I work remotely 80-90 hours a week using my laptop (this is important: your screen needs to be mobile). Here's how I currently try to keep my body moving:
- I don't have a desk or chair. I have a bar table and a stool. This makes a huge difference. I get uncomfortable sitting on the stool after about 30 minutes, so I get off. Then I'll stand at the bar table and work for an hour or two. When I get tired of that, I'll spend a minute or two doing a physical activity (see below).
- I try to work from different physical places, e.g., cafes, different places in the house when nobody is home, the steps outside, the floor, the hammock hanging by the lake. I make it a game to come up with new and novel places to work from that don't require a lot of travel time (unless I'm walking—then it's well-spent travel time), anything to change the physical position of my body while working (and hopefully something that gets uncomfortable within an hour so I'm pushed to change again).
- I have a sandbag next to the bar table that I'll pick up at random times throughout the day and do squats, deadlifts, bent-over rows, or just carry the 60lb thing up the stairs or out around the yard once. I'll also use it as a weight to hold my feet while I do sit-ups. I have a pull-up bar hanging between two trees outside.
- I don't watch TV. In fact, I try to avoid anything that involves the sitting position. If I have to sit, I prefer the floor, or if I'm watching a movie or reading a book, I prefer laying down. If it's something for a few minutes and I can stand, I'll stand.
I've been doing this for about a year now and it's the best I've ever felt while working this much. What I'd like to start mixing in are some runs or long walks, but right now it's a choice between those or getting sufficient sleep. I prioritize sleep.
I love my work, and doing something 80-90 hours a week that I love hardly seems like a problem. :-) I work 7 days a week, so it works out to around 12 hours a day. That gives me 4 hours of 'other' time if I sleep 8 hours a night.
My point is that unless we come up with some concrete definition of what "work" is, it's rather pointless to talk about its effects. A weight lifter might refer to 'work' as exercising. A truck driver might refer to 'work' as driving a truck. Those two forms of 'work' have a much different affect on your health.
>> Why are some people always suspicious of others who work a lot ?
Sometimes it's bragging. Sometimes it's somewhat delusional. A lot of folks who say they work that long don't really.
To be forced to do that much is awful, to do it voluntarily is probably obsessive.
We absolutely do not want that to become 'normal' or accepted. As others have mentioned, our forebears fought very hard to get the right to a family life, the right to time away from the grind. We shouldn't give it up so easily.
Working 16+ hour days is not sustainable in the long term and is counter productive. Usually when people say they work "80-90 hours a week" I take it with a grain of salt.
Working 80-90 hours a week remotely with the freedom to work from an environment that you find relaxing is a lot different than working 80-90 hours a week in an office or dealing every day with the stresses of traffic and commuting. Yesterday I was laying in a hammock feeling the breeze come in off the lake and listening to the birds while working on my laptop. I couldn't work 80-90 hours a week if I didn't have the ability to look up from my laptop and instantly feel relaxed.
It's something that one can do at certain times in one's life, in certain circumstances. There was a period in my life when I worked eight hours in the office, commuted nearly an hour each way, had dinner, worked another four hours at home and did this for months on end.
Not 80 hours but about 60 which in my opinion is still far too much in the long run.
It was worth it for the results but I wouldn't, and quite possibly couldn't, do it now thirty years later.
So it's not necessarily a problem unless it becomes an uncontrollable obsession or is forced on one.
I think he might be counting his exercise time in that and working 7 days a week. 11 hour work day with a total of 2-4 hours of breaks interspersed sounds about OK.
The mobility they afford easily makes up for any negative effects. I couldn't imagine working from a fixed computer. I even tried putting my laptop on a stand and using an external keyboard—it lasted a few days before I just got so annoyed by the fixed position. I sit facing different directions at my circle bar table, shifting my position multiple times throughout the day, so having a laptop that I can simply adjust as I adjust makes a lot more sense for me.
Wireless keyboard and mouse combined with putting the screen at eye level can solve these things. They give a range of motion and posture not available with the laptop itself.
Then again, I'm sitting on a computer with a wireless keyboard and mouse, in my living room chair, for many of the same reasons.
That's still not good enough because you will either have chipmunk arms (i.e. hands at chin level) or will have to bend forward to look at the screen.
There is a good selection of tenkeyless keyboards available that will fit in your laptop bag (get one with a microusb port rather than a fixed cable, as strain relief for a fixed-cable that's getting shoved in a bag is challenging).
Then you just elevate your laptop (stack it on books, bags, whatever you have handy; I keep a few textbooks on my desk at home for this) and put the keyboard on your lap if sitting, or bar if standing. I wouldn't call it perfect, but it's mobile, affordable, and way better than a laptop alone IMO.
>Get a proper laptop with fullsize keys and a large enough screen to work on.
No laptop in existence has a keyboard big enough for me. The smallest external keyboards I've used are probably larger than the largest laptop keyboards.
It's not about the size of the keys. It's about the location with respect to your shoulders. Having to angle your arms inwards is not a good idea.
Same for screen. If you're looking downwards, it's bad for your neck. Which is why I always use an external monitor.
If you decide you want a comfortable chair for your 30 minutess of sitting, looking into drafting chairs. They're basically office chairs with the height of a bar stool.
getting uncomfortable within an hour sounds like a lot of interruption and overhead during a full day. I try to concentrate my activity: cycling to and from work, 1 hour workout 3 times a week before or after work. During the day i sit a lot though, but i try to stand whenever i can (meetings, coworker conversations, drinking a lot of water to have to go to the bathroom every 2 hours helps too ;)
As a 3-4l of water/day type of person I have first hand encountered the lack of salt (cramps while I sleep) and also the solution: add salt to your diet. I makes the food taste nice to boot!
That's pretty rare in the modern world - most people chronically consume too much salt.
This recent (Apr 2017) interview[0] with Prof. Graham MacGregor[1] is really interesting on the topic of salt consumption. He says most people need add no extra salt to their food, relying instead on the small, naturally occurring amounts in the things we eat. I've done exactly this and noticed no ill effects (cramps, etc.).
oooh, I wonder if that's why I sometimes get cramps while I sleep. I feel like if I stretch my legs too much while in bed, I could randomly get a cramp.
- I don't have a desk or chair. I have a bar table and a stool. This makes a huge difference. I get uncomfortable sitting on the stool after about 30 minutes, so I get off. Then I'll stand at the bar table and work for an hour or two. When I get tired of that, I'll spend a minute or two doing a physical activity (see below).
- I try to work from different physical places, e.g., cafes, different places in the house when nobody is home, the steps outside, the floor, the hammock hanging by the lake. I make it a game to come up with new and novel places to work from that don't require a lot of travel time (unless I'm walking—then it's well-spent travel time), anything to change the physical position of my body while working (and hopefully something that gets uncomfortable within an hour so I'm pushed to change again).
- I have a sandbag next to the bar table that I'll pick up at random times throughout the day and do squats, deadlifts, bent-over rows, or just carry the 60lb thing up the stairs or out around the yard once. I'll also use it as a weight to hold my feet while I do sit-ups. I have a pull-up bar hanging between two trees outside.
- I don't watch TV. In fact, I try to avoid anything that involves the sitting position. If I have to sit, I prefer the floor, or if I'm watching a movie or reading a book, I prefer laying down. If it's something for a few minutes and I can stand, I'll stand.
I've been doing this for about a year now and it's the best I've ever felt while working this much. What I'd like to start mixing in are some runs or long walks, but right now it's a choice between those or getting sufficient sleep. I prioritize sleep.