Why not just do whatever you feel like and not overthink it? Enjoy you holiday :)

Good point

I believe I can be quite good at overthinking things.

Another candidate for holiday stuff: “less overthinking” 🎉

Is it a custom to take long summer holidays and then work throughout the rest of the year in Norway? I believe I've seen something like this in Finland

Yeah, quite common. I’m having an extra extra long one this summer, six weeks total. Taking out all my “vacation” days, in addition to some saved up overtime before starting in a new job in August. I’ve also found that I prefer having a bit of a break between jobs. There’s even a term for it, “https://www.fellesforbundet.no/aktuelt/nyheter/2023/fellesferie-2024-er-fastsatt/”, “the common holiday”. It started out in construction, all construction sites shut down for tree weeks. Then others followed suit, people liked having a holiday at the same time.

Nice. What's your new job (if you want to share)

We also have three weeks like that, it's called "bouwvak" in Dutch, which is short for "construction vacation"

Starting in https://www.ardoq.com/, software engineering. I’m quite excited about the team, I think I’m going to be working with good people. But I don’t know quite what it’s going to be like yet. We’ll see—first date is August 1st!

Very cool. I thought you already worked there

Congratulations, @U3X7174KS!

thanks 🙂

I’m struggling with this as well. And not so much just with Clojure, but with work in general. Like right now. It’s raining outside, the family is still sleeping, so what’s the cost of working? Especially with the bits of work that I truly enjoy? What I have found is that it’s smart of me to work at a company that values and gives flexibility wrt to working hours. Working at a company where you’d have to report hours and keep tabs on that would not be a great fit for me. Having said all this, I also do believe that some time with 100% non-work time is also beneficial. I’ll probably have a week of that in week 40, which is another scandinavism (or two): denoting time in week numbers, and having a week of school holiday in week 40.

Autumn holidays? I think that's "uge 42" here :flag-dk:

So, you're going to have lots of activities with the kids?

Yes, sortof, going on our annual trip to Fontainebleau for bouldering 🙂

The experimentation made me think, so I drew a map. Perhaps I can look at the map, then remember the experience from this summer.

Add something fatty before coffee, like peanut butter or dark chocolate

Offsets some of the consequence of consuming stimulants right as you wake up

Nice, more experimentation required!

and/or wait 1-2 hours after waking before consuming coffee, they say

something with cortisol, but I'm not an expert

Do you just start with some water, then? Coffee when I wake up is kind of ingrained into my habit now. Though not necessarily for the caffeine, I feel like it's nice to have a way to start the day that I can just do, without having to make any decisions.

my routine: drinking luke-warm water when you wake up. meditate. breakfast. walk to a place into the city (sunshine), there do some work/reading

getting out first and then coffee also prevents the problem of "I wish I'd getting out sooner"

I have different constraints, so I drink coffee (and pre workout) before the sun is fully up, but make up for it with plenty of water and peanut butter before

do you work out in the morning before doing any (computer) work?

Yes, I hate going to the gym in the evening and if I go in the morning that needs to happen before taking kids to daycare

good for you. I'm totally not a morning person so I prefer a slow quiet start of the day

Who said I was a morning person?

heheh

https://zantafakari.substack.com/p/the-case-against-caffeine

yes. I've experimented with getting off caffeine

The problem is - stimulants are amazing

I always wonder how much of that effect is just undoing withdrawal symptoms

Caffeine withdrawal is quick. By day 3 you'll be clean

well, take a look at r/decaf. many people report that it takes months and for some even a year to get back to baseline completely

dopamine-wise

mv self-reporting Trash/

I've quit caffeine before. after two weeks I still felt like complete depressed rubbish. 1 coffee solved the whole problem and I got back into the loop

right now I'm experimenting again with reducing caffeine on a very low level. I'm not sure what works best to be honest. I do get a deeper sleep

I abstain from caffeine completely after 1500

that's a good rule

I do want to experiment with nicotine in a controlled manner

like, patches or something?

yes

I'm glad I quit that when I was 19

so addicted

never smoked anything :man-shrugging:

I used to smoke 20 cigarettes or so a day

😮

Not starting the day with coffee helps with agitatedness for me. I also try to quit early (preferably before noon) to prevent IBS/insomnia problems. Ideally I should quit entirely, but that turns out to be hard.

How do you guys feel about smaller breaks during the day? I think something smoking culture got right was that there's a need to drop focus for a while, perhaps with a few other people. I don't feel like I've figured this one out yet either. I think it should be a goal to keep "toil" out of the programmer's day. But I don't think we can be hyper effective all day either.

I do miss my smoke breaks tbh

I had a friend at work who'd take me out to tea/coffee smoke breaks. Quitting smoking did not stop him from taking those breaks

The problem is I want continuous uninterrupted work, so I'd usually tie that break in between meetings (work's anathema) or around lunch break

I’ve quit coffee, withdrawal is rough for a week, then I’m ok. But it is my last vice, so I keep it to avoid becoming entirely and insufferably angelic. 🙂

Brewing one cup at a time and using slow brewing methods makes it impractical to get an addiction. 😁 It also adds a couple of 10 minute breaks spread throughout the day. Maybe I’m simply justifying my love of tasty specialty coffee to the crowd of enlightened here. 😆 On a serious note: do you drink tea? I always feel the effects of the caffeine equivalent in tea much faster and more strongly than with coffee. This has been my experience with various black teas, green teas, as well as some white teas. For this question I’m not counting herbal teas as tea.

coffee contains up to two times the amount of caffeine as black tea and twice as less as green tea, but it all depends on the amount of coffee/tea used, the kind of coffee (robusta or arabica, the height/temperature at which the tea/coffee was grown, etc) or the kind of green/black tea. in addition, green tea contains l-theanine which has a relaxing effect which may balance the jitteriness of caffeine. so it kinda sounds counter intuitive that caffeine from green tea would hit anyone harder than coffee, but yes, people do report that now and then too :) personally the caffeine from coffee is much more noticeable to me

I know that is how it is supposed to work, it just doesn’t in my body. 😅 Is there a difference in how quickly caffeine from tea affects the body compared to caffeine from coffee?

I don't think so, once it's dissolved into water it enters your blood stream pretty quickly

Regarding coffee, I do notice a difference between various brew methods in how the caffeine affects me. With espresso and immersion brew methods I have to drink a lot of coffee to get jitters, whereas coffee brewed on a coffee machine doesn’t require much more than a couple of cups.

that seems to line up with the amount of caffeine, since filter coffee contains more than espresso

with espresso the water isn't in contact with the water as a long as with filter coffee, thus less caffeine is released

Yep. That’s why I stay away from coffee machines usually.

Anyway, I enjoy both tea and coffee responsibly. 😆

Or try to at least.

oh wait coffee machine, I didn't catch that. that's usually either instant coffee or from coffee pouches, or it can be just a full-automatic coffee machine so it still depends what kind of coffee machine

full-automatic is just basically espresso without a barista, so less taste, but similar caffeine

No no, coffee machine means pour over but automated in Denmark, so I might have used the wrong word there.

You got the right impression. 😊

Oh! I've been doing the same for last 3 months!

(not the same piece to be precise :) )

Nice! Whatcha playing?

Working on Alkan Barkarole, Mozart Fantasia and Lyapunov Berceuse d'une poupee. Still far from playing them smoothly like you do. Probably overestimated my abilities but my teacher says it's ok so I'm fighting :)

Great :) What kind of piano do you play on?

(I'm playing on a Yamaha Clavinova digital piano but I'm looking for something better)

I play on upright piano which I own (45 years old Legnica, Polish cheap brand). Sounds ok. At my work building I have an access to a small Calisia piano. Not in good condition though.

ah nice, playing at work :)

Yeah 🙂

I assume that this is to help you work with Emacs?

kidding aside, very nice playing

Well, emacs probably helped keeping my fingers in shape all the years I didn’t play ;)

babachka :face_with_monocle:

Good stuff 👌