How many hours do you work a day (developers)?

There's no such thing as an acceptable amount of hours. Is the goal reached or not?

Often in programming, you have this weird situation where spending more time makes the work harder. It is actually possible to dig a hole that makes you further away from the goal, while for the whole time you think you're getting closer. So I try not to get too tired, and I manage deadline expectations. Often you find the right solution to a whole day's problem in a few minutes of clarity the next morning.

Working from home, there are certain productivity benefits. There's no commute. The environment is familiar. I can take a break whenever I like, to do whatever I want, like take the kid out on a 2 hour lunch break. I can make more kids during work hours. Run errands. Often I find I can spread out the normal working hours over a longer period and feel better.

There's no meetings, other than online chats on Skype or Slack. There is a bit of a danger of chatting too much, but it's not as bad as when you're sitting in the office.

The thing that makes the most difference is whether I like what I'm doing. If I'm enjoying a project, time just flies by. It's like snapping your fingers, and breakfast turns to lunch, which turns to dinner, which turns to bedtime.

respects, quite the opposite of me.

I have problems to get moving mostly because I honestly don't need to.

Based on git logs and some extended time tracking experiments, I tend to get ~4 hours of real work done on an average day.

I feel most relaxed when that's split between 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. Great days are 6 hours (i'll be in "the zone" from ~4:30 to ~6:30).

Another 3-6 hours can be spent reading (code or books) and exploring (fiddling around in a repl).

I am at the office for 8-10 hours per day, but the office is really only a center where most work hours occur. Often a good Saturday spent across libraries, cafes and parks can yield 6 hours of getting shit done.

I think 4:30 will be hard to market, as most people are stuck in the stone age. As you said, productivity is not a matter of hours, it's a mix of many things. But that's not what the majority believes. Many people still believe we work like ice-cream sellers, who need to be around, not matter what. My guess is most people want to pay only for the hours you work so it will be hard to explain why you want to be paid for 8 hours when you just work 4 hours (even with same productivity).

Personally I work every day. When I am tired and not productive, I work less. When I feel good, I work much. The minimum is usually 6 hours. Maximum is usually 12 -14 hours. At weekends, it happens it's just 2 hours a day.

I don't count in work time. I count in "fun". If I have fun, I automatically work more. If I am not having fun, I need to double-check if I am the right thing. If it's not, I go away. If it is temporary or something that needs to be done, I make sure I have some good relaxing part afterwards.

I really want to do this just so I can get some time to work on my own projects. How did you sell this to your employers (or are they one of a very few shops which do the 4 day week thing like Treehouse)