Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#1

Post by caiobegotti » Sun, Apr 27, 2014, 11:53 PM UTC

The other day at work we had a debate about being productive and a few people were surprised when someone said "if you work with computers it's nearly impossible to have your brain wired in productive tasks for more than, on average, 4 hours a day" :-)

Definition of productive hours for this poll: time spent on researching, designing, debugging, testing, coding, supporting, refactoring or any other technical task directly related to these which makes you get in "the zone" or totally focused on a problem.

Exclude: time spent on meetings (no matter the subject, as they can be productive for the team but not for you), managing people (only indirectly related to technical stuff), lunch time, coffee breaks and browsing the web (decompressing) and other minutes not spent on solving problems with computers.

Consider: a somewhat long time span, not just the current week or month.

...and have a happy monday :-)

PS: related poll on how people feel about their working hours at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6810289

Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#2

Post by EC1 » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 12:08 AM UTC

About 12. I've optimized my life to a point where I have no outside disturbances beyond my work. I have 3 days left of my day job, then I'm taking my own business full time.

I've been working 7am - 3pm at my day job, 4pm - 11pm at my side projects. Dropping the day job.

Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#3

Post by sktank » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 12:11 AM UTC

EC1 wrote: post #2

About 12. I've optimized my life to a point where I have no outside disturbances beyond my work. I have 3 days left of my day job, then I'm taking my own business full time. I've been working 7am - 3pm at my day job, 4pm - 11pm at my side projects. Dropping the day job.

Optimized your work life maybe, your life though... I'm not so sure.

Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#4

Post by ff_ » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 12:16 AM UTC

> "if you work with computers it's nearly impossible to have your brain wired in productive tasks for more than, on average, 4 hours a day" :-)

Definitely truth. IMHO the real problem of our productivity is The Internet.

Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#5

Post by zobzu » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 12:18 AM UTC

4 is pretty much the sweet spot for me too.

can do more but the 4 are the most productive hours. an extra 2h are half productive (which i do anyway due to work req), an extra 4h even less so

Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#6

Post by balls187 » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 12:19 AM UTC

EC1 wrote: post #2

About 12. I've optimized my life to a point where I have no outside disturbances beyond my work. I have 3 days left of my day job, then I'm taking my own business full time. I've been working 7am - 3pm at my day job, 4pm - 11pm at my side projects. Dropping the day job.

Awesome. Good luck, and I hope it works out for you.

I'm productive about 8hours in the day, but I put in 10-12 daily.

Overtime I'll start feeling like my managerial duties are productive uses of time. They are, but as a hardcore technologist, it's tough to shake the if !programming then wasting time.

Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#7

Post by hebleb » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 12:20 AM UTC

ff_ wrote: post #4

> "if you work with computers it's nearly impossible to have your brain wired in productive tasks for more than, on average, 4 hours a day" :-) Definitely truth. IMHO the real problem of our productivity is The Internet.

I don't know...it's also the solution to productivity. I would waste so much time trying figuring things out without the help of Google, Stack Overflow, API documentation, etc..

Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#8

Post by avoutthere » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 12:20 AM UTC

ff_ wrote: post #4

> "if you work with computers it's nearly impossible to have your brain wired in productive tasks for more than, on average, 4 hours a day" :-) Definitely truth. IMHO the real problem of our productivity is The Internet.

Self-discipline is, no doubt, a real challenge for many developers.

Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#9

Post by jakejake » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 12:22 AM UTC

An option not listed here is that I think I have bursts of massive productivity that last a few days to a week where I get intensely productive work done with barely a break to eat. 12, 16 hours per day. Then I go a week or so just doing the bare minimum to keep things rolling, which sometimes is zero hours of productive work. That cycle repeats.

Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?

#10

Post by Swizec » Mon, Apr 28, 2014, 12:22 AM UTC

I average about 5.5 hours of focused coding per day. If I really really push hard, I can get to some 6.5, sometimes even 7.

That's normal and I consider myself very productive. But here's the real question, how do you present this info to clients/bosses/entrepreneurs without them throwing a big hissy fit?

This is a big problem when working with people who are heavily and directly invested in the business you're helping because they feel like they're productive 12+ hours a day and feel that you should be too. Most of the time they're just fooling themselves, or their idea of productivity is so different from an engineer's that it's nearly impossible to compare.

Furthermore, so far everyone I've said "Dude, you're not even half as productive as you think" to directly got grossly offended by my suggestion.

I've been trying to get to the bottom of these for a year and a half now (writing a book about this stuff) and I can't say I'm much closer to a solution.

PS: the worst part of this equation is that you're often asked to look productive for 8 or 9 hours a day because that puts people at ease. That makes them feel they're paying you fairly, even though you could easily do the same amount of actual focused work in 7 hours and spend the rest of that time doing other things.