One of the great things about having your own company is that
you get a chance to (try to) make it a better place than where
you've worked yourself. That said, I've been pretty spoiled in my
previous jobs with some great bosses and awesome challenges.
This morning I thought of dealing with off-days. Probably
because I had one yesterday. One of the days where I'm going to
work and get very little done. Not because I don't want to, but
simply because there's some miscommunication between my fingers and
my brain (however, I didn't try using my nose
like this guy). Most programmers - and creative people in
general - that I've spoke to about this, recognize it immediately
yet I haven't found anyone who had a 'formal' policy on dealing
with these things. I'd love to.
Let's face it - off days are inconvenient. Big time. They have
this special ability to pop up when you needed them the least.
Which usually means that you have to do your best to ignore them to
meet a deadline, milestone, meeting, demo, whatever. So you write
crap. Which really is the developer equivalent to hustling through
an unprepared presentation. It might save you short term, but makes
you feel bad (or at least it should!) and long term it'll come back
as a boomerang. It's simply not worth it.
So why? Why do we have work environments that believe developers
can work as factory workers. Who are we trying to cheat? When we
ignore an obvious issue, we don't improve. It's things like these
that are heaven sent when it comes to evolve as a human being.
Accepting off-days in return for trying to understand them is the
way forward. In many cases off-days can relate to lack of sleep or
personal distractions (nothing is worse than going to work with an
unsettled argument at home) and what if that's more than ok. Why
hide that. We're humans - we're not perfect. If it was ok and if
everyone in a company could be open, we might start being able to
work out patterns for off-days and see if they could be minimized.
Or just be turned better. Whether it's going home and getting some
sleep, seeing a therapist (paid by work), calling your wife or…
I really want to develop some policy around this for the HQ and
if it work out, I'll blog again. At least a start is simply saying
out loud that off-days are fine and a part of us. Until then, let's
try to help each other with our experiences in the comments - start
the conversation!