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How I got to 200 productive hours a month

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Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#101

Post by welly »

crispinb wrote: post #60
welly wrote: post #45

Who works 200 hours a month? That's either five 10 hour days a week or roughly seven 7 hour days a week. My time off work is far, far too important to me to be working either of those options. It seems I value working less than other people. I'm fine with that.

From the article it looks like he works 7 days a week, in two 3hr+ sessions. Not so punishing perhaps in terms purely of hours, but .. really? Not even one day off a week? In 2017? > It seems I value working less than other people I don't know anyone who works 7 days a week.

I should rephrase that to "some people"! And likewise, neither do I.

I'd be interested to read a follow up blog post titled: "How I got down from 200 productive hours a month to something a bit more reasonable for sanity and health's sake".

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#102

Post by welly »

azag0 wrote: post #77
crispinb wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article it looks like he works 7 days a week, in two 3hr+ sessions. Not so punishing perhaps in terms purely of hours, but .. really? Not even one day off a week? In 2017? > It seems I value working less than other people I don't know anyone who works 7 days a week.

It also seems that he works at least partially on his own stuff. For me personally, there is a big difference between working on something for someone, and working on my own ideas. The latter tires me much less.

This is quite true. I guess I don't count the hours I work on my own projects and learning.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#103

Post by ivm »

crispinb wrote: post #60
welly wrote: post #45

Who works 200 hours a month? That's either five 10 hour days a week or roughly seven 7 hour days a week. My time off work is far, far too important to me to be working either of those options. It seems I value working less than other people. I'm fine with that.

From the article it looks like he works 7 days a week, in two 3hr+ sessions. Not so punishing perhaps in terms purely of hours, but .. really? Not even one day off a week? In 2017? > It seems I value working less than other people I don't know anyone who works 7 days a week.

My day off is usually 4-5 hours and then I work 7-8 hours on the following days. Since I have multiple projects, a full day of entertainment feels boring because my mind still wants to think about some of them.

For example, I spend some hours each month helping a local non-profit with their site and promotion. Switching to their simpler tasks is similar to rest for me.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#104

Post by zerr »

ivm wrote: post #99
zerr wrote: post #2

Interesting. Yet another "Mac" time tracker and todo management app. Do all these apps make some ramen income (at least)? An article on this would've been more useful ;)

> Do all these apps make some ramen income (at least)? Yes, but 3-4 times less than I can earn by just freelancing. But it's mostly a visibility problem — time tracking keywords are too competitive. I wouldn't recommend developing Mac-only apps because they are too hard to promote. Press is not interested in reviewing software for 15-20% of their readers. Even Apple-centered press is more about iPhones nowadays.

Btw, any reason not going cross-platform (Win/Linux along with Mac)? Judging by screenshots it doesn't look like a native Cocoa app, neither download size corresponds to Electron - what framework did you use for the UI?

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#106

Post by jnet »

welly wrote: post #45

Who works 200 hours a month? That's either five 10 hour days a week or roughly seven 7 hour days a week. My time off work is far, far too important to me to be working either of those options. It seems I value working less than other people. I'm fine with that.

That was my first thought too. Maybe it works for some people but I think I would burn myself out if I was putting in 200 hours of work each month for an extended period of time.

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#107

Post by iluvmylife »

dsenkus wrote: post #51

Thanks for great article, I found some good ideas how to optimise my workflow. I think everyone should spend some time adopting these techniques, instead of relying on "autopilot" mode. Here's my mindmap of this article if anyone is interested: https://imgur.com/a/RnRgV

What did you use to create this? Anyone have good recommendation for mind map tools?

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#108

Post by ensignavenger »

nurettin wrote: post #62
mbrock wrote: post #26

TL;DR: Basically getting up early and doing 4 hours of deep work has changed my life from really stressful and bad to really productive and nice. One thing really fundamentally helped me, as someone who works from home on a large project in an asynchronous 100% remote organization. I work on a fairly involved project that demands a lot of hard work. At the same time there are other things I want to get done: some adm…

I miss the times developers would optimize their lives without all the online rants and the sensitive encouraging, nodding and enabling of said behavior. That said, don't you have banks which automatically pay your bills (electricity/gas/water)? Which country are you from?

My bank doesn't know how much my bill is going to be every month, so I have to put the amount in. Fortunately, I use simple.com and paying a bill with their mobile app takes a couple of seconds (once I have entered the companies info). Some companies have decent recurring billing via ACH, and I use that on most of my credit cards (I still check the statements each month), but my electric, water, sewer, and gas companies (all separate where I am) all have absolutely terrible websites (and the electric company just plain sucks generally), so I often find myself just paying those bills manually as they come in (after checking them for accuracy).

Re: How I got to 200 productive hours a month

#109

Post by ivm »

emodendroket wrote: post #69

I don't believe anybody is really productive 200 hours in a month. Focus on fewer things if you feel you need to work 50 hours a week, every week.

I'd like to focus on fewer things but I still feel that 50hrs are ok. We are awake about 16 hours each day. If less than 7 are spent working, there are still 9 hours each day for other stuff.
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