VinceStross.com

The Thirds: Sleeping, Working, and You!

I’ve come to think about life in terms of “The Thirds.” Culturally we’re told that 8 hours of sleep constitutes a good night sleep, and businesses generally operate within an 8 hour work day, which leaves 8 hours for the rest of life to fit into. It’s no secret, but just in case you’re not with me: 24 divided by 8 = 3, which means our days are divided into thirds and the philosophy of the “micro = macro” equation brings us to a simple logical conclusion that our lives – as a whole – are therefore divided by “The Thirds.”

There’s the Bait… Now the Switch:

The division isn’t quite that simple though because even though 24 hours is simply divided into “The Thirds” by 8 hours three times, we still have this mysterious weekly remainder of 48 hours – more commonly referred to as: The Weekend. However, I consider this “The Remainder” because it’s the time we use to fit in all the remaining things necessary for a complete existence that didn’t fit into our daily thirds. This could be more work, more sleep, or more time for our selves.

The debate over whether or not it’s healthy to compartmentalize your life can go back and forth, but through my work as a keyboard & mouse professional I know that it’s not healthy to sit our bodies in front of a computer for more than 5 consecutive hours per day, let alone 8 hours! This recent theory of compartmentalizing my day into “The Thirds” has helped me stay aware of how much time I’m spending in front of the computer. There’s a great article I was sent last week called: You, Unplugged. In this article, a 2002 study at Tokyo’s Chiba University is mentioned as concluding:

“… workers who spent more than five consecutive hours in front of a computer screen experienced problems ranging from headaches, eyestrain and stiff shoulders to depression, anxiety, fatigue and sleep disturbances.”

This is not news to me, just a really great reminder. This article was delivered to me at the right time. Over the past few months I’ve been trying to make a concerted effort to intertwine the two thirds of my day that aren’t spent sleeping, in an effort to avoid burn-out and health problems later in life, caused by spending too many consecutive hours in front of the keyboard & mouse (trackpads count too!).

Interconnecting my two waking-hour thirds also helps to avoid the territorial anxiety I feel when one inevitably encroaches upon the other. If I put too much stock into the idea that my “Working Third” is spent working and “My Third” is spent not working, I’m just asking for anxiety and/or less time for my “Sleeping Third.” Life is entirely too dynamic for this kind of thinking.

Like any shift in habit, this is an ever-evolving process but so far I’m enjoying it. At NetCrafters, we use a tool called: The Emergent Task Timer (I call them bubble sheets because of the little bubbles you fill in to track your time) which is an amazing aid for keeping track of where you’re spending your working time during the day. It’s dynamic enough that when used properly it’s easy to track your time even on a day when you might work 3 hours here, 2 hours there, a long lunch, then a few hours in the evening. With the bubble sheets there’s no anxiety if I decide to go for a walk at 2 o’clock (with my cell phone of course.. just in case!) because I know I won’t lose track of my “Working Third” when I decide to have a piece of “My Third” pie in the morning or early afternoon.

The Hook:

Don’t be too strict. Stopping points are everything. Just because I’ve hit my 8 hours doesn’t mean I have to stop right then and there. I may need another hour to get to a good stopping point for my “Working Third” so I can move cleanly into a “My Third” activity. This works both ways though and the reverse is much harder to slide within our culture. You may have only spent 7 hours on the “Working Third” today, but you’re at an excellent stopping point and you know that the next things on your list will take you past your 8 hours to get to the next good stopping point. It’s okay to stop at 7 hours or even 6.5!

Everything always balances out in “The Remainder,” if you’re mindful about it. When thinking about my available time in between planned activities on the weekend, I try to take a look at how much time I’ve spent during “My Thirds” for the week so I can catch up on sleep, work or play time.

I tend to read a lot of non-fiction. Whether it be a technical tome, some over-worked physicists newest theory, or books related to the crises of our time (food, water, and shelter).

That being said, whenever I catch myself avoiding a daily read it’s normally because I’ve been reading too much non-fiction. I then immediately switch to fiction to quench my desire for literary immersion. The most recent occurrence of this took me back to J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” septology.

My point… right.

A few nights ago I was working late on the Paradigm API code – which will be used to power the new cincy.com and currently drives the pgcincinnati.com website. It had been a long day of coding and when I tried to lay in bed I just kept seeing lines of code flash past my eyes. Trust me, it’s nothing like counting sheep!

Multi-tasking

I had just finished the third “Harry Potter” book and, while I was reluctant to start a new book at 2am… it’s Harry Potter! I only had to read the first chapter though to receive my inspiration. Most likely due to my extremely hyper mental activity… I could see between the lines. I was able to relate with the baffling number of characters and plots on plots under plots. For the first time in my life I realized that web applications programming isn’t much different than writing a novel. Juggling thousands of variables, objects, functions, and conditions of a program. Along with the syntax for the various languages utilized to connect all the dots.

The things we are creating now at NetCrafters are cutting-edge. This is no doubt a product of the industry. However, the Jasmine CMS (Content Management Sytem) and Paradigm API (Application Programming Interface) running on Amazon EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud) and Google App Engine respectively, is the most advanced and interconnected project I’ve every worked on.

Creating these tools (plots) using all of the different programming languages and platforms (characters) involved, yet having them talk to each other like their in the same room (dialogue), feels like my defining moment! I’ve written a lot of programs and applications over the last 20 years (unpublished stories). A large majority of them are running on giant servers, tucked-away behind expensive firewalls in hospitals and mental health facilities all around the country. Whereas hundreds have dissolved, and still more are archived… just in case.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. It turns out I already am one, I just write in the language of machines instead of humans. I attribute J.K. Rowling with a few other things in my life as well, but this time, the first chapter of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” was the vessel. I can now move forward with my work and let the anxiety of, “When will I just sit down and write!” dissolve.

Now is my moment, I love what I do and what I’m doing… it’s time to be published!

(Shakespeare photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Boy do I love a blank canvas!

That’s what NetCrafters has been for me over the past year. I came from a budding 8-year career working with closed systems that were purposely isolated from the Internet for security reasons. I worked on servers across the country that housed clinical information for millions of people. I was always working within very strict guidelines and always with proprietary systems which yielded zero results for the prized “ask Google” solution we’ve all come to rely on.

Now I’m on the cutting edge of technology in every way. The tools we’re implementing at NetCrafters are easily available and not a single one comes packaged on a disk, or inside a box, wrapped with cellophane. Everything can be downloaded, learned without a classroom, and in most cases without a visit to the book store! Every day I read my carefully selected RSS feeds for the latest updates on many different fronts. Each and every day something amazes me. Think about that… Every Day!

This correlates to a high probability that each and every day my understanding of the tech soup I’m swimming in will change. This doesn’t come without some serious challenges, of course. One of which being the urge to go backwards. The thousands of lines of code for our Jasmine CMS tool is constantly swimming in my mind. Each time I discover something new I immediately start a cranial search for applications of this newly minted puzzle piece… “I know this will fit somewhere.”

The challenge comes with deciding where the line is. At what point does going back and updating old methods become counter-productive? They will eventually need to be updated – undoubtedly – but they’re working now. Nobody is complaining about them. In fact as far as everyone who isn’t as intimately familiar with the code is concerned, everything is working great! But now I’m waking up in the morning and immediately thinking about how exciting it would be to spend the first few hours of the day crawling like a spider through thousands of lines of code and cleaning out the cobwebs. It’s a glorious and refreshing feeling until…

Someone inevitably asks the question, “So whatcha been up to today?” A very well-intentioned and perfectly acceptable question, mind you.

To which I must reply, “Well, I discovered this amazing, flashy-new-shiny way to do the same thing we were already doing but now it’s 1.78 seconds faster and involves about 3 hundred fewer lines of code.”

And of course the response tends to be, “Ah, cool. Is it something you can show me?”

Which brings the, “Well, not really…”

But that’s the beauty of our team. We all trust each other to make good decisions while considering the whole. It may not have been one hundred percent necessary, but if it helps my mental sanity then we’re all better off!

I’m thankful and appreciative to be able to paint on the most interconnected, dynamic canvas in history – the highly malleable canvas of 1’s and zero’s – each and every day.