How to Stay Healthy and Sane Working 12-hour Days As a Programmer

DocuSign Momentum '14

The DocuSign Momentum conference is just a few days away, and my team and I has been pulling long shift in order to deliver something absolutely amazing and to make sure that it’s in a great shape. So I wanted to share what exactly helps me stay healthy, sane, productive and happy working as a programmer 10–12 hours per day sustainably:

  • Get at least seven to eight hours of sleep
  • Skip breakfast: clears mind, reduces calories intake, and saves time
  • Check work email only a few time per day and check personal email/Facebook/LinkedIn/etc only once (in the evening) preferably inboxing zero both categories
  • Meditate and workout (12 minutes is enough)
  • Cancel all activities and avoid any additional obligations and projects
  • Wear uniform-like clothing
  • Drink lots of good coffee (e.g., bulletproof coffee)
  • Avoid fruits, sugars, sodas (even diet ones), grains, legumes and potatoes, i.e., paleo lifestyle/diet
  • Change workstations: resistance ball chair, stand-up desk, sofa, etc.
  • Consume vitamins: C, Omega–3, Multivitamins and D3
  • Take walks and stay positive!

PS: The Healthy Programmer book has been on my to-do list for a long time. Please let me know whether you read/liked it.

Author: Azat

Techies, entrepreneur, 20+ years in tech/IT/software/web development expert: NodeJS, JavaScript, MongoDB, Ruby on Rails, PHP, SQL, HTML, CSS. 500 Startups (batch Fall 2011) alumnus. http://azat.co http://github.com/azat-co

2 thoughts on “How to Stay Healthy and Sane Working 12-hour Days As a Programmer”

  1. Hi there. Just wanted to say: fix the link to the Healthy Programmer book. :-)

  2. Hey,

    I disagree with the skipping breakfast part and don’t eat fruits. Besides that, everything looks good to me.

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