#9hr 50mins actually | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

trad-masculine · 1 year ago

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I figure I'd weigh in as I'm someone who explicitly likes long hours more than a 40hr work week, which I consider the worst possible schedule.

My current schedule, and my favorite schedule ever, is as follows.

25hr week - 9-2 is grind time. High-quality ununterrupted work time. 5 hours straight. Then it's lunch. After that, in once sense I consider the work day over.

60hr week? - What is work time anyways? I'm "on call" till 6... sometimes till 10. I'm a cofounder for a volunteer organization, which means evenings are when everyone else is most available. Usually that time is social, and it's waiting on other people's time. So I have all my irl tasks and todo list and work through it until someone needs something from me.

This means my minimum work week is 25hours, which I quite enjoy. More often than not I'm on for at least 2-3hrs per weekend day, so let's round to 30hrs. I far prefer tapping into weekends over extending on clock time over the weekday. Weekends aren't a good vacation, imo. But down time is important, so because weekends are good volunteer time, I often have some kind of weekday of sailing or some other mind-off-work leisure activity.

In a more direct accounting sense I'm doing 60hr weeks. As I'm not task switching out of work tasks until 6pm, that's 9hrs a day, usually 7 days a week, weekends can go longer or anything can go late, so if I do take a short day for sailing it's padded elsewhere.

This kind of 60hr week is very sustainable for me. I work from home and have a baby home gym, but I also go to my regular gym a few days a week. I fit in quality family time after 6, and all my life maintainance tasks between 2 & 6. (Or in the morning hours before 9.) I still have weekly date night, occasional leisure days. I can maintain my personal network, throw house parties and BBQs and visit as well. I have to have my shit together, I can't make bad time management decisions, but I can also handle coordinating a remodel of the downstairs without killing myself.

~70hr week? - If I instead went with a 60hr week with commute times, and it was 10hrs a day with one day off, and all the on clock time was scheduled as high quality time, that would be a very different scheduled sustainability wise. As described that 60hrs is more like actually a 70hr week, especially with like lunch and break times off the clock during office hours, and commute.

85hr week - My maximum maintainable schedule looks like the following. Start at 8. (Changes: breakfast is heat & eat, quick shower, no morning reading, day planning done quickly.) Break at 2. 3-7 also quality work time, intermixed with "meetings". That's now a 10 hour day. No day off, 70hr week. On call till 9 on weekdays, 80hr week. Add weekends 85hr week.

If I really have everything together, my schedule is tight, my habits effecient, home gym has everything I need, I'm healthy and everyone I rely on is onboard, so I don't have to do anything auxiliary (such as chores) 80-85hrs could be maintained for over a year. I'd be able to squeeze in monthly date nights for my girl, and a few other minimal standard of living like things. But it would be a team effort on the home front.

100 + 120hr weeks - I've done 100hr week sprints, and I have one 120hr week under my belt. 100hrs you loose stuff like taskwitching out from work during lunch. That's 7hours. You loose night time, that's 7+ hours. From 85 to 100. For 120 hrs you loose any semblance of a morning routine (this is fatal for long term mental health). You also loose any potential moments of down time. Brushing your teeth, you're also on your phone reviewing something at the very least. You also start to loose sleep, and literally every moment of your life has to be automated. You can't do anything that isn't work. WAKE WORK SLEEP, maybe remember to eat. There are 168 hours in a week, leaving 48 hrs for sleep which is 6hrs 50mins of sleep a night.

Moreover, and this is the key, you need a team wherever your work is to manage you, because you can't manage yourself with those hours. You can only do it with a constant feed of bite sized things to do, and a team to whom you can punt decision fatigue issues and tasks you don't click into right away.

40 hr weeks 🤬 - I hate 40 hour weeks, specifically because they are tiring, but not exhilarating. 60hr weeks feel fucking legendary, done right, you feel on top of the world, everything in your life has to be smooth, elegant, effecient and effective. You need to have your shit together, you need to be dialed in at work, and with family, and in your motivation and life goals. 40 hours can suck, massively. You come home burned out and tired, veg out in front of the TV, ignore problems in your life you can, and you never really get everything together. 60 hours doesn't allow for that kind of comatose state.

60hr week 😇 - Try a 60hr week. You don't have to work 60hrs, but schedule 60hours in your week to do things which require you at your best. Schedule all those things on your bucket list into your day. Live your best life. Want to learn ice skating? Put that on your ideal week schedule as part of your 60 hrs. Then make your life at home work, make it possible to do 60 hrs of your best every week. Solve the problems in your life, emotional, habitual, social, organizational, or even spiritual that hold you back.

Even if I were doing only a minimal 25 hours, I'd want my life life to be put together the way 60hrs feels. I'd just have a lot more items I've listed out in my life goals on my day to day, and not postponing them for after what I'm doing now is off the ground such that I can take a break.

Live the 60hrs you want to live, it is seriously worth it!

(Also, absolutely no one read into this any criticism of op, 60 hours drawing sounds absolutely brutal. My limit for artwork before it starts to really suck is like 2-3 hours. Can't imagine what 8+ hours doing fine motor skill work does to the body. But what hours are like for different people varies a lot. I'm an insane person who thrives in extreme situations. I can't handle "normal," a regular 9-5 is incompatible with me. I also take long breaks off from anything like work. Months to do what I want to do, like a major sailing trip or world travel. I like all my work to be in one place, and all my time off in one place. I look at time more like Seneca than like a corporate middle manager.

I hate wasting time, I love spending time on leisure. Deep thought. Peace. Philosophy. Learning. Self improvement. Dreaming. Romance. The stuff that matters to me. Working long when I do work means I live my best life. It would be impossible otherwise. So work only to live your best life. That's my advice.

What Does a 100 Hour Work Week in Animation Feel Like So I saw (and commented on) this post remarking on the working conditions on the new Spiderverse film which were less than stellar. I'm not surprised, I was literally talking to animator friends about how it seemed like it was a tough project even as the trailers were coming out. But I think we see news like this break all the time - ah a game got delayed. Don't worry. "Oh the dev team is working 90 hour weeks until it comes out". Red Dead Redemption infamously had a manager brag about 100 hour weeks. Some members of the team on Sonic the Hedgehog did 120 hour weeks to update the model to something with much less human-looking teeth. It's all very abstract. So I thought I might provide a little insight into how different workweeks feel for me. For context, I am an able-bodied high functioning person who is, by all accounts neurotypical, but who still struggles with overstimulation and needs a lot of therapy. If I feel this way, then imagine how someone disabled is faring under the same conditions, and consider how much of a barrier of entry this really is to the industry. Disclaimer: I'm going to be describing a not great work/life balance from a practical point of view. I work a lot. I try not to. I don't always get it right. Please don't think of what you're about to read as how you 'should' be working in the industry. Whenever possible, insist on your rights to rest and live a life outside work.

40hr week - What would be considered a standard workweek. Animation is a thinking heavy job, so I’m usually tired at the end of the week, but I do still have energy to see friends, do personal work, go for walks, work out. I would prefer a shorter week but it’s doable.

50hr week - Probably my personal average if we’re being honest. This is not always due to the animation job itself - for financial reasons, I usually have small sidejobs next to full-time employment and the hours add up. This week works alright so long as I plan them well. Mealpreps, using google calendars to make sure I'm carving out time for workouts, cleaning and a bit of rest.

60hr week - I have spent a lot of months this year pushing 60 hour weeks and let me tell you, I don't like it. I'm tired. Social life and personal projects go on the backburner. I'm less delighted, less inspired. I still work out, but less. Wrists begin to tingle, shoulders sometimes get more sore than I like. If I fail to mealprep I end up spending so much money on prepackaged lunches. I'm processing stress in my dreams, so I often wake up in the middle of the night and lie awake. Light brainfog starts kicking in. I'm more sensitive to things not going my way because I just don't have much energy left to problemsolve anything that isn't work.

70hr week - This is when I personally start considering a schedule to be 'crunch'. For some the number is higher and for some lower, but for me, a 70hr workweek starts to really fray me at the edges. I have time for work, the commute and sleep, and not much else. I try to get in workouts where I can, to avoid my RSI flaring up too badly. I am no longer seeing friends. I am no longer drawing for myself. I'm not reading books. Maybe I watch a youtube video over dinner. It's not a state I can (or should) sustain for very long. 80hr week - This is where I'm hitting my ceiling. I have done this on rare occassions. My personal max is 85 hours of work in a week, and the personal record of maintaining it was 4 weeks, and those weeks were a shitshow. Cannot recommend. Towards the end, my shoulder was on fire and I had recurring headaches. I was doing all of my stretches and still managing the gym, and somehow it was never enough to soothe the RSI symptoms I can otherwise usually manage. The should injury I got during that month still haunts me to this day.

And I cannot stress enough, I never made it to those famed 100 hour weeks. I honestly don't know how anyone manages anything above 60 for an extended period of time. I know people sleep under their desks to avoid commuting time cutting into work hours, but i just feel like the brainfog would render me incapable of making anything good or even passable.

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