HACKER Q&A
📣 carrygan

Tools and resources for making a calm company or calm workplace?


Hi!

I've been a workaholic these past few years and struggled with health and mental issues because of it. I used to work long hours and sometimes even work for 80+ hours a week. I sometimes even experience guilt when I'm out doing other things when I could have used the time to work instead.

Since last year, I've been slowly fixing my work habit (being a workaholic) and now try to only work less than or equal to 40 hours per week.

Books like "Rework" and "It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work" and following Jason Fried and DHH on Twitter really helped changed my perspective about work.

I'm planning to curate a list of tools and resources for making a calm company or a calm workplace. So my question is, what are the tools and resources that you know that would help in making a calm company or a calm workplace?

Currently, this is what's on my list:

- "Rework" book: https://basecamp.com/books/rework

- "It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work" book: https://basecamp.com/books/calm

- "Remote" book: https://basecamp.com/books/remote

- "Getting Real" book: https://basecamp.com/books/getting-real

- Work Can Wait feature of Basecamp: https://basecamp.com/features/work-can-wait

- Shape Up: https://basecamp.com/shapeup


  👤 cco Accepted Answer ✓
Walls between employees, traditionally called offices.

👤 carrygan
Thanks to all the responses so far!

I forgot to mention on the post that I also went through relationship issues because of workaholism. Previously, I'm proud that I'm a workaholic and wear it as a badge of honor. I'm glad that my perspective about workaholism has changed now.

I know that a lot of people are having issues too because of workaholism so I wanted to curate a list of tools and resources for making a calm company or calm workplace and hopefully it will help people achieve a better work-life balance and will help companies improve the work environment of their employees. Hopefully, it will also help spread awareness and prevent people from having to learn the negative effects of workaholism the hard way like others and I did.


👤 winkelwagen
https://hurryslowly.co/ it’s a podcasts, think there are definitely some interviews with people that might give you new resources.

👤 cntainer
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67825.Peopleware

Happy and healthy teams result in productive teams, who would have thought :)

Some of my best work was done during 40 hours weeks or less. Whenever I break that rule the end result suffers because I lose creativity and focus.

It's ok to do the occasional extra time when you're really engrossed in what you're doing, but overwork has long-term negative effects.


👤 nefitty
My life feels nicer with plants around. I would love having plants at my workplace. The second best thing is views of greenery outside. The last resort is pictures, posters, desktop wallpapers of green places.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nomanazish/2018/02/10/think-you...


👤 rapnie
This resource (while mainly targeted at improving insane Chinese work schedules) is about work-life balance:

https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU/blob/master/README.md


👤 AndreFvchs
Get yourself a good pair of noise cancelling headphones. Inspiration: https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-noise-cancelling-head...

👤 gtirloni

👤 sjg007
You need to say "no!" and get managers to say "no!" as well. Setting limits and boundaries etc...