How to pull this through when you are paid by the hour?
You either learn to live on less, or switch to billing by project ;)
Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
41–50 of 146 posts
Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
#42If I told you that every car needed 8 gallons of gas to drive 100 miles, you'd point out I was wrong - so many different makes and models, not to mention variables from tire pressure to driving style. Yet for the potentially even more complex range that is different people, it amazes me that so much of the advice is didactic - we all need 8 hours sleep, 8 glasses of water, and 8 hours of work with breaks is optimal.…
This is one of my gripes about working in an office. More often than not I cannot work continuously from 9-5, and end up wasting time just trying to get myself back into working mode - which usually descends into browsing HN/Reddit/etc or just working half as effectively as I usually do.
When I work remotely and have freedom over my time, I can take a few hours off to go for a walk, sleep, go for a long lunch, meet friends, or even play games. Afterwards I feel recharged and can be 110% productive, and usually end up working more hours than I would in an office.
I did this for a lot of last year, as I needed to overlap with teams in India and PST, so I usually worked 10am - 10pm taking a few hours off in the afternoon. I was able to get so much more done because of that extended break.
Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
#43I work 4-5 hours everyday but everyday on my own project. I wish I could have more time on work since most of the rest time I have is allocated to housework and taking care of two little ones. I guess the key is to control your work pace. When a sprint is needed and you are ready for it, a two-week with 90-100 hours in each week would not be a bad idea. Just like running. Listen to your body, pick your pace and keep going towards your goal.
Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
#44I agree with this article mostly, although 3 hours a day might be too little to make good progress with work for some people. This article reminded me of my previous workplace (about 7 years ago) where my manager discouraged engineers from working for more than 6 hours a day. He recommended 4 hours of work per day and requested us not to exceed more than 6 hours of work per day. He believed working for less number of…
I've found 6 hours to be about the right amount day in and day out.
Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
they are also often bullshit deadlines that users dont care about but gets a few brownie points for management.
No true Scotsman fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
True, they're still deadlines. But, since they are BS, that might be fixed somehow, no?
Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
#46I agree with the author with some exceptions: when you are working as a contractor or freelancer for someone else's project maybe 3h/day is not acceptable. When you've got externally imposed deadlines 3h/day may not be sufficient. But i agree that working less than 8h/day could be really more productive. I also liked the "less stuck for coding" topic as "...it is sometimes hard to go bed without solving some unknown…
> when you are working as a contractor or freelancer for someone else's project maybe 3h/day is not acceptable. When you've got externally imposed deadlines 3h/day may not be sufficient.
There's an easy solution to that problem: don't take on those projects. If they don't fit into your schedule don't do them.
Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's interesting, what do you do exactly? Designer? Developer? :)
I'm both, but offer a couple of productized design services. I'm actually right now in the process to figure out if if I'm able to replicate the same model for some dev services. Curious to find out.
I realize this may not be the thread for it; but you seem to have a good enough handle on your freelancing to be evaluating different product strategies, which is significantly more detail than I typically hear mentioned. Do you have any writing/thoughts on getting this far, for someone stuck in the bigCo land who has always dreamed of more autonomy, but stumbled on the "building a freelancer client network" block?
Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
No true Scotsman fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
True, they're still deadlines. But, since they are BS, that might be fixed somehow, no?
What evidence do you have the the negotiating partner doesn't have good reasons for insisting on the deadlines despite they look BS to you?
Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any questions about the license not answered by this? http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/271080/the-mit-licen...
I don't think that answers anything. Just because some anonymous poster put code online doesn't make it usable under the MIT license no matter what the ToS of the website says. The poster may have copied that code from a GPL code base...
That's true even if you find code on GitHub explicitly labeled as MIT, CC or Apache.
If you're worried about using code from stack-overflow, use it as inspiration only and write your own code. Or conduct a short search first to see if it WAS copied from another code repository.
Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday
#50As a freelancer, I understand where some of the comments "As a freelancer this won't work" are coming from. However, the last year I've flipped my freelancing model where I offer a more productized service with a clearly defined scope and set price. Instead of doing design work for $XXX/h, I'll deliver A,B,C within Timeframe Y, for Price $XXXX. With clearly defined services, I've actually been working for the last 12…
This approach has a lot of pros and cons.
By committing to a fixed price for a project, you're taking a lot of risk on yourself.
What if it takes more than Y? What if you weren't able to expect the true scope of the project? What if the customer isn't cooperative and wastes your time? What is considered a reasonable delivery? How many bugs do you continue to fix for free without charging more? How many changes to you put in your design without charging more?
Working at an hourly rate saves a lot of legal and contractual headaches. Its also critical when you're working with an agile company that has constantly changing needs and expectations.