100% wrong because they lack any context or knowledge from other domains like history, philosophy, or art. At 15:03 he declares that "work-life balance" is some modern invention because he's placing it in the context of "people on social media say this," as though there aren't incredibly famous schools of thought such as the Tao Te Ching, the American Trancendentalist movement, the poetry of Rumi, or even the concept of the Sabbath as a day on which you should not perform work are all just a handful of a massive number of historical precedents. I have been a professional programmer for 15-20 years, and I have seen coders spend countless hours bouncing the same ideas around their own head about technology and society rather than pick up a goddamn book that is about society rather than technology.
He never said you shouldn’t rest.
Sabbath is a rest. When did he say you had to work every day? He said that someone working 60h a week will be more skilled than someone working 30h a week.
And the developers you see spending a lot of time while achieving nothing is another matter. It’s all the IT developers doing OOP shit, clean code, MVC vs MVVM architecture battle, etc which he addresses in other videos.
They avoid learning the fundamental skills of programming and keep themselves busy in pointless arguments and refacto.
Obviously spending time isn’t enough if you waste it on stupid stuff. You talk about bias but playing dumb by stating or assuming stuff he doesn’t think is no better.
@@AChannelINeed Great way to refute nothing that was said in the comment you're replying to
JB does great work but you should never take advice on work-life balance from a 50 year old man without a wife or kids. His life is making games.
His life is not making games. He puts on this facade of being some veteran grizzled dev who programmed 8bit NES games, but if you actually look at his career he's done very little. He did a little trivial contracting work in the 90s (all worthless stuff that never went anywhere), and then he did two indie games. He's a lightweight and a charlatan.
@@bobsaget9182 lol wow, you really went hard. His 2 games are not too impressive, they are games that can be built with unity in less than 3 months. However, you have to give him credit for building his own engine, that stuff is very difficult to do.
@@bobsaget9182 Not everyone's feats are showcased on the internet
The envy runs thick in this thread 😂 lmao
@@bobsaget9182 And you still find time to criticize him! Point proven!😂 Aren’t you dead!
Jonathan Blow sigma grindset
**takes a knee**
I love the pragmatism here. No shame for people who don't want that lifestyle, but also acknowledgement of where and for whom it is appropriate.
Yes, exactly. I totally agree.
Respecting both sides.
Most people don't care about their job. There's not that much meaningful work to do. Most of it is non-sense for the sake of it. Carmack and Blow work for themselves on their own projects for their own personal success.
The concept of work-life balance, if it has any legitimacy, is actually about one thing and one thing only: ownership. And I don't mean "ownership" as in "your boss gives you the 'autonomy' to make your own decisions and then he still owns all the work you produce". I mean ownership as in actual property-rights ownership.
"Work" is the stuff you do as villein to enrich your liege lord/employer. "Life" is the stuff you own yourself.
The only reason to produce code for a wage, that someone else is going to own the IP rights to, is if you need to pay rent and groceries and your heating bill, but haven't accumulated enough capital to work for yourself. I.e. you are basically a villein who hasn't earned enough to purchase your way out of your oath of fealty and become a freeman.
John Carmack didn't work 80 hours a week to produce someone else's intellectual property and enrich someone else. He worked 0 hours per week producing intellectual property for others. He was the co-founder of id. He had ownership over everything he produced. Every single hour of labor he exerted was directly benefiting and enriching himself.
Unless you are being paid untold sums of money to do it, no one in the West should ever work more than 40 hours a week for an employer. Is your wage going to make you as wealthy as producing and owning Doom? No? Then don't work as hard for your employer as John Carmack did for himself. The goal is working 0 hours for the benefit of someone else.
Jonathan owns Braid outright, and he founded Thekla. He worked very briefly as a software developer for an employer after he dropped out of Berkeley, and he was terrible at it and hated it, and then founded his own games company with a friend. Essentially his entire working career he has never worked for an employer.
Blow works 0 hours for an employer, that's 40 hours less than the "work life balance" people he's criticizing. His ratio of work to life balance is 0% work, 100% life, and that is the ideal ratio for a human being.
If every hour you spend on labor is directly benefiting you, and you have property ownership rights over every line of code you write, then why in the hell wouldn't you work 80 hours a week or more?
This is very well put and I almost completely agree. There is also a problem in corporate environments that increasing your work output does not linearly increase your pay, nor does slacking necessarily decrease it, although that can also be true for projects you do own.
Then found a compnay, it costs you literally nothing to program.
This person gets it
exactly this. your unconscious would only be on board 100% with your efforts if you do it for you.
I sense strong feelings of a lack of control over one's life. A bit of resentment. Etc. Work == Effort. Doesn't matter if it is for someone else, purely for yourself, whether or not it is making you any money. Work is time, patience, diligence and dedication. What he means by work, isn't just your job. It is the amount of time and energy you spend on continually trying to improve yourself, skills, etc. Work is an abstract class. When you've got too much of an outside mental framework that shapes and informs all of your opinions, as determined by the ideas of someone else, you end up having to clumsily shoehorn all of that ideology into unrelated, more universal discussions. You could literally go to a hippie commune in 1967 and the odds are that a discussion just like this could still be had, in a situation entirely removed from your idea of what constitutes work or a work environment.
I think very few people even really strive to belong to the best, and those who do, are working all the time automatically without thinking much about it, because the interest in the work keeps you going.
When they do try to be the best, the get slammed with the "Elitist" label.
I can't imagine getting tired after 6 hours. Since 1978 you can't drag me away from the computer with wild horses. Loved this rant.
Just because someone is successful and known as a game dev/designer, doesn't mean their thoughts about other things are valuable.
Watch the Lex Friedman podcast with Carmack. Carmack never remotely did any some sort of "olympic training".
The dude barely woke up before noon throughout most of his life. He's 52 now and he's saying he's "trying to push his schedule back to wake up at 8am", had been waking up at 10am even in his late 40's. He talks about how he'd roll into the office at 2pm half the time at id. Yeah he'd nerd out until late at night drinking diet coke, but not because he was "working hard", because he was doing everything for himself on whatever he was interested in.
This is no olympic athlete, this is just somebody who his whole life got to work on absolutely whatever the hell he wanted that he was interested in himself. His entire life he has worked for himself enriching himself, on whatever schedule he wants. Work means the stuff you do for an employer, life means the stuff you do for yourself, and by that token Carmack has never had any "work-life balance", he's been 100% his own life. He's never had to work a job for an employer, he's always been lucky enough to work for solely for his own benefit and his own interests. In his 20's that was for himself at id which he owned, now at Occulus it's making millions and millions to be given totally free reign as a consulting CTO, again in practice working just for himself.
I don't know when Blow wakes up, but Blow is the same. The dude has barely worked a day in his life for an employer. He dropped out of college. He quit his real programming job and started a games company almost immediately to do just what he was interested in. His whole career has been 0% work 100% his own life and his own interests. That is the ideal work-life balance: 0% work for other people, 100% everything for yourself and your own company that you own.
working hard did not worked for me. Wasted 10 years to figure that out. Instead I`ll aim, to do something I enjoy and at the same time which is paid for
I can’t help but wonder whether the thing you worked hard at was music…
no man on his death bed has ever said "you know what i regret not being able to go to work for one more day".
@dootie8285they key is HIS, not some billionaire's pockets. Most os us work for OTHERS
No need to take it so literally xd. For majority of people thats the case. People like mozart are outliers in this case. For majority of people work is nothing but a responsibility, they do it to be able to live. Not everyone finds their passion on something that they can monetize.@dootie8285
as if you know what every man has said on his death bed
@@w0nnafight is it not common sense though?
@@akj3344 Nope. People regret not going after their dreams. And the only way to go after your dreams is working hard, one day at a time.
On the athlete comparison: Muscles grow during the rest after training. So athletes actually benefit from resting well.
Everybody does, even when it is mental rather than physical effort. There is already a lot of evidence that most people benefit from intermittent periods of practice rather than practicing something for hours on end.
Yeah that analogy made no fucking sense
Straw man
I like how he talks mad shit about flash cards and then you have John Carmack on the Lex Fridman podcast admitting that he's using them to learn better.
There's a lot of good advice and truth here. "Work harder = more skill" is mostly true, and I think that's the key point here. I think that the idea that "work harder = more money" AS A LINEAR FUNCTION or better than linear (mentioned after the halfway point) is just plainly misguided though. That's just not how it works a lot of the time. That would be exceedingly fair, and life isn't fair. So I think you definitely need to differentiate between different outputs, and not just treat money(work hrs), skill(work hrs), or whatever else as equivalent functions. There's also just lots of factors besides hard work, including shifting economic conditions etc when it comes to some of these like money. I think the real issue is that people use all these functions as excuses not to try or work hard, and that's not good.
I see your point, however people who do spend a lot of time improving their skills also tend to make a lot more money than those that don't. Working harder doesn't mean more money, but being more valuable by having useful skills does (which seems to be what Jon was getting at).
"Work harder = more money" is absolutely true when the identity of the person is a constant.
It is not true between different people though, for a ton of reasons.
It’s not linear my dude in the real world. Complain about it as much as you want but it won’t change.
This is the problem with the redpill sigma grind mindset, thinking doing xyz will guarantee xyz and then being mad and lashing out and blaming society because the result didn’t match your expectations. It’s a type of entitlement just as bad as people expecting things when not putting the work in.
The world has never been nor will ever be meritocratic. Goodness and hard work and following the rules sometimes are not rewarded. Deal with it
no we should not deal with it, the system has to change, the idea that we should reward some and punish others for things they have nothing to do with (their genes, epigenetics and circumstances) is insane and has nothing to do with the actual world as it is. A person cannot deserve anything more than anyone else.
Important thing to note here is Jonathan Blow doesn't have a family. Maybe I'm wrong about that but I've never heard him talk about his wife or kids and google doesn't say anything about it.
Yeah, like, men didn't have wives and kids before 1990, so they had to balance work and life to stay on track.
@@dimitarzitosanski3105 epic comment
@@dimitarzitosanski3105 According to history, they mainly regulated all the work relating to the kids to the wives since most women have historically been stay-at-home housewives. So, no, they didn't really subscribe to "work-life-balance" even then.
Hunter gatherers had a lot of free time afaik
*It's common sense when technology blew up work life boundaries got blurred , you can get email , messages call in personal time , that's how idea originated, timing pf it exactly coincides with advent of emails , internet popularity*
Im not sure if the analogy works with olympic atheletes.
Most of them do not train for more than a few hours a day, simply because doing more results in overtraining which will make your body deteriorate.
Many even have jobs next to their training.
I was just gonna say that lol
@Aldari Kinda misses the point but whatever.
@Aldari Working a 20 hour work week for 10 years is about 10k hours accumulated.
I get your point, but I don't think this is accurate for a lot of athletes. Top cyclists like armstrong back in the day would have training sessions that last about 5-6 hours. Similarly, most of the top climbers spend 4-6 hours a day working routes, and another 2-3 on training and conditioning. Most sport training seems to follow this cycle, ie a few hours physical training on top of many hours of technical practice.
A better example would've been esports, since overtraining isn't a risk there. That's a field where most of the top performers do train 70-80+ hours a week.
"Long hours of work is how you get good" is not true.
Only sometimes long hours can improve results, but there are many other factors (learning new perspectives, information, sharing experiences, resetting your thought flow to make you think in new ways, etc.).
Long hours are a way to get more things done when you know exactly what you're doing and are at peak form.
long hours = more experience -> more experience = get good -> get good = outperform the average
@@johnuII that's what I'm talking about. You think that there is a linear relationship between time and experience but it's simply not true.
@@incole7041 It doesn't make sense but ok, in my life the "git gud" works
@@incole7041 deliberate practice is the least that is expected of a programmer
I have almost zero life and almost zero work. My existence is perfectly balanced.
How is it 2 years later? Has it evolved, or did it devolve as it usually does?
Dilbert had a comic strip about this
I'm convinced that if I got married and had a kid back in my late teens/early twenties, (currently 25) I wouldn't have learnt how to program at all, at least at a competent level because it already takes me forever to really master a concept as a bachelor. Lmao.
yes
The English and the Americans are singing about 16 hour work days, doing 16 hour work days, and then in the end the Germans with the 8 hour work days are producing the cars 2 times cheaper and everything works.
Just because the Anglo-American culture by design produces bad technical experts doesn't mean that all countries should work 16 hours to match a German's 8 hour work day. (The Anglo-American culture assumes that intellect is the most important quality of a technical professional, but in reality it's the 3rd or 4th most important and the Germans know this.)
And what are the 1st ,2nd and third qualities?
@@titanicisshit1647 In my experience, this is how I would rank them:
1 - communication. Communicating your own ideas & facilitating others to communicate theirs. That means actually LISTENING to people & not being afraid to admit if you don't understand. (The Anglo-American staple is to enjoy the sound of your own voice over everything)
2 - teamwork. The success of the project is more important than your personal success. Anglo-Americans go to work to stand out. They don't care about the project. Germans go to work so that the project succeeds.
3 - systems thinking and multi-discipline knowledge. This seems to be especially important for programmers. Engineers and physicist tend to develop this quality early. But in my experience, programmers are a lot more close minded & don't study other fields nearly as much. This is a pity because some of the greatest ideas in math, physics, etc. came from studying other fields. Also, a lot of SW projects fail because of factors unrelated to the code (psychology, business, etc.).
Sorry for the long post and I hope you find it interesting!
@@dickpiano1802 he talks about those problems a lot ,but here he is focusing on how to become a good programmer individually
here is my take:
I don't care about my employer's problems. I have tried to find some meaning in those tasks but at the end of the day they all feel superficial to me. Its simple transactional to be, you buy my dev time, simple, no culture bullshit, plain old transaction. So I don't feel right when I have to work over time, instead I feel very bad about it. And overwork is a norm in my country (India) that too without fair compensation.
I can put my being into work if I find it meaningful but they can never be someone else's ideas. Not average ones.
I really really disagree with that definition of burnout. You can be a total success, but the crunch and deadlines to get there can be mentally exhausting to the point of burnout even if you love what you do. One of the consequences of burnout is that you stop enjoying the work you previously enjoyed, so "just enjoy work and be successful" is backward.
And also, repeated short breaks and spaced repetition make sense, it has been scientifically tested and proven to help with productivity and learning for just about everyone. "Psychological muscles" is not even a thing that exists, it's at best a myth, just as "training willpower" is just a myth that has been disproven with the same types of long-term experiments that gave rise to the theory of willpower in the first place.
It seems like Jon is convinced that "You can work long hours if you just do it", I say that's BS and instead "You can work long hours if you dedicate your life to it". If you build your job around your passion/interest, build yourself and your life to support your work maximally, and not working past the point of mental fatigue (like you do when you have crunch, crushing deadlines, etc. ), you will work maximally. If you just work more just to be able to work more, you WILL burn out. Also, if you are living a healthy lifestyle you can put in more dedicated hours where your mind is focused because you have the energy to do so. Build your life around your work.
The tradeoff thing makes sense, but the tradeoff is less like "Either you put in the hours or you travel", and more like "If you build your life around the fun things you want to do in life, you cannot build your life around your work, and you then cannot be maximally productive ever".
All the great inventors of history dedicated their life to their work, they did not just "work more". The "dedicated their lives to" part cannot be understated.
Passion's a joke bud. Fake news just like "training willpower" is fake news.
@@weirddingus4620 Yeah, I've heard the Mike Rowe take on that, not sure what to make of it yet. I've seen people who can be super excited and creative when doing anything they set their mind to, and I've seen the opposite.
The Polgar twins experiment is also a really interesting take on passion. Go to these twins and say that their passion for chess does not exist because passion does not exist, and they will laugh in your face. But also, their passion for chess was completely manufactured by their parents as a (sort of) scientific experiment. Look up the Polgar twins experiment for more on that.
I dunno man, it's weird. Passion definitely exists IMO, but you can become passionate about anything if you know how to do it.
Did you achieve what he has achieved? So who is correct probably?
@@thewiseone1785 Wow, so cool very comment. Very nice. So smart.
@Adam Henriksson it was pretty smart
I started as a junior engineer 5 years ago, fresh from college. I worked very hard and put like 60-70 hrs a week for at least 2 years. Not because I was forced, but because I enjoyed it and loved it. The team I started with had a senior and 2 mid level engineers. Five years after, I am above them in position and knowledge. I’m not with that team anymore, I moved to another team when I outgrew it. I don’t work as hard anymore, but I do take extra time every week to keep learning. About 5-10 hrs. I’m pretty sure my old teammates didn’t put not even an extra hour. That’s the difference. Hard work pays off. If you enjoy it, it doesn’t feel like working, and it’s a long term investment in yourself. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise
As a counterpoint to this: Work-life balance isn't laziness. It's discipline. Sure, you can work 100-hr weeks on making a game but if you don't have the self-discipline to look after yourself you'll inevitably damage your mental and physical health, which then leads to reduced work because you are burnt-out.
I agree that if you want to be the best at anything sacrifices have to be made.
Work life balance attempts to educate and prevent us from waking up having made the wrong decision. Every decision is fine as long as you are aware of the consequences. The work life balance theory just serves as an alternative. I do not see anything wrong with it.
There's no guarantee you'll ever be the best. The focus shouldn't be on "being the best" but being as good as you want to be since that's a more intrinsic metric.
@@weirddingus4620 That is part of the risk analysis and consequences equation. Also working towards "being the best" is probably more likely to get you closer at being the best than having a mindset of "I am never going to be the best". Be the best or die trying. In the end if you really can honestly live by those words your whole life, it does not matter if you reach the ultimate goal or not, because you tried, you gave your best and there is nothing else you could have done to it. That is how some people see it.
Another topic not often brought up is that of specialization vs interdisciplinary career paths. I could see some people easily interpreting this video as being only applicable to a specialized career since the only example we see from the video for enjoying your work is when you're dedicated to one discipline, but taking breaks from one discipline to work on another can allow both productivity and provide breaks. I wouldn't say that this is the most efficient way of working and interdisciplinary careers aren't as likely to be world class performers as was stated in the video, but I do find that overspecialization is a thing, and even though they might not be considered breaks as in periods of not working, I think having varied interests and a diverse schedule can lead to a more balanced skillset for certain people and can keep you from plateauing or getting stuck in a rut.
Kinda similar to the discussion on multitasking and how it affects productivity now that I think about it. Though not quite the same at larger time scales, the way both mutlitasking and interdisciplinary experience affects one's ability to see the big picture and introduce changes in perspective is valuable enough to be notable I think.
9:49 Spaced repetition in the context of active recall is a great studying tactic. Not sure why Jonathan doesn't take solace in Anki...
Spaced repetition is a great tool. Don't understand his criticism, since using SRS does not imply studies only x minutes or y hours. I did SRS-based studying sometimes for several hours a day during intensive language courses. Without it I probably would have wasted lots of those hours...
I think it's pretty obvious that not all work is created equal either. Some tasks are quite simple, routine, or make room for multitasking. As a programmer, your work can span so many disciplines that your "work" can easily be "fun." While we're at it, I even believe that doing something that subjectively feels difficult, pointless, or unpleasant may even be a direct source of exhaustion.
With that said, there is some evidence that most people who attempt to work longer hours actually so much less work done per-hour that they would accomplish more if they spent less time on it. People who think this way also unfailingly refuse to believe that they are too tired to be productive.
Of course work is good and important. That’s why it’s called work/life balance and not “don’t work just life”. There is a benefit to experiencing life outside your work.
I get it what he's saying, but I disagree.
His case and the John Carmack is that both are the owners of the company, so yeah, if they put long hours on work they will get more stuff done and probably will get more money. But if I'm a simple employee, long hours will not result in exponentially more money or even in me getting better at my job as a whole, because I could be working long hours to do stuff that I already know and not in stuff that would improve my skills.
And this topic doesn't even apply for mundane jobs, like, you wouldn't be a better receptionist if you work 12 hours a day instead of 8.
As a side note, his point about long work hours blur when he talks about works hours as a programmer, like, I work 9-5 but on my free time I do side projects to improve my skills, so I think that would include in my work hours as a whole, but in not my main job, so that work on my free time would be considered part of the work-life balance?
But he specifically mentioned such case: working regular job, coming back home and putting the rest of the hours into your own project.
man, stfu and use your brain instead of acting like his on the spot thoughts are a published research paper and trying to dissect each statement for any flaw.
@@weirddingus4620 It's a common thing on the web for people to completely miss the point of a statement, and instead focus on nitpicking. They act like every statement should cover every possible use case. It's just plain mental laziness.
@@etodemerzel2627 But for most people that own project will never pan out into anything major.
@@AtmoStk Well the analogies and examples in the video are simply wrong regardless of your lazy nit-picking.
I think there are decreasing gains as you work past a certain amount, but if you solely want to optimise for becoming a good programmer; I think that your solution is correct!
Sure. But if you’re driven by a desire to produce something, you can just stop when you’re tired and resume when you are rested. As opposed to being chained to “working” for a set period of time when you aren’t productive anyway.
I'm a weird hybrid between overwork and clocking out early because my actual passions aren't necessarily profitable, so I go in and do the boring soulcrushing job that I'm somehow good at and make lots of money from, then clock out and overwork myself on my unprofitable passions.
With that out of the way: I think that everyone has their own personal work-life balance that makes sense to them at any given time because not everyone is passionate about profitable things, but that can also change over time. The people who get to do their passion as a job are the lucky ones. For my current stage in life, clocking out of my job on time is extremely important, but I'm hoping to eventually fix that and find my unicorn job that I will voluntarily work on for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I'm just curious - what's that boring soulcrushing job, and what're those unprofitable passions?
Love love love this! I recently hid away from my current job for a week (actually I'm still in that period of hiding away from my job). I gave no one any real notice to speak of. I made no excuses or justifications. I just hid. I hit some kind of emotional/psychological/physical limit in the weeks leading up to that point with multiple (very serious) family crises outside of work and a job that is just a grind which I don't find fulfilling - quite the opposite actually - I tell people it's slowly eating my soul. I'm always learning outside of work, relentlessly. I have a few ideas I'm passionate about investing in which will require a significant degree of learning and diving deep into unfamiliar technical territory (which I love). I've also noticed over the years that I'm usually most passionate and curious when I'm *not* working (after a few days of downtime typically). I also earn a lot of money (by most people's standards) and have definitely sold out for that in recent years, and yet I'm wrestling with a decision to take 1 year off (knowing that I can easily afford many years of time off work if I really want to do that). It doesn't make sense that this is such a difficult decision for me, but it is. I love your take on this Jon. Thanks for being so "no BS" and honest. Seeing this video is timely and has given me somet things to think about. Really appreciate the wisdom and honesty.
12:30 - Idk about that... and I'm kind of surprised JB said that. Economists want to think and talk as if things like "salaries" or "sales" is as simple as "5x the work equals 5x the profits", but it's definitely not that simple in practice. I don't mean to bash Notch or anything, but there's definitely indie developers that worked harder than Notch and make a fraction of a fraction of money. Luck plays a huge role when it comes to how much money you make, both in terms of someone in the workforce and someone running their own business.
How many of those hard working indie devs make anything as unique (for the time) as Notch?
These days I'd say close to none.
@@Nors2Ka Yea Notch didn't just randomly stumble upon the idea either, and even if he did, it resonated enough with him, that he made something with it of high value.
You can "work hard" at the gym every day, but you'll never get minecraft out of that. There is such a thing as having good judgement too. Those indie-devs are working on more niché things, and the market is more saturated now, less low-hanging fruits, so to say.
If you think those things are luck, then so be it, I just think that what people chalk up to luck, has far more subtleties to it. Luck is to a large extent just the capacity and willingness to grab opportunities in front of you.
I think "working hard" for him does not mean just crunching the hours (which is of course a given) but also trying to come up with new, original solutions to old problems, which is something that is sorely missing from the indie scene unfortunately. Jon made two games that have been wildly successful because they are original and unique and with a concept refined to a T, even if they aren't for everyone. Both of these games came out after a long trial and error process in the concept phase.
Most modern games are just "find what works, and slap a new gimmick on to freshen it up", which is hardly even in the same league of effort, and is making the whole industry stale. I have seen posts by people in tears because they have mortgaged their house and worked long days for years to make a tower defense game... I don't mean to be mean, but if you believe a game that is the same as hundreds of others flooding the market today will make you financially independent you're going down the wrong path.
@@fullmontis "worked long days for years to make a tower defense game".
Yea. No one promised that thickheaded effort in any direction was going to lead to success, yet this is the strawman that many people attack, instead of thinking about why so many people seemingly work so hard, yet get so little in return (both in terms of status, money and meaning).
If what you're working on isn't meaningful to yourself on some deep level, that keeps you thinking about it and playing with it in your mind even when you aren't working, then it's probably not going to be particularly interesting to a person that didn't invest a lot of their life into it.
@@fullmontis I think "working hard" for him does not mean just crunching the hours...
You're essentially rewriting what was in the video inorder to defend what JB said. There was a VERY clear focus on "putting in the hours" throughout the entire video and the sentiment of "everyone who is successful is successful because they put in the hours and everyone that complains just doesn't put in enough hours" is the main problem I had. Granted JB is kind of being put on the spot, and I'm sure he's had a to deal with haters trying to discredit his efforts. I'm not taking what he said as a hard stance on the topic or anything, but still... that sentiment feels overly simplistic.
I actually do get more done at 35 hours a week then 50, because I'm doing interesting and creative work. If I'm always at the computer writing code, then I'll get stuck. I have to step away, do other things, and then come back, and when I come back I'll have a new perspective on something on which I was stuck, or just an idea for a better/faster way to do things.
I've been doing this for years and have just found that creative problem-solving requires regular breaks, and it's when I work too hard without breaks that I go down a wrong path or do ineffective work. I might produce more quantity that way, but less quality, and if that continues then the overall product will be worse.
Jonathan missed the saddening realization that a lot of jobs exists because the employers themselves don't want to do it, many times it is because the jobs are denigrating, exhausting, boring, unethical, unfulfilling or non-educational (or even worse they create bad habbits.)
"Productivity" is overrated. Health is where it's at. Of course it's a balance, but life isn't fair and your inputs will most often not be matched to outputs by your employer. Jon is in a unique situation though where it's his own projects that he works on, and that's where his hypothesis may be true.
You apparently understood nothing of what he said in the video. You're just regressing the discussion to that superficial, work-life balance framing. Saying "productivity is overrated" is ignoring that some people find their work, or the act of working by itself, or the idea of developing their skills, meaningful.
@@franciscofarias6385 No; I am misunderstood. The thesis of my idea is that your health and your productivity are positively correlated. People focus too much on being "productive", when in reality they would get much more done in the same amount of time if they were just healthier. The pinnacle of every human is firing on all cylinders while healthy-- that's how you get to be able to work 60 hour weeks in the first place. Not just physical health, either, but mental, emotional, spiritual. That is what self-actualization looks like. Not working yourself like a dog until you suffer a serious health problem. Then you can't do anything.
@@franciscofarias6385 It's possible Jonathan misunderstands what work/life balance means, possibly because he's never worked a normal job before. It's all about not overworking for your company. Spending your free time improving your craft because you love your craft *requires* work life balance. Are there people who may out work you for a promotion? Yes, but it's also usually the kind of culture you wouldn't want to work for as it promotes putting work over your personal goals (family, personal projects and development, etc). Good managers nip that in the bud, you don't want a rat race to the bottom culture where the most desperate worker willing to put in extra hours to please the boss gets rewarded. That's a easy way to lose good talent that don't need to work overtime to get shit done
I mostly agree with his points here, except that how hard you work does not necessarily translate into success (i.e. working 5x more than someone else doesn't mean you'll eventually get paid 5x more). In my experience, yes, you'll likely get better at whatever it is you're doing if you work 5x more than the average person. However, the rewards are not guaranteed to be linear. Hard work is typically necessary for success, but not a predictor.
But he's absolutely right that if you are complaining that somebody else who worked harder is having more success, well that's on you. If you want to work less, that's totally cool, but don't complain if somebody who worked harder and more hours is more skilled than you.
Blow's description of work in the past and the evolution of work-life balance is pretty ahistoric. Workers were clamouring for the invention of the weekend in the 1800s, and Jewish people have been taking the Sabbath for millennia. Not to mention his idea that hunter gatherers were "working" constantly is weird: there's evidence of humans taking part in leisure activity as far back as recorded history goes. He also misses the fact that our current conception of paid emlpoyment - where someone owns and purchases your time rather than an output - is a modern invention. In feudal society, serfs were given land and their production was taxed, but they weren't filling out time cards. The commodification of time is an invention of the 20th century, and the concept of work-life balance is a response to our current work environment.
when people talk about work life balance. they mean working for someone else. working 80 hours a week for EA is exploitation not grinding. im working 40 hours a week, then spending another 30 hours working on an indie game and i couldn't be happier. because i plan on profiting from my own work.
For me work & life balance thing is actually about trying to not work or think about work all the time and have some time for real rest, because without real rest it's pretty hard to work effectievly, and the problem is that it's pretty hard to split those things, especially when you work from home, and you really like your work. For me this problem is very relevant
"Optimizing your performance at work" is not really what they mean by work-life balance lol
i graduated top of my class and the only reason I did is because I studied more than anyone else
Suprised you took it down got to watch a the way through.
Fixed some volume levels I wasn't happy with.
I think you should never feel like you have to work 12 hrs a day, you should feel like you want to work 12 hrs. When it’s thrust upon you either by direct force or by peer pressure that’s not a good environment, but companies need to create environments where it’s ok to work 12 hrs a day but it’s not required to keep your job. I think it’s hard though to see reality that the person who works 12 hrs a day is likely to be the one who has more doors open to move on and up (it’s not always case but it does help)
If you push yourself to the limits then you are likely to improve.
Here's my thing, I do agree, but I wonder how is his relationship with his kids and family. You can never get that time back, while it's amazing to master a skill. Time with loved ones is forever lost. But I'm guilty of the same, but I get both sides of the argument.
3h of fun and flow state > 12h of forced grind.
The more you do the former, the longer you can manage, but breaks and taking care of your physical and mental health is a prerequisite for that
JB knows that most programming jobs are bullshit. At those actively working to excess on SOLID CRUD Bullshit web applications isn’t going to make one a better programmer.
In fact, considering arbitrary and nonsensical code reviews and “best practices” at these places, more time spent at this kind of work is detrimental to improvement and one who desires improvement should be looking at saving energy for actual programming outside of work.
Best comment here. Most web devs are soy devs
great talk thanks for posting
If your passion in life is programming then 60+ hours spent on programming is not a problem. Even if you have a job working for someone else, that's 40 hours a week for your employer plus 20 hours a week on developing your own passion. Of course you still need work life balance: you still need to devote time to your family if you have one, your health and spiritual development, etc.
If you're working just for someone else though, and you're doing 60 hours a week, that's a problem. Even if you're being paid fairly enough to work 60 hours a week for your employer, the things you're doing just on behalf of your employer are probably not particularly challenging or contributing to your self improvement as a programmer.
If you're just working for someone else and you have no serious stake in your employer or no serious control over direction, if you are going to spend an extra 20 hours a week toward your job/career, you should be spending it on moving your career toward independence or more creative control. Don't grind 60 hours for your employer: put in the 40 hours and then spend 20 hours a week developing your own projects and your own company, or developing new skills to take you somewhere else where you will have more control.
I just noticed that isn't his living room, it's just a background.
Just stumbled upon your channel, great content. I dont know who you are, but you seem to know a lot.
He’s just stating the facts. You could still be pretty good with work life balance, but obviously people who spend more time on something will be better than you
This is so true.
The reason those people don't come into the discussion is because they're the exception. The vast majority of people do whatever work they do because they have to do something to earn a living. Yes, they might like their job, but in most cases they will not get any significant reward for putting more time into their employer's projects. And that's the key part of the work/life balance discussion. Given the choice your employer will happily use up more of your time without paying you. That's where this all originated - the typical employer paying as little as they can get away with then demanding overtime with the threat of firing anyone who doesn't comply.
What I'm surprised about is how he tackles the topic from whole angles, which is a mark for a good and intelligent human being who is aware of what he sais and not just living on autopilot
Something to consider for anyone reading this. Yes at a technical level time spent = greater skill. Its the identical principle of weight lifting. Time under tension produces growth. If you are only interested in technical mastery that is one thing, but producing art through games? That requires vision. A lack of life experience reflects an uninspired vision. To create great works of art one must live a work of art
Olympic athletes compete for the goal that they set themselves. Work forces goals of other people onto you. I program at my job but I also program at home, first one I hate second one I don't. One feels and is work that will just go into pockets of higher-ups because meritocracy doesn't exist anymore.
I used to love both, then I loved second one, now I hate both :D
Meritocracy never existed
I agree with a lot of what Blow is saying here, but the idea that "work-life balance" is a new concept is questionable at best. The struggle for improved working conditions in the modern world dates back to the Industrial Revolution. As early as 1866, there were calls for an 8-hour work day in the US, and this was codified for US government workers in 1869. The Haymarket Riot developed around the struggle for the 8-hour workday in Illinois. Blow is trying to give the impression that "work-life balance" is a new obsession by fluffy, white-collar dilettantes, merely because the term itself is fairly new. But the concept underlying the term "work-life balance" has been a focus of struggle for centuries now, and these struggles have been carried out largely by working-class, salt-of-the-earth laborers.
I do, however, 100% agree with Blow's view on there being dignity and value in work. I think a lot about the culture in Japan of passing the family business down to the oldest child, and how it's kind of expected that a skill that was cultivated for decades by each preceding owner will be taken up by them and passed down to their oldest child as well. I like the idea of making a skilled craft one's life work, and just kind of focusing on and developing that, and taking pride in it. This can definitely enrich a person's life.
What I think Blow fails to address is that the nature of this system we inhabit is unfortunately to extinguish this kind of labor. An individual who hones a craft over a lifetime is simply too indispensable to be allowed to exist. So tasks get broken down and mechanized to the point where one needs relatively little skill to carry out any one part of the process. And the skilled practitioners can't keep up with the hundredfold increase in efficiency brought about by these changes, so they fade away and disappear over time. Given this economic/labor atmosphere in which we reside, I don't think it's unreasonable for people to increasingly feel that work is a burden separate from their lives. There is less and less, after all, to feel proud of. So of course it makes sense for people to start breaking it down into a this-and-that paradigm of "work over here," and "life over there." We can of course try to perform psychological magic and try to rethink our way into a "healthier" perspective, but that's just a band-aid, a temporary coping mechanism at best. At some point, we must recognize that the problem is systemic and stop blaming individuals for engaging the dysfunction on its own terms.
Wow you really broke it down. Excellent comment
Straightforward truth here! Thanks
working 5 times as hard? thats debatable and whats productivity?
I love this, thanks for sharing this clip!
boy I've never seen Blow be so obviously wrong on something.
How is pomodoro and anki a get rich scheme? He rants every day about how hardware have better and better design and yet software design is still like it was in the 90 and somehow he doesn't realize the obvious fact that we have better methods for learning that what we had as hunter gatherers... Nope, you slam your head against a book, "just train it like a muscle."
Talking about that, in our early days, Sapiens worked LESS than we currently do. If someone wants to work more for more money, I am all for it. But 99% of the people talking about these issues say something more along the lines of "huh, I work 37.5 hours a week and yet most of my salary goes into my apartment, one which is cheap for my area".
It seems as if Blow understands this and yet is fixed on a niche part of that sentiment which are hard Marxist or believe that work doesn't make you an expert. Maybe I am naïf, But i think most people know that Carmack wouldnt be anywhere without extreme amounts of work hours.. Again, the concept that humans should be fine with less than 40 hours a week is one held before words.
Jonathan Blow actively practices meditation, so I don't think he intends to suggest that people learn or focus best without applying any technique. I think he specifically dislikes pomodoro for some unclear reasons.
try to learn linear algebra with 25/5 pomodoro
What John might not get it (to use his metaphor):
I don't want to be Olympic class runner. I just like running.
The hard truth is that yes, if you want to be not-mediocre at anything, you have to pursue it obsessively and for a long time. And even then, a lot of it comes down to innate talent. So it's a long, bitter road with only uncertain chances of reward.
However, this video may be misleading if one concludes that paid employment is always the way to do this. In many environments, employers want mediocrity and will go out of their way to punish excellence - in the form of firing, micromanagement, bullying, etc. A priority in the contemporary business environment is to keep workers from getting leverage. If someone does better-than-average work, they become less replaceable, and they can negotiate for more.
If you are in a job where excellence is tolerated or even encouraged, then you are very lucky.
Well it's not just contemporary. Employers (or masters as Adam Smith called them) have always sought to prevent employees from gaining leverage. Even if you do better than average work you can't negotiate for more because there is a lot of semi-collusion that goes on to keep pay suppressed.
You don't have to pursue something obsessively to avoid being mediocre either.
I think there's something to be said for "how" someone works, in the sense that you can work a certain way where you are learning and improving your skills. Or another way where you are just completing assigned tasks to acceptable levels and not really push yourself to do anything new.
I believe that if you are passionately driven to increase a skill or knowledge, you aren't exactly "working" in the sense that being passionately engaged in something is enjoyable or even thrilling. Where as simply completing assigned tasks while not learning anything or trying to tie it into your learning process is just soulcrushing.
But this is everyone's personal responsibility. I think you should endeavor to make sure that your activity remains beneficial to yourself. And I think it's normal to encounter situations where that is not the case. But that is when you need to take charge and seek to change that situation for your own sake
bro just yappin
I understand what you mean. And I do work way more than 40 hrs week (just not for my employer). BUT, I still believe you have to set boundaries to protect your health and family time. Otherwise you'll risk ending up being a fat lonely developer. Even though I really love programming, I still need to remind about this myself.
Problem with modern day "hard work" is that it has turned into some douchebag manager forcing you to work friday nights so you can get some shittiy feature out for no reason other than to make this manager look good.
People will work hard and more than they have to if the work they're doing directly benefits them. Doing mindless bullshit that you know has absolutely no urgency other than a made up target deadline is what causes burnout.
In modern day society theres little reason to honestly work hard. You do just enough to not get fired ala Office Space. Sure there will be periods where you feel extra motivated, maybe a new job, maybe a competitive spirit, but ultimately everyone will regress to doing just enough a not any more.
The hardness of our work does not matter as much as politics and knowing the right people.
What's missing is a discussion of the fact that you could work 100+hours a week and still not be the best programmer in the world.
The real skill is in finding the thing in life that you can pour your soul into AND HAVE IT PAY OFF. Some people are down for that search.
What perplexes me that it seems that he has done absolutely zero research on this subject. You *do* need to put in the hours to get good, yes, but what matters is the 'intentionality' that you do it with. Just spending 80 hours a week copy-pasting solutions from Stack Overflow will just make you an old, tired, jaded, self-righteouts but still low-skilled programmer.
@@Milan____ ...But if you pay attention to him he expresses the same sentiment. He mentions that your brain needs to feel tired from thought-intensive deliberate work.
What you're trying to imply he said is something that he has already implicitly rejected, if you watch this whole video. How are you missing this?
@@AtmoStk I see your point, and I appreciate you clarifying this, but why would I watch the whole video when I already am irritated and feel like he's full of crap by the third of it? Time is valuable.
To achieve anything, you have to sacrifice and dedicate time for it. Choosing to work, instead pf watching a movie
When people say that in previous centuries people worked 3 days a week, or worked hard only half year, they don't realize how hard is actually to survive, if you lived in village you understand that there is no division between work and free time. You always have stuff to do at home, prepare firewood, feed animals, bring water from well and other really physically hard things which are not considered work, they worked not only in field, but at home.
Our generation is really first generation which have opportunity to work less.
I totally agree with this speech, you must be realistic about your choices and trade-offs, if you want to be great and if greatness is thing which brings meaning to your life, you have no other option but work hard.
For me personally it's better to make not so much money and not to be greatest professional, but to have more free time for family, travels and hobbies. But that's a choice and it has cons as well as pros and not to be disappointed you must understand them =)
So it was basically better than most people's lives today. The majority still have to do work at home. Repairs, cleaning, cooking and so on. Except now for most of those people they also have to work at least forty hours plus another ten hours commuting per week.
@@Ian-eb2io tell me you're previleged without telling me you're previleged
17:40 it really seems like a case of they are just obligated to spent 250 days working for their lords profit. While forgetting the remaining days are available to work for themselves. Make a bed, fix the roof, make some coins, purchase something. The work that makes their life more worth living.
The important part is the beginning. You guys make games for a living, and are passionate about that.
How many people do you think are passionate about making a storefront for Kroger, or making an app for interacting with your bank?
Some. But not many.
When introduced to differing opinions: "this is exactly why I like the sub only streams". Living ego can only stand to be surrounded by his yes men.
I love the man, tho I think that in this conversation he's missing a fairly important point which is having time for your family and people that are close to you. It's just not possible to work 12 h a day and still maintain close relationships with the people you love at least in my opinion. And to stay mentally and physically healthy. So not committing all your day to work isn't just being lazy. It's way more complex than that and I think that Jonathan misses a lot of factors in his conversation and leaving them out of the conversation seems a bit odd. Of course, I don't deny that his point of view may be perfect for his particular situation, tho I don't think that that's the case for most people. He ignores a lot of factors here and I find the way he reacts to this subject really strange. It's really funny to me because I really love his work and talks and here I just completely disagree with his behaviour and the way he approaches the subject
You missed the point completely. It does not matter what your excuse is for not putting in the "crazy" hours, there's always going to be someone who will put those hours in regardless and he will most likely get ahead of you. You don't have to feel bad about it, just acknowledge the facts. If you CAN decide between watching netflix or doing more work, you can choose the work and get ahead of those who decide to chill and watch netflix. Then again, some people need that relaxation of watching netflix in order to do more work without collapsing and losing even more time overall, but there are people who don't need the netflix relaxation and who do not collapse from continuous working. Naturally those people will get shit more done.
All he is saying don't listen to these vague rules or recommendations about what's a proper time to work per week. Everyone should decide that themselves depending on what is their personal situation and what they value in life. Your reasons of not working 12 hours a day because of family are very valid. You value your family more than doing more work, but you COULD abandon your family and focus on work only. Some "psycho" will do just that, and he may be better than you at the things he spends his time on.
@@meanmole3212 sure, you have very valid points. Still I totally understand what he meant, but it's just not the first time I hear a tech/gamedev guru talk about not being lazy and spending all your time working. I think that the family/relations matters should then be also discussed as they are really important and many people especially in tech fields have a tendency to have problems with social interactions, at least from my experience. I wouldn't call relationship matters sth that you can skip and that makes you lazy. It's a critical matter that relates to many people in IT and to me it's too often left undiscussed. That's just my opinion and I stand by it. But thanks for sharing your point of view on it. We can have a different opinion on the matter, that doesn't mean that I've missed the point completely :)
@@macieksozanski9723 I think the question of how family relationships affect programmer's well-being and performance is a different discussion. Furthermore, I must have missed the part where choosing family over work effort was considered laziness. It's not laziness, it's just a neutral choice.
However, there's nothing you can do to robots like John Carmack who willingly choose to do more work instead of spending time on social relationships compared to other programmers. It's not like we are going to prohibit those individuals from working more than others so that they do not learn to be masters of their trade faster than others. At least I hope not...
The only reason people find this contentious it that
A.) they feel the statement is some judgement about their worth (if I don't work a lot, I won't be great, therefore I'm not as valuable as another person who does) - pure ego. If you take the statement at it's face, it shouldn't be a judgment about you, just your level of skill.
B.) People who talk a lot about work/life balance have never experienced dedicating themselves to something they're passionate about. They think work is something that gets in the way of their free time. If something is a passion, the drive to continue to do it will be pretty limitless and you want to live and breathe it. If you say that's true and you want free time, then I'd argue you haven't really found that drive. You don't HAVE to have it, it's just something that people who have it understand.
C.) You can absolutely spend a lot of time working and spend time with your family. If you're truly driven about something, you'll find creative ways to do both. You may not advance as fast as someone who completely ignores their family, but you CAN still be just as great. Sean Murray, creator of No Man's Sky, literally created an entire game universe while being married and having a young kid. He was on a team of like 2 people.
I think you missed Jonathan's point. He clearly stated that one is not better than the other. You want to work 4 hours a day and still be as good as someone who works 12 hours a day. That's impossible and not how the real world works. Feel free to spend time with your family, but don't guilt trip / gas light others who want to dedicate their life to their craft.
i think, it doesnt have anything to do with the hours put in, you can learn the basics of any language in a couple of hours, its the exposure to certain problems that makes the appearent nature of lesser problems quite obvious that propells learning forward. its all about the exposure and people shield guarding you from certain experiences can actually stunt your joy and growth in general. life begets life, if you want to create, start with your life.
If this guy works so hard and it goes so well for him then why has he released so few projects? And if this is to make him happy then why is he so grumpy all the time? And why is he called blow if he sucks so much?
Back in 3000 BC the idea of "Work-life Balance" was called "Keeping the Sabbath". So, if you take at least one day off a week, that's the ancient's idea of the appropriate balance.
Depends where you were. Doesn't mean the worked themselves to death the rest of the time either.
He talks about the people who didn't work as hard , they got demolished . Why are you taking the jews in 3000 bc as an example ?they got conquered,deported,enslaved ,again and again by people who didn't keep the sabbath and there was no negotiating like the phonecians on the coast who could obtain limited independance because they were useless and didn't work on the sabbath
Are you live in japan that soft bank thing was so dipressing
Athletes works 7 days a week because there is crystal clear incentive. Gold medal. We as developers don’t have that.
The reason athletes take recovery enhancing drugs is so they can train more, but without them they need rest days or they'll destroy their body.
And still trained less than 40 hours a week. Phelps trained 5-6 hours a day, 6 days a week
12:23 Working 5 times longer may not get you 5x as much money as someone working a regular 9-5 job. It's more likely that they'll get a 10% increase in salary so long as "the company is MY LIFE. Please notice me, Senpai!"
Now if that person wanted to make their own company and get the money to delegate their thousands of tasks to different people, I'm okay with that. They just need to acknowledge that they need to work smarter BEFORE working harder.
"Through almost none of human history did anyone has any idea of work-lif balance." - yea, humans also used to die at 50 back in the days, if they not wealthy enough.
Judging something by the virtue of it being "new idea" is just stupid. Almost all modern medical equipment is "new" and was invented in the last 50 years - you wouldn't use it just cause it's new? You are working in an IT field, that was literally non existent 100 years ago and somehow you can't fathom the fact that "new things" can be good...
Totally true JB. I had the chance to work for Elon Musk, but decided I would rather spend more time with my family than work 60hr weeks on something super cool. All the best for those who do, and I'm glad I have the option instead of being an indentured serf who has to work the hours just to feed his family.
I usetoo code for 12 hours a day, i usetoo practice videography 10-12 hours a day, and i usetoo produce music 10-12 hours a day. I got good at all three of those things in different sections of my life so far. Work life balance is an absolute joke
I'm exosted after 8h / day of work. But I use to love 16h / day working on my own projects.
You can all agree or disagree. But the best people in their fields have one thing in common: they work a lot. How many hours do you think Einstein, Newton, Galileo, and the rest of geniuses work? A lot. Because they loved it. Geniuses are not only born, they are also created. You need both, the aptitude and the hard work.
he finally nailed it at 5:30
context matters. this conversation cannot exist is a vacume. its like saying:"dogs bad". Yeah dogs can be great, but i dont wanna see one in the kitchen of a restaraunt i dine in. I'm very confused what the rant is about tbh.
I do not believe it is possible to put in more then 4 hours a day of PURE working time a day. I am 35 currently.
Before 30 - I was able to work for 4 hours a day of pure time, but later at 35 my lower back started to hurt and now the most I may put into sitting before computer is 3h a day of pure time…
@Dootie what do you call “complete nonsense”? Also - what do you do for living? What is your age? Do you understand the concept of “pure working time” vs “dirty working time”?
@Dootie it seems you are a bot. You ignored all my questions. Also if I look at your profile it also seems to me as an artificial personeless profile. So if you do not want to conduct 2-way conversation, then I would consider you as a bot.
@@vembdev what is your age currently?
3 hour lunch 😂😂😂😂😂. That got me
Ohhh silly me, I thought I'd need a day job to survive because of indie market saturation. The answer was to be born earlier so I could post my games on XBLA instead of Itch like Jon Blow did! Why didn't I just think to do that!? Then I could be the guy who gets to brag about knowing better than everyone else.
Thanks.
When successful people do their "life balance" they often select activities very carefully. So even in time off, they do things that leave mental space to ruminate. Things like walks get you away from the screen, but they think more on the problem they have. I would say going to the gym covers this too.