Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

Historically, working 24 hours a day (I include sleep because after a certain number of hours you even dream of code or your business) for 1 year typically accomplishes more than working 3 hours per day for 8 years. Or 1.5 hours per day for 16 years. There is just some kind of economy of scale.

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EDIT: I got downvoted. Come up with whatever standard of productivity you want (ANY standard that you want) and adduce a single human who in 16 years times 90 minutes per day accomplished more than I can find a counter-example of someone doing in the same field in 1 year. 1 year of 24 hours a day strictly dominates 16 years of 90 minutes per day, and you cannot find a single counterexample in any field from any era of humanity. Go ahead and try.

oh and by the way, in 1905 Einstein published 1 paper on the Photoelectric effect, for which he won his only nobel prize, 1 paper on Brownian motion which convinced the only leading anti-atomic theorist of the existence of atoms, 1 paper on a little subject that "reconciles Maxwell's equations for electricity and magnetism with the laws of mechanics by introducing major changes to mechanics close to the speed of light. This later became known as Einstein's special theory of relativity" and 1 paper on Mass–energy equivalence, which might have remained obscure if he hadn't worked it into a catchy little ditty referring to an "mc". You might have heard of it? E = mc^2? Well a hundred and ten years later all the physicistis are still laying their beats on top.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers

Your turn. Point to someone who did as much in 16 years by working just 90 minutes per day.

Closer to our own field, Instagram was sold for $1 billion about a year after its founding date, to Facebook. Point out anyone who built $1 billion in value over 16 years working just 90 minutes per day.

Probably depends a lot on the amount of intrinsic motivation involved: burning for something you love until it is done? Much more efficient per hour than revisiting it as a side project for some leftover hours each day. But when you are just exchanging hours for money, you will see acceptable (but not stellar) productivity at a reasonable amount of hours that will sharply drop when you add more.

3 hours a day is just not enough for everyone.

For some projects it's perfectly fine but some tasks can only be done if you focus for a large amount of time on it, work obsessively on it until you reach a milestone.

The greatest work I have ever done, was always done when I retreated like a monk for several weeks, cutting myself of the whole world and working almost non-stop on the task until I made a significant breakthrough.

Then I go back to the livings and share the fruits of my work, and of course, take a well deserved rest for several days.

The trap into most people fall is that they are confusing being active and working.

I'm pretty sure this has worked for the author, and it will work for a lot of other people as well, but a lot the benefits raised can still be achieved when working more than 3 hours a day.

A few points are raised in the post: 1. If you only work 3 hours, you're less tempted to go on twitter/facebook/hacker news.

True - but that's really a question of discipline, work environment and how excited you are about what you're working on. It's perfectly possible to perform for 10 hours straight without distractions, just make sure to take an occasional break for physical health.

2. Better prioritization.

Treating your time as a scarce resource helps focus on the core features. But your time is a scarce resource even if you work 12 hours a day. Programmers are in shortage. They cost a lot. And the time you're spending on building your own apps could have been spent freelancing and working for someone else's apps. Always stick a dollar figure on your working hours. Even if you're working on your own projects. You should always prioritize your tasks, and always consider paying for something that might save you development time (Better computer. better IDE. SaaS solutions, etc).

3. Taking a long break can help you solve a problem you're stuck on.

Personally, I find that taking a short walk, rubber duck debugging or just changing to a different task for a while does the same. If I'm stuck on something, I don't need to stop working on it until tomorrow. I just need an hour or two away from it.

On the topic of work environment: in one job I worked at, we had the Internet machines completely separated from the work machines. If you needed to check something you had to physically walk over to the Internet desk. Great for focussing on the task at hand without distraction, and considering carefully what information you need.