Martin Fowler writes: “I should also mention that I suspect I’m not as energetic as I used to be as I age. I’ve long known that when you’re doing very creative work, such as writing or programming, the useful hours you can do in a day is rather less than the accepted industrial eight. I’ve always been nagged by my conviction that I’m not working as diligently or effectively as I ought to be. Sadly I’m not getting any better at not letting that bug me.”
I love how he openly admits his weakness.
Let me clarify that I don’t mind if his weakness is real or just subjective. I think it sets a good example if a public figure like Fowler, who’s written quite a number of highly influential books and given too many great talks to list, is openly sharing his inner feelings.
In today’s work environments, there is this illusion and pressure that you have to constantly perform on the very highest level at least eight hours a day. This is hurting so many people, up to the point where good folks drop out of their jobs due to burn-out and depression. So, it’s important to recognize that we are all human after all and that the performance we are capable of is not constant. What we can deliver at work is depending on so many factors and many of them are actually outside of our control. We just have to accept that.
If in our daily work life we can all be a bit more mindful that we are collaborating with other humans and not robots, if we are open to actively listen to what is going on in the life of the people around us, and be able to connect this to our own struggles with daily delivering what we think we should be capable of — maybe then the overall work experience will improve for all of us.
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