Culture Shock?

Doing my reservist in the last 3 days required a bit of adjustment from me.

The reason was because the army takes a lot of breaks!

I’m typically used to doing work cycles that consist of at least 6 hours of uninterrupted work. Sometimes the sessions could be 12 hours at a time. Sometimes I could do 6hr + break + 6hr + break + 6hr. Or even 8hr + break + 8hr work days.

So it was interesting to hark back to the laidback lifestyle of 8am start, teabreak at 10am. lunch at 12, teabreak at 3pm, end work at 6pm.

I guess for what I consider a Lowest Common Denomintor organization like the army. (Typically big organizations), it works.

But I think this 2hr + break + 2hr + lunch + 2h + break + 2hr workday just doesnt quite cute it in private companies simply because there issuch a thing as market competition.

The army lives off a defence budget that is pegged to the GDP so it’s obviously different from companies. Also 2hr essentially means that nothing really substantial can be done. I mean what can you accomplish?

I know programmers who essentially work 20 or even 30 hr stretches then sleep then repeat the cycle. Not that I’m advocating a crazy work life but rather focusing on continous stretches without context switching is extremely important to get anything done in the knowledge industry. This is why I find people in the tech industry so cool! Because a lot of them are essentially in the upper echelons of ability to concentrate and focus.

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