Ask HN: How many hours per day are you working? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How many hours per day are you working?

#11

Post by evrimfeyyaz » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

the_cramer wrote: post #4

evrimfeyyaz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you meant "6 hours... counting the short breaks." In any case, I think six hours is a good number. So, you have to put in eight hours of actual work? A usual workday is eight hours, but I'd say most employees probably do less than four hours of actual work every day. Are you a freelancer or an employee, if you don't mind my asking?

You are correct. 6 hours including the breaks. I am an employee at a large distribution company for IT hard and software. I think there are many factors that play into how long a productive day really is: Type of work - is your job requiring brainwork all the time or maybe you have some work in-between that just requires execution prime to thinking work? Environment - how good are you shielded from distractions? Comm…

I agree, this method probably works for a "maker" and not a "manager" (or a person whose job requires them to move between tasks a lot).

Re: Ask HN: How many hours per day are you working?

#12

Post by insaneisnotfree » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

thedevindevops wrote: post #6

We have a real meeting problem in my workplace, I'm at work the standard 7.5hrs but usually 5.5-6 of that is calls

Same problem here, it seems like solutions like mixaba, squawk, watercooler might be an option

Re: Ask HN: How many hours per day are you working?

#13

Post by robodale » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

6 hours of actual heads-in-the-code software dev work. It does vary, sometimes I get nearly 8 hrs, but meetings/etc drop it to the average of 6.

Re: Ask HN: How many hours per day are you working?

#14

Post by tothrowaway » Thu, Jun 11, 2020, 5:19 AM UTC

I tracked my productive time down to the minute for 4 years when I was working for a consulting company. I could do 4-6 hours of actual programming work in a 9 hour time span. Any more than that, and I was exhausted.

I'm a solo dev now. I don't keep track of my time religiously but RescueTime reports I'm coding 3-4 hours a day plus 1-2 hours of email.

Re: Ask HN: How many hours per day are you working?

#15

Post by wprapido » Fri, Jun 12, 2020, 8:34 AM UTC

3-5h a day, if lucky. Being busy or looking busy doesn't count as working.

Re: Ask HN: How many hours per day are you working?

#16

Post by ThroAway200612 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 7:05 AM UTC

I would love to hear your answer because I do this too, and the numbers may seem shockingly low. Posting under a throwaway just in case some manager sees this and judges me.

I have been scrupulously tracking focused time for years, since I was in college. I "stop the clock" when I sit back to daydream for a few minutes, check the news, or use the bathroom. I also generally don't include meetings unless they're small meetings where I need to be fully engaged.

The result is that for me about 150 minutes of real work feels like an ordinary productive day at my not overly demanding dev job. 180 minutes is doable on a daily basis but I have to be pretty disciplined. If I set my goal to 240 minutes work begins to consume my life and I often stay late to make it up. Days when I have done more than 5 hours of work by this definition are really rare, I either get so stuck on a problem that I am consumed by it (super rare) or have some really impending deadline that blots out everything else (rare). I know if I put in 240m I'm doing a really solid day's work every day.

In college while taking 18 credits of graduate courses I could get by on 4h studying/homework per day, but had to bump it to 5h near the end of the term.