Working too much is bad for your career!

Headline byte, but it seems obvious that the more you work, the cooler you are as a specialist. And there's recognition, fame, honor, rock and roll, groupies, sorry, got carried away. But no, that's not how it works.

I started my career as a student and a schmuck - there was no strong success in anything, no understanding of the market and the profession either. I studied poorly, I designed something, but I had no reference points, and in the evenings I played Warcraft.

Stupidity was cured by time management. I began to time the time spent, gradually horrified by his inefficiency. Eventually came discipline, work began to take the "proper" 8 hours a day, then 10, then all 14 with breaks for food. Then nights shortened, weekends went away — I gave them to work too (I even have weekends crossed out on my calendar, because why would I do that).

After a few years, I was horrified to discover that I had become a workaholic and had forgotten how to rest. Vacations, weekends, leisure — it's all for the weak, it's important to take a task or an order, because here it is, the one for the sake of recognition, fame, honor, rock and roll, fans, sorry, I got carried away. It is ironic that the career never happened, no money either.

You can work cheerfully, earning a lot, tracking trends, doing all the work in the office for three people, plus freelancing on weekends — and so on for ten years, and then suddenly find yourself on the sidelines of the professional industry, without understanding how it happened.

One reason is loss of focus due to lack of time to digest information. During quality, good, challenging work, we consume information — learning new things, honing a skill, earning money. If there's no time to think about it, those skills and information start to slow down. It's hard to make decisions when there are already a thousand skills, but no understanding of where to go.

That's why the progress, both in income and in project management, came not when I started working a lot or a little, but when I started to find time to build a strategy, set goals, analyze orders and clients.

Strategy → Operations

I use two rules to stay on track:

1. Pause to update your goals, analyze your experience. You can do this once every six months thoughtfully, and once a month more locally. Ideally in writing.
2. Don't occupy the entirety of your time with work. Working on freelance — leave time for exactly one dream order to agree to it without a second thought. Working in the staff — remember that all tasks can not be done, they will always be more than time and health.

A few free days that you dedicate to formulating career goals and understanding yourself — will give you growth for the year ahead. Reasoning about what you are doing and why is the best investment and a hundred times more useful than any order or task.