Ask HN: What's your working day like?

Creating a throwaway account because I don't want any link with my public persona.

I am a research assistant in math in an institute somewhere in Eastern Europe. In contrast to western countries, you may have here a permanent (i.e. quasi-lifetime, ultra-secure) position even as you are still a PhD student. However, at that point you have a salary of ~$3.5k/year after taxes, which can be supplemented by being in a research grant or some other similar funding.

A productive day:

[06.30] My alarm rings, I wake up, morning daily routine.

[07.30] I leave home, I walk to the institute (somehow, home and work are positioned in a way such that any public transport lengthens the time for commute).

[08.20] I arrive at my office in which I am alone, turn on my computer.

[08.20 - 09.00] Read my mail, answer my mails, put in my schedule something I remember I have to do and could easily forget, check out RSS reader.

[09.00] I realize I don't have anything "urgent to do" (e.g. write an abstract for a conference, preparing a lecture) and may therefore work on an interesting problem.

[09.00-13.00] Productive work. This usually implies a lot of Googling and skimming through many, many papers to get a feel for the state of the art in a sub-sub-field of math. I may write a lot of summaries of theorems with pen and paper to understand what exactly are the differences between them and where are the main difficulties. I sometimes suddenly realize that there is something everyone missed and I might discover a new link. More frequently, I realize that my ideas are blind alleys. I may get some new ideas for that, then I search again for a lot of papers that may help me (becoming frustrated when some of the papers I want to read aren't even behind a paywall, but completely forgotten except for citations). When I'm very very well-read and very very very lucky, I find new natural definitions and interesting theorems and write papers about them.

[13.00-13.30] I go out, have some lunch at a canteen-like place nearby, get back to my office.

[13.30-17.00] Productive work like before. If everything goes well, I don't see anybody for the whole day.

[17.00-18.00] The road back home.

[18.00-22.00] I eat, I read, I watch movies et al.

[22.30] Shower and then sleep.

An unproductive day:

[07.30] My alarm rings later because I am very tired from something I did the last day so I had foreseen I might sleep more. I am somehow not yet rested so I go back to sleep.

[11.00] I finally wake up and I realize I have to go to the institute because I have some form to fill.

[13.00] I arrive at the institute, I fill the form, I eat something like in the above and then go to the university because I have some tutorial to teach.

[14.00-16.00] I teach.

[16.00] I realize I can't do anything interesting that day so I head home and feel a bit bad about myself.

[16.30-end] Like in the above.

Most of my days are a mix between the two "ideals" :)

I'm glad you replied back. I have done both now, in various forms - used to have a ~45 minute bus commute, then an hour drive, now I work from home. By far, the drive was the worst of the three, but I wanted to work for a company that was in a different city than I wanted to live, so I had no choice. The bus commute was incredible - I never had to worry about traffic (other than it took longer when the weather was bad), I could check emails in the morning and zone out in the afternoon. It created a really nice separation between work and life. Now I work from home, and it suits me. I've got a spare bedroom that's designated the office, and only work stuff happens in there. I do my normal morning routine, spend the day in that room, then leave it and close the door. I think it's the rigor that makes it work, but I know that's for me, and many other people have far more distraction than I do at home, so it's harder. But, to each their own, and I'm glad you've got a commute that works for you. A train ride every day sounds really nice.

Most of this kind of 'collaboration' that I have seen have fallen in the bikeshedding or superficial variety. Not all work is of this kind. Some require building mental constructs and contexts that are easily derailed and painstaking to reconstruct

Profession: Laravel Developer - Remote

[7:45] First alarm.

[8:00] Second Alarm.

[8:15] Third alarm...sometimes final..sometimes I wait till 8:25.

[8:45] Morning Standup.

[9:00] Spend an hour on hn/reddit.

[10-12:00] Try to get an hour in.

[12:00-1:00] Lunch

[1:00] Try to work if i'm in the right mindset, or HN/Reddit.

[2:00] Ditto

...

..

.

[1:00 AM] Bed.

I'm usually always at computer trying to get work in, and catching up on the weekends--my wife hates that part, but can't grep the fact that my mind can't just code like a machine whenever I'm 'on the clock'..

I have aspergers/add and focusing is a major issue. We use a time clock tracker for work that tracks activity/time so I just pause that when I'm in distraction mode.