Article: Pausing Creativity

I hate weekends.

Weekends force me to pause my creative work so I can do chores.  In a normal 5/40 job, it's mandatory that I take two consecutive days off each week so I can lose the flow of my work.

Breaking flow is a major snag in creative work.  An artist will not stop painting because it is Saturday.  Stephen King's advice for writers is to write four hours a day and read four hours a day.  He does not make an exception for weekends.

I think game development is in the same line of work.  It's a creative endeavor.

I find that when I am doing something creative, and I miss as little as one day of work, my drive to work on the project goes down.  Getting distracted with other things has some psychological impact on my desire to work on a project.  I can certainly get that drive back, but it takes an extra day or two to kick back into full gear.  So a day of lost work actually translates into a day of lost work and two days of less productive work.  There may be some non-linear formula for calculating multiple days of lost work in a row, and perhaps it is different for everyone.  Perhaps some people have no trouble jumping in and out of a creative project.

I don't wanna!

But I am most productive when I am deep into a project and nothing distracts me at all.  It's like being lost in another world where everything in life goes away except food, sleep, and bathroom breaks.  Having to pause that for two days is like being ripped from a great dream:  you just can't get back into it once you're woken up.

So I tend to despise weekends when the rest of the world can't wait for them.  I can't wait for Monday, so I can start to get back into gear, and I can't wait for Tuesday when I can finally be as productive as I was last week.

Think about what kinds of jobs the 5/40 workweek was invented for:  factory jobs.  These are mind-numbing jobs that people have because they need to pay the bills.  It's tiring, boring, laborious work.  People don't want to be cooped up in a factory their whole lives, and want to be able to relax.

But when you're in a creative field, work is not a burden.  Even in non-creative fields, many people enjoy their jobs thoroughly.  Why stop doing what you love for two days each week?

Sure, there is always the worry about overworking employees, and 40 hours a week is certainly a good length of time to work without overdoing it.  So for any job, no matter if it's a tedious or creative job, forty hours a week is a good rule of thumb so as not to overwork people.

However, I think in creative fields, those forty hours a week could be redistributed.  Consider the normal 5/40 week to be represented as 0-8-8-8-8-8-0 (S-M-T-W-T-F-S).  If we instead shift the numbers to be 5-6-6-6-6-6-5, then the distribution becomes even (without resorting to decimals, of course).  Now there is no hiccup in creativity.  For simplicity, let's call this a 7/40 schedule.

To me, this solves the problem quite nicely.  I would love to work more days a week with fewer hours a day.

Now, the only real problem, to me, is people who have families who want to be able to spend weekends with their loved ones.  For them, a standard 5/40 schedule is desired.  I think any given company should accommodate both options.

I think about my time working at a software company that had a 9/80 schedule.  I worked that schedule the first year, and the second year I worked a simple 5/40.  I preferred the 5/40, because the extra hour each day during 9/80 began to drain me.  Heck, working eight hours a day can be a drain, too.  I would have been happy to work a 7/40 schedule capping at six hours a day.

I think one of the problems with such a scheme, however, is the kneejerk reaction "I can't give up my weekends!"  To me, this is silly for two reasons.

Firstly, of course, you're still working the same number of hours, so the number of hours you have off is the same (excepting commuting time), it's just redistributed.  Going into work at nine allows you to get off at four on week days, and three on weekends (assuming a one-hour lunch).

Secondly, as I stated at the beginning, I reject the notion that weekends are something to look forward to.  I look forward to doing my job, because I enjoy it.

Naturally such a work schedule is not for everyone, especially those who have a strong personal life that fights for attention, but I think people who want to spread their hours should have the option in a company.  In some companies, this is simply not allowed because the place is locked all weekend.

I think the 7/40 schedule would create more productive workers out of many people, myself included.