Work/Life Balance

I had an upgrade for a customer this past Tuesday, and since that upgrade there's really been a lot of things I'm excited to get involved with at work in terms of development. One great thing about working at a software company is that there's plenty of room for work to be done & improvement to be made. Whether it's development, process automation, improving monitoring/visibility, training... there's plenty of great and fun projects to get involved with where one feels like they're making an impact on the company long-term & making life easier for our coworkers. From people I've spoken with in the industry, it makes a lot of sense to get involved with these things, but it's also very important to make sure we're handling a reasonable workload to maintain a work/life life/work balance.

I read an article the other week about burnout, which I think is something that new college graduates are particularly susceptible to. The article explained how burnout is very difficult to escape from. Overall, it's 100% best to be avoided, at all costs. Similar to depression(s), it's easy to get stuck in a cycle of being burnt out, which will make you less productive at your job, causing one to work more hours, causing one to get even more burnt out. Reflecting, I'll admit that I find myself guilty of working a bit too often sometimes, but I've been good about catching myself & taking breaks from working a lot of hours at just the right times

Still, I'm a bit concerned about the impact this might have on the people around me on days or weeks that I do work long hours. I enjoy being at work late sometimes & getting an automation (or similar type of project) done, but it can also be frustrating when I have obligations or interests outside of work that day. Realistically, people often have these obligations or interests outside of work - that's part of someone living a healthy & balanced life. There are cases where staying late can be concerning, because people will feel obligated to skip out of those extracurriculars that keep them motivated & excited about life. Maybe one of us is just staying late because we wouldn't be doing anything else, but then someone else stays late because they feel like they should be doing that same? To me, it just doesn't feel right. With that, I'm going to promise myself not to feel guilty about leaving work before others.

Beyond co-workers, I also think that working extra hours might be difficult for the people in our personal lives, such as significant others or family. I'll admit that I'm personally a pretty bad communicater, so I think that my girlfriend is definitely the one most impacted by this myself. With that in mind, I'm going to be making it my goal to start to indepedently commute to work (instead of carpooling) with my bike