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Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

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Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

#51

Post by kethinov »

sleepychu wrote: post #15
rmsaksida wrote: post #9

I mostly agree with the author, but I don't see the point of stopping yourself when you're "in the zone". Why lose the flexibility? What works for me is having a baseline of 3 or 4 hours of daily work, and not imposing any hard limits when I want or need to do extra hours. This works out great, because I have no excuses not to do the boring routine work as it's just a few hours, but I also have the liberty of doing o…

The author thinks in the long run the 10h sessions hurt you. They acknowledge specifically that got a week long exercise more work will produce more results but that they feel their average productivity is much higher over months or years by never getting bogged down even when they're making progress.

The 3 hours every day pattern might work for the author and many other people but it won't work for everyone. That's the problem with generalizing. There's no one size fits all solution for an optimal work schedule.

I think the lesson to learn from this is that we should work harder to not only remove the stigma of unusual work schedules, but encourage them so people can discover their maximum productivity schedule for themselves.

Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

#52

Post by bpchaps »

wtbob wrote: post #36
dkopi wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Air gapping". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_(networking) It's common practice in classified environments, as a necessary security precaution. But it's a true productivity killer imho. Better to just install an extension that blocks twitter/facebook etc, than completely cripple your ability to search for technical information as you need it. Also - good luck installing tools and plugins when you have to start…

> Better to just install an extension that blocks twitter/facebook etc, than completely cripple your ability to search for technical information as you need it. With godoc, man pages, info pages, a local copy of the Common Lisp Hyperspec and Usenet, what more does one need?

At the last place I did sysadmin work, this was basically how I functioned. Just about everything was done to prevent having to use google, stackoverflow, etc. It was absolutely amazing in terms of learning and gaining confidence in the tools and documentation, etc.... but nah. After about 3 months of that, I gave up. It's possible, but it led to so may "time wasting" rabbit holes in trying to figure things out. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but in hindsight, it probably wasn't the best use of time while at work (and should be frowned upon if management ever suggests it)!

Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

#54

Post by chris11 »

susam wrote: post #40

I 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…

Did he differentiate between more demanding work like writing code and less demanding work like going to meetings?

Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

#55

Post by rev_bird »

lucaspiller wrote: post #42
JacobAldridge wrote: post #7

If 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 f…

> 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.

I did this off and on for about 6 months, pretty much by accident: When I worked from home, I wandered in and out of my responsibilities all day, so I couldn't get my work done until probably 9 or 9:30 at night. I was absolutely miserable, and I think the case would be the same if I tried it again, albeit more mindfully.

In theory, being able to take breaks helps me clear my head. In reality, though, I find my brain interprets "It's 10 pm and I just finished work" the same way whether I worked straight through from 9 am or took a 3-hour break in the afternoon. I hate it.

Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

#56

Post by jacquesm »

There is a much better alternative: work really hard for 2 to 3 months per year and then take the rest of the year off. If you're doing high value consulting you can easily do this. You may have to forego some luxury but that's a very small price to pay for the freedom you get in return.

Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

#57

Post by agumonkey »

lucaspiller wrote: post #42
JacobAldridge wrote: post #7

If 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 f…

A friend at work prefer to stay at work incontrolably doozing rather than taking a cut, because "that's not proper", even though he will spend that time on reddit, self loathing, doubling the negative effect.

Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

#58

Post by mrottenkolber »

What about work 11 hours a week and be happy? Works for me, and I am a freelancer.

Edit: I usually do three blocks of three hours each and one two hour block each week. I find three hours perfect to tackle a problem, and a good chunk to be able to reflect upon afterwards.

Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

#59

Post by Melk »

jacquesm wrote: post #56

There is a much better alternative: work really hard for 2 to 3 months per year and then take the rest of the year off. If you're doing high value consulting you can easily do this. You may have to forego some luxury but that's a very small price to pay for the freedom you get in return.

That was my schedule the past 8 or 9 years (actually it was closer to working 4 months and taking 8 months off because I'm not that high value). The problem is that I like what I do but the months I was working I enjoyed it less and the months I was off I missed working. Also it's killing for your social life when you're working nonstop. Another problem is you'll lose clients if you're not available for months at a time. My new schedule is closer to what the post describes and it works much better for me personally.

Re: Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday

#60

Post by logicallee »

onion2k wrote: post #28
logicallee wrote: post #2

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. --------- EDIT: I got downvoted. Come up with whatever standard of productivity you want (ANY standard that you want) and ad…

Regarding your edit - no one is downvoting you because they believe they can do more in 90 minutes than 24 hours. You're being downvoted because you're saying that productivity is infinitely scalable - I believe that's wrong. Over a certain amount of work productivity drops to the point where it creates a negative impact on your effectiveness. If you find that you're effective for every hour you work regardless how l…

Why would you say that I'm stating productivity is "infinitely" scalable? Is a billion "infinitely" more than a million?

I'm saying if you want to accomplish something great and groundbreaking, it's better to work 24 hours a day at it than three hours a day, and, yes, you can stop after a year or two. You literally have as much life left, but you can accomplish a huge amount more, by concentrating the work rather than spreading it out. I don't know why this is, it just is.

But you know what's even easier than working three hours a day? Working zero hours and signing up for unemployment benefits. You certainly won't suffer from exhaustion or burnout.

You can choose smallness, but just be aware that you are doing so. That's what choosing to work three hours a day means. I don't think I'm saying something even a tiny bit controversial and I am utterly perplexed at the votes I received on it.

If you want to do something big, then concentrate your work on it, don't spread it out over a longer time period. You literally are not able to achieve as much in the exact same number of hours, if the hours are spread out over a longer time period.

I can't believe anyone finds this even the slightest bit controversial or finds any objection to what I've written.

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