I'm 40 (I think age is important when measuring productivity of IT workers) and I can do 12 with a lunch break; however, I will be a zombie next day and half-zombie the day after. I do two long runs per week b/c it hurts my brain not to finish a module/task plus I hate to 'reload' the problem in my head the next day. Also, having the feeling of 'not done' makes me unable to disconnect from work and rest. On zombie days I do the no-brainier tasks or catch up with emails. Not sure if this a good strategy but I feel that in the long run I accomplish just as much.
Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
51–60 of 84 posts
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#52I have 10-12 productive hours most days, and sometimes more if I'm highly motivated.
I work from home which eliminates 1-2 hours of commute loss, and untold loss from office chitchat and politics.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just find these kinds of statements to be more self-justification than anything else. "No one should ever work more than 40 hours a week!" "Productivity beyond 4 hours a day is impossible!" Why must I shackle myself to these seemingly arbitrary limitations that other people have? If I'm having fun coding something for 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I feel I can sustain this output, why do I have to limit myse…
If I'm working on something interesting I can do 8, 10, even 12 hours of coding without being aware of the time passing; but that's not the point, we're talking of averages here. Also, some people in 2 hours can obtain the same results of me doing 8 hours of work - that's about quality, so the "woking-harder" it's not a valid argument: the real problem is "working focused"
You want to play a word game? Fine. Substitute whatever words you'd use for "working focused" with every time I used the words "working hard".
The point stands. Maybe I (or someone) just works harder/more focused, for longer, than you (or someone else). Why should that person hold themselves to your standards and not theirs?
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
"When I'm setting up my environment, I'm not being productive. When I'm researching a bug I'm fixing, I'm not being productive. When I try a fix and it doesn't work, I'm not being productive. When I'm looking up the most efficient way to write a method, I'm not being productive." All the activities you mentioned are part of what you're being paid for as a developer, so you should consider yourself to be productive wh…
I completely agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I feel there is a difference between what I 'produce' and what I'm paid for. As you say, I'm paid to solve business problems, so any time that I dedicate to not solving those business problems or improving the business is essentially not productive. I'm not suggesting we count lines of code, but I'm only actually producing when the code I write makes it into a…
I think that when you dispose of code to create a better solution, say to reduce from 1000-100 lines or throw away a prototype to build a real application it's productive.
It's like throwing away the scaffolding that was supporting a building during construction but is now redundant. It's like removing the stone from the sculpture that isn't part of the figure you're trying to create.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
"When I'm setting up my environment, I'm not being productive. When I'm researching a bug I'm fixing, I'm not being productive. When I try a fix and it doesn't work, I'm not being productive. When I'm looking up the most efficient way to write a method, I'm not being productive." All the activities you mentioned are part of what you're being paid for as a developer, so you should consider yourself to be productive wh…
I completely agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I feel there is a difference between what I 'produce' and what I'm paid for. As you say, I'm paid to solve business problems, so any time that I dedicate to not solving those business problems or improving the business is essentially not productive. I'm not suggesting we count lines of code, but I'm only actually producing when the code I write makes it into a…
"If I spend 5 hours writing code, and then throw it all away, I'm not productive."
Writing throw-away prototype code can be very productive, since it's a way to learn about your domain and the problem you're trying to solve. It can certainly contribute toward making a better final product. If we're trying to solve hard problems, we can't expect to be able to come up with a perfect solution on the first try with no backtracking.
As Thomas Edison said about his numerous unsuccessful attempts to make a light bulb, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Each unsuccessful attempt got him a bit closer to being able to make a working light bulb.
"Using your example of refactoring 1000 lines of code, if the 1000 lines ends up doing the same as the 100 lines, how have I added value to the business?"
Speaking from first-hand experience, sometimes the code base you inherit is so bad that you can't add anything to it without breaking it. By refactoring, you've made it possible to add the new functionality to the code which your customers desperately need. You've also probably made the code more reliable, since there's less stuff in there to break in the future.
On the other hand, if you had code that worked perfectly and didn't require any new features, and you refactored it merely because it offended your sense of esthetics, then you were probably not being productive.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#56I highly recommend RescueTime, which tracks exactly this - it looks at what software you are interacting with/what websites you are on, and reports many hours a week you were on your computer and how much of that was productive. For example, last week I was on my computer 30 hours (I had a lot of meetings) and I was productive 75% of that time, which averages to 4.5 hours of productive computer time per workday. It's…
I just started using this couple of weeks ago and has been really helpful so far. I now have an idea what's the reason behind not getting something done on a particular day.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#57I highly recommend RescueTime, which tracks exactly this - it looks at what software you are interacting with/what websites you are on, and reports many hours a week you were on your computer and how much of that was productive. For example, last week I was on my computer 30 hours (I had a lot of meetings) and I was productive 75% of that time, which averages to 4.5 hours of productive computer time per workday. It's…
Exactly. Why guess? Why not know exactly how productive you are?
Last month I was 71% productive as defined by those tasks which are directly leading to output. An average of 5h 36m per working day. My best day was Monday, 14th April. I'm more productive in the afternoon than the morning.
My largest non-productive time block is on this site called news.ycombinator.com.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#58I highly recommend RescueTime, which tracks exactly this - it looks at what software you are interacting with/what websites you are on, and reports many hours a week you were on your computer and how much of that was productive. For example, last week I was on my computer 30 hours (I had a lot of meetings) and I was productive 75% of that time, which averages to 4.5 hours of productive computer time per workday. It's…
A more valuable question is: how do you make yourself more productive?
I am just using this for a couple of weeks, but sometimes looking at the hard numbers makes you realize where exactly you spend your non-productive time and where it can be avoided.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#59> "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 just find these kinds of statements to be more self-justification than anything else. "No one should ever work more than 40 hours a week!" "Productivity beyond 4 hours a day is impossible!" Why must I shackle myself to these seemingly arbitrary limitations that other people have? If I'm having fun coding something for 8-10 hours a day, 5 days a week, and I feel I can sustain this output, why do I have to limit myse…
If you're able to pull it off, good for you. Rest of us, as this and numerous other discussions here on HN show, find it hard. Its a pretty big deal. You don't really have to complain about it. You're probably the exception, not the rule. :)
In fact, it would be more useful if you can tell us more about how you it.
Is it just an innate ability you've got or something you learnt to do? Do you have any hacks/system like the pomodoro technique?
Do you have off days?
How often do you get 'into the zone' a day? Because, if you can only last a couple of hours in the zone (like me), then to get 8 hours of productive work would take me 12-13 hours to accomodate breaks, food etc. Do you have the luxury of not having to check your mail too often?
If you work with other people, do you notice them working less/more than you?
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bet if you get them to REALLY think about it, they know they are not productive more than about 4-5 hours per day. If they spend 20 minutes writing an e-mail, is that 20 minutes of productive time? I bet it's really only 5 minutes of what is considered 'productive', because they didn't write the e-mail for 20 minutes, they edited for 15, checked other e-mail, etc.etc. When they go to a meeting and it starts out wit…
as a former journalist, I have to disagree that editing is unproductive time. Saying exactly what you mean to say is extremely valuable, well-invested time. "I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time." Concise emails really ease the workload by reducing inefficiencies.
Totally agree with this. I'm a software engineer and I would estimate that half of the time I spend writing emails is formatting. I believe this is productive as it takes less effort to communicate. The point here being that communication requires effort by two parties.