I’ve quite often been called crazy, working until all hours of the day, cracking away to get things done. Trying to explain to people that for me, working 15+ hours a day is easy, and I consider it fun. Not many people get the opportunity to call what they do fun, but I do. Sometimes I rant and grumble about stuff that goes on, but that’s all part of the job.
I stumbled across a post by Chad Perrin titled “Insomnia and Productivity”. He hits the nail on the head as to why working 15+ hours a day is a breeze for me. The 8 at work are a complete mess, I very rarely get any projects completed due to interruptions1 or I’m constantly in meetings about projects, changes, problems, etc. My ideal working time is after 21:30, and usually runs up until 03:00-04:00. Why? The kiddo is asleep, the wife is preoccupied with games, or medical shows, so I get some time to lock my brain onto a subject.
For example, I have several projects I have to work on to share data between our app, and SalesForce. Quite easy, seeing as I’ve crafted several apps to do it already, but if I try doing it at work, it’d take me about 2 weeks due to interruptions. When I do it at home, it’s done in 4 hours.
So when I get asked why I work so much, and so late… It’s because I’m a system administrator… It’s because I’m a hacker in the original sense of the title. It’s my job… It’s what I enjoy.
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Really should follow up on “Interruption Shields” as hinted by Limoncelli in “Time Management for System Administrators” ↩