Ask HN: How are some people exceptionally productive?

so what are yours

how massive? I can't always plan my crunches, but since I started taking caffeine pills - I take 4 pills, equiv 4 coffees, right before really focusing on something, then I can relax in a different part of the day where it doesn't matter if it's slower. So I go between 0 and 8 coffees per day worth of caffeine, depending on what I'm doing. I've completely stopped drinking coffee and save a bunch of time that way (except socially.)

How does this compare with what you called truly insane?

Burnout can absolutely lead to a poorer diet and a lack of exercise due to a lack of general motivation to eat well or stay active.

At minimum it would be correlated with poorer diet, in that if you're overworked, finding time to take care of yourself becomes increasingly difficult.

Not claiming to be a "highly productive person", but there are a few rules that I've learned along the way. These are true for me at least.

1) Context switching is expensive. Know your tools/language well, avoid interruptions.

2) You probably only have something like 4-5 hours max per day where your brain can effectively handle hard thinking tasks. Accept this and try to plan your day to get the most out of this time. For a lot of people this tends to be early in the morning, others late at night.

3) Plan all of your low cognitive tasks outside of this time. Bug reports, user support, whatever. I'm also a sysadmin so I have a whole bunch of these tasks.

4) If you have a lot of those low-cognitive cost tasks, make sure that they're well documented so you can have a wiki open on one monitor and a shell/web page/whatever in the other so you can get through lots of these quickly and without invoking many brain cells.

5) related to 2 - you probably only have a maximum of 50 hours a week where you can work effectively. The odd 70 week is probably fine, but do this on a regular/continual basis and your cognitive ability starts to decline, depression/burn-out/resentment and other things start to creep in.

6) related to 5 - keep some semblance of a work/life balance. Eat well, do regular strenuous excersize, see your friends/family, get away from work for a few days, etc.

7) enjoy what you do.

In my mind I'm a lazy person. My good hours are in the morning, and after that it only goes down. Right in the afternoon it's really hard for me to get anything done.

When I was studying at the university for exams, I learned more than 50% before noon, rest in the afternoon, and at 8pm, I was unable to keep anything in my head.

Now is the same, but if I haven't worked that much during the day, I can still crunch out some good code at 9pm. If I worked during the day, no way I can do that.

Yet, when I look back, I always had great reviews at my jobs. Some managers considered me more productive than others who I thought were more productive.

Next to my full-time job, I take care of our 3 kids together with my wife, and I'm programming a side project http://rpgplayground.com. I always had projects in my spare time. Some people with kids ask me were I can find the time. Yet, I still feel lazy all the time. In the weekends I'm beat. Sunday is terrible, but due to that I'm "super" productive on Monday (relative to the other days ;)).

I think it's hard to know by yourself if you are productive or not. Being productive 60+ hour per week? I highly doubt that. I even doubt begin 40+ hours productive per week. With productive I mean crunching out good code, while being in the zone.

I think a good day is being productive max 6 hours, on average 4. But it is impossible to do that in one go, and you also can't do something else productive during your resting time. If you look at athletes, they also don't train more than 6 hours in a day.

My good days are when I'm feeling energetic, positive, and am passionate about a clear goal, and like the 'zone' that I'm in, the problem I'm solving. Also, a good nights sleep can do wonders!