Thoughts on work-life balance
Intro
Depending on your job and your personality, working a little overtime might actually be a net positive to your mental health and life quality overall. You owe it to yourself to experiment with your hours, but how do you make sure you find a balance that works for you without the (rather obvious) drawbacks of too much overtime?
It’s a good question, and it’s something I’ve got better during my career as a software engineer. Here’s the ways I’ve tried to approach it in the past, and my current balanced overtime system that leaves me doing my best work when I feel like it with the freedom to enjoy what I love outside of work.
Too cold: No overtime
Back when I was starting out at my first software engineering job, I was adamant not to work any overtime. I had read endless articles about people burning out in software engineering. I wanted to start my career with discipline and built good habits, so I could create an amazing work-life balance for years to come.
Every day at 5:30, I’d clock out and head home, no matter what was going on at work. At most I’d work ten to fifteen minutes longer, and that would always mean I’d be finishing 10-15 minutes early the day after.
I call this approach no overtime (no points for guessing why), and it’s quite simple:
- Get all your work done during your workday.
- Work hard for all of your workday.
- Knowing you did a good days work, relax until tomorrow.
While I still think having a good work/life balance is important, this strict approach was not always healthy, and sometimes ended up causing me a few problems:
- When I was unproductive at work, I’d get stressed. Negative thoughts would play out in my head, “Why can I not work? I’m wasting time, I need to get something done or I won’t feel good when I get home” .
- When there were busy periods at work, I’d get stressed. I’d be eating dinner, thinking about the work I’d have to do the next day. Hardly the work/life balance panacea I was looking for. 🤦
This is not to say I did not get a lot done, or felt terrible all the time. Most weeks I was perfectly happy and productive, and I loved my job. However, these little bits of friction caused me to search for a better approach.
Too hot: Unlimited overtime
In my second job, I decided to throw my rule out the window and see what happened. In the first few months I found myself pouring a lot of my evenings into work with the hopes of getting the hang of things faster, and making a big impact.
I experienced a bunch of benefits by working overtime. I’d often feel less stressed if I got a good piece of work done in the evening, leaving me a lot calmer and sleeping better. I’d also be able to get into the zone due to a lack of distractions. Lastly, I actually found myself enjoying releasing lots of exciting features. Good for me, and good for our team!
However, I’m a person who values their free time for hobbies, self development, and relationships. I could feel my pace was unsustainable. It was chipping away at my morale, interfering with other areas of my life, and even starting to make the hours I was working less productive.
Working with my manager I decided to try make one more tweak, and came up with an approach that combines the best of both worlds.
Just right: Balanced overtime
What I’ve found worked best for me in my current role is a pretty simple system:
- I track all long sessions worked outside of normal hours in an “overtime bank”.
- If I’m having a really unproductive session, I cut myself some slack, make a cup of tea, and subtract that time from the overtime bank.
- If the bank grows too large (5-10 hours) I take the opportunity to raise it with my manager.
Doing things this way had some really positive effects:
- I’d no longer feel bad when I worked extra hours, because I felt it would come back to me on those days when my energy was low.
- I stopped feeling guilty if I’d not made enough progress during the work day. If I had the time I could always attack the problem in the evening without sacrificing my work life balance.
- I procrastinated less, as I knew that time would come out of my banked time.
It’s not a huge change, but this small system has contributed to me procrastinating less, feeling less guilty about taking breaks, and not beating myself up for working overtime when I want to.
Conclusion
Not every day has to be a nine-to-five, and it’s worth trying different strategies and schedules to try and find what works best. Work with your manager openly and honestly to try and find the best performace you can maintain over the long term that maintains your personal happiness, because at the end of the day, that’s what everyone wants! If you’re looking for a place to start, I’d suggest my current strategy of balanced overtime. Discuss with your manager, try it out, and see if it works for you. 🙂