Working, traveling, programming. Seems like time well spent to me. Oh wait, I'm still not posting photos from Oaxaca, what a bad person I am. Will do that. Soon. Or not. :)
I really like this philisophy page at gun.io. It's about how our sedentary life (as coders) is a little bit off, considering the technology and opportunities that we now have to move.
I'm settling for a while in Mexico which means I'm trying to apply these guidelines to the letter. I'm not sure how it will work in the end, good I hope. What is certain is that the world is not that big. For example Mexico is just twelve hours from french-land: add airport friction to the equation, it's just a one day trip. Instead of taking your car/train to commute to the same place for the rest of your life, grab a plane and start exploring ; while you have time. I guess it is that simple.
Advantage: no one's looking at me when I'm singing along LocoRoco's soundtrack.
This reminds me of a rather recent conversation I had with a co-worker at af83.
If you want a happy productive team, I would say at all costs. As with most things awareness and professionalism is the main key. Listening to individuals who are working at the coal face and in the fire line of production.
An great example being that when they complain about other employees work and behaviour, explore it, don't fail over to the easy position of favouritism and write it off to a "personality clash" as you obviously have one individual not functioning (the one who is vocalising the issue) and very likely there is something wrong with the one they are pointing to.
Ignore this at your peril. Unfortunately most do, or allow their reactions to be directed by personal bias, i.e. attacking the individual who is trying to explain the issue.
In situations like this there is a Tesa coil of a bolt building up.
Professional and unbiased personnel management is key, though usually absent unfortunately. Recent surveys have indicated that around 50% of individuals have let or want to leave their employment due to poor management.(complete article at Lifehacker)
This reminded of a decision I took a few weeks ago to basically "work less", and take more time for whatever else (running, reading, naked sky-diving, ball shaving, you name it). Since it is easy to overwork oneself in a exciting start-up environment, and quite enjoy it, the solution was not so obvious at first. Some people are having a rather hard time figuring out that they're not their job.
I came up with a pretty stupid solution, that mostly involves a timer (and some graphs, 'cause you know I'm collecting data and... that's what you do with data), and then a "stress margin" to leave some room for exceptions... Again, as we are often saying : "works for me".