I am fortunate to have an employer who was able to allow me to work from home while Irene recovered from her second hip replacement. It made things much less stressful for all involved.
Working from home for a month, though, leads to some odd behavior. My hours of work were scattered all over the 24 hour day, partly in order to accommodate things Irene needed me for, partly because I found it convenient to work when Irene was asleep. I could take naps whenever my eyes started to feel heavy. There were several days where I didn’t bother to dress.
This past week was my first week going back to the office each day. It was a shock to my system: resetting myself to a semi-fixed schedule was tough enough, but making it through an eight or nine hour day without a nap was torture. I raced home from work on at least two days during the week so I could immediately toss myself into bed and close my eyes.
And there is this great desire to have tons of “face time” now that I’m back in the office. I felt like I was in an endless series of meetings as the week wore on. The toughest was one four hour meeting on Thursday, during which time I was grilled by three people regarding a complex data model and code design I had originated. Four hours straight of running my brain at full throttle: I swear, smoke was pouring from my ears.
Yeah, I’m weak, I know: lots of people drive themselves at 110% all the time, and seem to thrive on it. I have great respect for people who can do this, but no particular desire to emulate them. For me, the mid-afternoon nap is more in keeping with my continued mental health…I must be ready for early retirement or something.
Bah it has nothing to do with old age. I don’t do well in a full 8-9 hour day either. My only saving grace is that my job requires a lot of out-of-the-office work, site inspections/investigation, pre-tender meetings, etc… Those days I seem to do alright, but I suspect it’s just the blood (after climbing 16 floors worth of stair I should hope so) being allowed to flow instead of all pooling at my feet after sitting in front of the compute writing reports.
As for the crazy hours… I would preferably be on a 10 am to 3 am schedule if I could. When I first moved out I had a delightfully nocturnal existence (3pm to 7am, work included)
I didn’t say it was old age: I was probably ready for retirement when I was 30 🙂
But yeah, some folks seem to be more “tuned” to be active during certain hours than other folks. My ideal balance seems to wake up at around 8:00 am, work from about 10:00 am until about 2:00 pm, sleep until 5:00 pm, then work again from about 7:00 pm until about midnight. Waking up at 6:00 am and working from 8:00 until 5:00 pm in one stretch doesn’t work so well for me. This is compounded by the fact that I don’t do a good job “breaking up” the day- I should probably go for a 15 minute walk or something at some point during the day.
I also find that meetings, at least meetings that are “serious”, are a bit like running a marathon. Longer ones can have an effect that lasts right through until the next day.
I like to get up and get work over and done with … my “ideal” working hours are something like 7am – 3pm. With most everything done in the 7am – Noon 5 hour stretch.
Of course I have also gravitated to a job where I move around from place to place and task to task throughout the day. I get bored easily and when I get bored I don’t do a good job.
Get up early in the morning and get your work over and done with? What are you, Chris, some kind of freak? 🙂