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In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

inc.com

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Re: In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

#41

Post by madshiva »

Harkins wrote: post #21

There's a trick in this clickbait: > According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American works 8.8 hours every day. Yet a study of nearly 2,000 full-time office workers revealed that most people aren't working for most of the time they're at work. The plain reading is that this article is based on BLS data. The BLS makes huge amounts of data available (and is friendly about answering questions), and the 8.8…

non smoker do break too, most of the time even bigger than smoker. Yes, I have proof.

Re: In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

#42

Post by jrs235 »

gexla wrote: post #34
eksemplar wrote: post #10

I'm skeptical about these, because each time we've tracked worker productiveness they've worked around 6 hours out of the 7,5 they are paid to on average. The only way we'd get someone spending that much time on news/SoMe is when our workers are bored. Like an IT tech waiting for a consultant to call back on a priority task or when someone simply doesn't have enough things to do. We do lose a lot f time to things lik…

Maybe this depends on the job. I can do tech support all day long. Programming comes with productivity traps such as difficulty getting into a zone, procrastination due to feeling overwhelmed due to deadlines or project difficulty and limits on creative productivity. My brain begins to melt after 4 hours of straight problem-solving on average. Problem-solving requires creativity, which burns out and leads to busy wor…

And after your mentally burned out, rather than being allowed to go refresh it's then braindead "butts in a seat" work which is maddening.

Re: In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

#43

Post by falcolas »

im3w1l wrote: post #28
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, very bizarre. She's claiming that the average American works spends 23 minutes a day on smoke breaks, and 26 minutes a day looking for a new job, and 17 minutes a day "preparing hot drinks", etc. Something is completely bogus here.

> 17 minutes a day "preparing hot drinks" This figure I can believe.

As can I. As with the smoke breaks, it becomes a water cooler moment - a socially acceptable time to talk with colleagues about personal lives and the occasional work-related meeting.

Re: In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

#44

Post by blubb-fish »

Harkins wrote: post #21

There's a trick in this clickbait: > According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American works 8.8 hours every day. Yet a study of nearly 2,000 full-time office workers revealed that most people aren't working for most of the time they're at work. The plain reading is that this article is based on BLS data. The BLS makes huge amounts of data available (and is friendly about answering questions), and the 8.8…

23m = 3m leaving desk + 10m smoking + 10m talking + 3m returning to desk

Re: In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

#45

Post by sigi45 »

DanBC wrote: post #33
sigi45 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you justify your behaviour? oO? You could use your time you get paid for for better things. Doing something for the company you get paid from? Here have a read: http://bookofhook.blogspot.de/2013/03/smart-guy-productivity...

> And how do you justify your behaviour? oO? If you're productive for 4 hours a day you need to avoid causing harm for the other 4 hours. Noodling around on code when you're not productive carries greater risk of introducing errors. I hope most programmers are not being paid per hour, but for the quality and quantity of their output. But I accept that many managers see those unproductive hours and imagine they could…

I, what?

You can write tests. You can cleanup a small save portion after you wrote tests. You can help a work collegue. You can optimize your teams workflow.

Quality and Quantity are still connected. Do you think anyone would pay me a dime for a perfect and beautiful small feature x which i worked a year on and any one else would only need a day for it?

Re: In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

#46

Post by sigi45 »

consz wrote: post #38
sigi45 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you justify your behaviour? oO? You could use your time you get paid for for better things. Doing something for the company you get paid from? Here have a read: http://bookofhook.blogspot.de/2013/03/smart-guy-productivity...

What if you're required to be there physically for 8 hours, and you also don't get paid any more for better work then you currently produce? I suspect that would describe the majority of jobs.

In my contract there are 8hours a day written down. You probably don't get paid for feature x, you get paid for 40 hours (or whatever).

If you get paid to do feature x, you would be a contractor with an contract stating that you do feature x for payment y.

I do make quality code because that is my standard. I do not care what others get paid for the same work. If they do, i will switch company and or will talk about my salary. If i work in a company with labor contract, than it was my choice and i still produce my quality and not reduce the quality on purpose to read HN for an our every day.

Re: In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

#47

Post by sigi45 »

flexie wrote: post #32
sigi45 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you justify your behaviour? oO? You could use your time you get paid for for better things. Doing something for the company you get paid from? Here have a read: http://bookofhook.blogspot.de/2013/03/smart-guy-productivity...

I don't have to justify that to anyone, except maybe my family. I work for myself.

And do you write down your ours or do you talk jobs and tell them up front how much it is, independend from hours worked?

Re: In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

#48

Post by sigi45 »

ndh2 wrote: post #23
sigi45 wrote: post #16

Bullshit. I'm not reading an hour Internet pages non work related. And if i would, i wouldn't count this as my working our. Not calling my partner every day for 18 minutes at work. What a crappy article.

Are you assuming that this article was written about you, personally? Because that is what your answer seems to imply.

You are right, the article itself says something about avg. worker.

I had other similar article in mind when i wrote my comment.

Re: In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for 2 Hours and 53 Minutes

#50

Post by consz »

sigi45 wrote: post #46
consz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you're required to be there physically for 8 hours, and you also don't get paid any more for better work then you currently produce? I suspect that would describe the majority of jobs.

In my contract there are 8hours a day written down. You probably don't get paid for feature x, you get paid for 40 hours (or whatever). If you get paid to do feature x, you would be a contractor with an contract stating that you do feature x for payment y. I do make quality code because that is my standard. I do not care what others get paid for the same work. If they do, i will switch company and or will talk about…

(I do get paid directly based on my work, so my original description for the 'majority of jobs' does not describe my own, so here I'm only speculating)

I don't think anyone is reducing their work hours specifically to read HN for an hour every day. Like the study describes, most people don't and aren't capable of working for 8 hours an entire day; if they choose to spend the unproductive hours reading HN instead of working on some ancillary project, I don't see any reason they'd have to go out of their way to justify it to themselves.

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