Confessions of a workaholic

Today is my last Friday…

Well, It’s just under a week to go before I pack my Microsoft throwing devices (MSDN and Channel9 Guys), my box of Branflakes and my Coffee machine under my arm and walk out the door after 8 short years and 8 shorter months.

I am taking a break before I fully enter the ‘identity metaverse’ but it would appear that I am not going to have much of a break as it would appear that I feel the urge to metaphorically change to fifth gear before starting my new job. I am going to be spending the next couple of weeks (when not changing my son’s awfully ripe nappies) taking stock on what I want to get out of the next 5 years. My new job is going to be very exciting but none the less very challenging.

I’ve been following for the last months or so what some are doing to ‘make themselves a better developer’ and think it’s time that I did something along the same lines. As of next Friday I will have the first ‘free’ time I’ve had since Ryan was born and I plan to immerse myself in books on Management style, OpenID, Cardspace and Identity in general.

As a side, I’m half way through PeopleWare by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister (I appear to be the only one who hasn’t read it) and it would seem that I have fallen deep into one of their classifications. Hello, My name is David and I am a workaholic. I am one who has reached the end of a major project and his tether. The project rolled out very successfully due to in no small part the 60hr weeks that I have pulled pretty much since February. I love what I do with a passion, every aspect of it, but I have not really managed my work/life balance very well recently – and indeed there is a similar pattern over my professional career. I can relate very closely to what Tom and Timothy say in their book about demands, quality, productivity and turnover – kinda case in point is that I am now leaving a job that I loved.

So, I now recognise that the way I work is bad – or do I – I’ve just spent the last couple of paragraphs talking about what I am going to do during my time off and low and behold isn’t it work related.

So Doc, tell it to me straight, is it terminal?