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Work/Life Balance
Bex Huff says that work-life balance is nearly impossible for good computer geeks. I couldn’t disagree more.
There’s a distinction between creative work that people do for “work” and what they do outside of work. Work/life balance for computer geeks, knowledge workers, or artists has nothing to do with not being creative or solving problems. It’s about giving your brain a break from the same, constant grind and giving yourself time to think and be refreshed.
Like Bex, as a programmer and computer geek, when I go home, I still talk about and think about technology. But that doesn’t mean that I’m still “working.” I may be solving similar types of problems, but I get a lot of relaxation and enjoyment from not working on the same exact problems. Outside of work, I do iPhone development, personal Grails and Groovy projects, AppleScript, play with bayesian algorithms in perl, tinker with embedded linux, spend time with my family, and more. Those are all geeky technology things. But that’s my point - that’s still work/life balance because it gives me a break.
Finally, Bex quotes Isaac Schlueter as saying “An artist doesn’t stop being an artist when he goes home.” It’s true, but that artist doesn’t always work on the same projects when he gets there.
This entry was posted by Scott Vlaminck on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 8:14 am and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Yeah I agree, it depends on what part of your job you consider “work”. For me, my favorite hobby is also my job. So in that sense, most of my job I don’t really consider work, as I would be doing most of this even if I wasn’t in this industry.
To me the work/life balance is separating the parts of your job that you wouldn’t normally want to do outside of work (like the specific projects you need to finish). But the learning, tinkering, etc, that’s our hobby. That isn’t going to stop when you go home. We’re just lucky enough to have turned it into a successful career.
...on August 25th, 2008 at 10:38 amYeah I agree, it depends on what part of your job you consider “work”.
+1 to everything Brent said.
My job is about 60-80% pleasant. I don’t sit in boring meetings at home. I don’t read boring emails. I don’t write boring documentation. I don’t rush to fix bugs when I don’t feel like it just because some arbitrary milestone is coming up. That stuff costs money, and Yahoo is willing to pay enough to get me to do it (a small amount of the time, anyway).
Apart from that stuff, my job and my free time are quite a bit like one another. I really enjoy a lot of aspects of the project I’m working on, and have even spent a few weekends happily hacking away on it. In fact, in some ways, my dayjob work is more fun, because I have a bunch of friends who are working on it with me.
It seems like we’re all saying roughly the same thing in slightly different words, no?
...on August 25th, 2008 at 12:22 pm