Proper reentry for developers

If you are a developer or anyone else that does high-concentration work (writer, artist, maker or orange juice) you have to reenter the world at some point after your workday is done. Those of us with families can probably all think back on a time when we were writing software like mad only to see that it was 6:30 and thus time to check-in, logout, and go play with our kids. Only for the first 30 minutes to an hour we weren’t engaged with our kids and we were impatient with our wives.

In fact I’ve met those that appear to treat the people in their lives like computers – demanding fast responses and barking instructions at them while getting annoyed at how unreliable they are. After hours of doing development work you need to make sure you separate effective methods at work and at home.

Why are we jerks? Aren’t we working to support our families? Wouldn’t we rather hang out with them all day rather than sling electrons to the highest bidder? Well I’ve had trouble with this and I think it’s because the pace of both activities are just so different you have to be intentional about ‘reentry’.

Differences

Writing software means that you are in almost complete control of what is going on – your computer hums and obeys, you listen to whatever you want, you look at whatever you want. Your software if it has bugs are your bugs so you can’t yell at anybody but the cat (side note: recommended). In short you are in charge.

In addition you can control how much you have going on, and most of us choose to dive deep into the waters of NADD and have caffeine, music, and multiple threads running while we work. If you were to watch a video of me working you would think my job was to load test Windows 7. This is a high stimulus environment and its fun and addictive. You feel powerful and respected.

Enter family: you do not control what is going on. Your music is suddenly different. You do not feel in control and can’t Alt-Tab away from a slow-loading page. If your two-year old wants to start off a conversation by saying “Daddy daddy daddy today we today we daddy daddy today at school we daddy daddy today we went daddy oh then she said that the doggie…” then you should act like a normal human being and listen.

So, my tips for proper reentry.

Enter the vacumm chamber

Twenty minutes before you get home unplug as much as you can. If you drive home don’t check your email once you walk out the door and try to listen to different music (or ideally none at all or talk radio) to separate. If you work at home close up everything like you are about to stand up but don’t walk into the rest of your home until you take a few minutes and do something physical – sit-ups, pushups, Christopher Walken-impression, hiding under your desk, etc.

Begin reentry

When you get home greet everyone and go change clothes. This signals to everyone that Mr. Rogers is awesome and his legacy lives on forever and that you are switching from one thing to another. If you work from home I’d say change something even though you are probably wearing the most comfortable thing you have on (i.e. your moo-moo). I normally either put on or take off my cape (depending on what happened during the day).

Turn off your phone; like hit the button. During the day you are probably checking your email all the time and if you are like me you use your phone for this. Guess what – you aren’t working! So don’t check it. If you must go put it somewhere that you can hear it if someone calls but not close enough to see a little light blinking telling you that you got something that doesn’t matter such as a new Twitter reply or a virus. Unless your job description involves the phrase “nuclear launch codes” or “creator of Chipotle restaurants” let’s face it – your job isn’t that important and you should enjoy your rest.

Get some perspective

On the days when you can’t get this right: you have too much to do, the kids are crazy, the significant other is crazy, everything is chaos in both parts of your life you need to gain some perspective to snap yourself back to reality. I have a few, but here is one: there are many immigrants in this country who work more hours than you, for less money, doing harder work, in a foreign land, for the sole purpose of sending money to their families who they rarely get to see.