What Constitutes a Crazy Day?
Frank Arrigo has blogged that he had a "crazy day" where he started at 8AM and didn't finish until 6PM, that he grabbed some food on the go and didn't even get to write a blog entry. Fair enough.
But since the hours mentioned are a normal day for me (I'm usually here at or before 8AM and leave about 6 to 6:30 including working through lunch) it made me wonder what most people think of as a normal day and what things in a day constitute a crazy day. For me a crazy day is one where I bounce from one thing to another with no mental downtime between and where there is a high demand for critical thinking and clear decision making. Constant task switching between often completely different things with no in between time to get my brain in gear or to spend with my team is usually what frazzles me.
For my teams, they start around 8:30, have the scrum daily stand-up meetings at 9AM. Most people will take a decent break for lunch (Sydney has plenty of lunch time distractions) though a number often work through so they don't break out of the zone or so they can complete a feature, and a majority will go home around 5:30PM or shortly thereafter. Since they are all "knowledge workers" involved in concentration based activities I have no problem with this, and it lines up with my philosophy of having a life outside of work.
But what about people like myself who spend most of the day communicating with other people or involved in other management activities? What of the Scrum Masters, the Product Owners and the various other I.T. disciplines like DBA's, I.T. support, network technicians, etc.
What sort of day is it that makes you get home and go "ploomp" on the couch in front of the TV?
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