Yeah, a month of 100 hours work weeks can be bad. Three months are much, much worse.
It's not just hours, though; what's worse is that "no time to stop for gas, we're already late" mentality of all deathmarches. So you end up working from unrealistic specs implementing architecturally unsound decisions using wrong tools and digging through a mess of unreadable ad-hoc code along the way. For 100 hours a week, no less.
It's funny, but what helps me most to recover after a deathmarch is more programming -- but done right this time. Something small, something smart, something that needs more thinking than typing. Maybe Euler project or codegolf, or maybe your own small scheme or forth implementation, or something :)
Interesting, another poster argued the opposite -- to do manual labor without much mental demands, as a way of getting over burnout. :-)
(For the record, I have friends that use both methods and it seems to work for them. Personally, I read literature (-: ok, an exaggeration -- sf&f :-) and just take time off.)
It's not just hours, though; what's worse is that "no time to stop for gas, we're already late" mentality of all deathmarches. So you end up working from unrealistic specs implementing architecturally unsound decisions using wrong tools and digging through a mess of unreadable ad-hoc code along the way. For 100 hours a week, no less.
It's funny, but what helps me most to recover after a deathmarch is more programming -- but done right this time. Something small, something smart, something that needs more thinking than typing. Maybe Euler project or codegolf, or maybe your own small scheme or forth implementation, or something :)