At least 90%. If I'm at work and not working, I'm usually working on one of my own projects.
Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
41–50 of 163 posts
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
#42Some days almost the entire day. I'll read, watch videos, do some tutorials. But its offset because usually when I do this it's because I'm hung up on something and it just isn't going to get solved unless the ole brain has time to do its subconscious thing.
Letting the subconscious work through a hard problem while doing something else is a truly underrated trick. Taking a shower or going for a walk also works wonderfully.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
#43Throwaway for maximum honesty: I am pretty sure I spend at least 75% of my time "at work" not working. HN, Reddit, messing around with side projects or learning a new language or framework. This has been the case for my entire working life. I seem to get as much done as other people (sometimes better) so part of me wonders if I'm not as unusual as I feel. Part of me wonders if I should get evaluated for ADHD, since I…
The best way to describe ADHD is: The TV is always on, but you don't get to choose the channel . Some things are easy to focus on—I can sit down to program for a bit and lose track of time for 5 hours. On the other hand, if something is boring, it's mind-numbingly boring . It was the worst while I was in school, since teachers and professors just thought, "oh, he's unmotivated" when in reality it was more along the l…
Unrelated but I felt compelled to share a similar sentiment:
> It was the worst while I was in school, since teachers and professors just thought, "oh, he's unmotivated" when in reality it was more along the lines of, "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper." (Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)
Oh man I can relate so much. So many conversations with teachers asking why I wasn't motivated while every night I went home to program and build side projects and was singularly focused on becoming a programmer in the game industry.
The answer was of course I was motivated just not by anything they had to offer and that never went over very well.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
#4499% of my 5 hour day. Because I discovered I can't usually stay in flow mode for more than 5 hours, so I get in the office around 12pm and leave around 5.30pm
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
#45I only spend around 5-15% of my time at work, not working.
Work in my context is time spent on things I planned to do and want to do, including the small breaks I take to recharge and socialize.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
#4699% of my 5 hour day. Because I discovered I can't usually stay in flow mode for more than 5 hours, so I get in the office around 12pm and leave around 5.30pm
So that's your working time?
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
#47Arguably, time spent reading HN is a legitimate part of becoming/remaining a good developer. Certainly, spending time socializing with coworkers is a required part of work, many places. Spending some amount of time unwinding at the office is arguably required for mental health and therefore a functional component of remaining a worker -- does that count as working? "Working" is an ambiguous category, it seems to me.…
I'll be honest; I don't think using HN is anything close to what I would consider "working." At best it's marginally optimized random browsing.
While it isn't work, reading technical articles regularly on HN can be very beneficial.
In fact, the first thing I tell aspiring developers is to start reading HN on a regular basis if they already aren't. It confers a sort of broad awareness of various stacks and ecosystems over time that's hard to obtain otherwise.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
#4860% or more :(
But there are SOME DAYS that I work 150%! ("in the flow")
So how to achieve flow consistently?
One of the few things that works for me is to get started working first thing in the morning: no news, no HN, until 10am, etc. When I can do this, I know I'll have a productive day.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
#49I spent 60-70% of my time not working because even though I'm working with interesting technology, it's stuff that won't get used by almost anyway, my peers don't seem interested, my manager is absent and the requirements are all over the place (symptom of nobody caring, whatever is done is okay as long as it impresses, for some random definition of "impresses)...
... so it needs to be done to check an item in a list but nobody cares. If nobody cares, I don't care either, which makes me think I'm wasting my time, which leads to depression, feeling burnt out, procrastinating even more, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How much of your time at work do you spend not working?
#50Not counting lunch break, I'd say I probably spend ~90-95% working.