I am unable to code completely immersed for more than 50 minutes at a time.
That's fine. You should take 5 min break after every hour of staring at the monitor. In my country employer is required by law to allow you those breaks.
Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
61–70 of 84 posts
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#62About 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.
What are you working on?
Just consulting and doing some project management stuff on the side, decided to do it full time because its fun.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#63I think the problem with threads/discussions like this is that you first need a clear definition of what 'productive' is. My definition of what I consider productive work is probably different from what other people consider productive work.
Until we are sure all parties are talking about the same thing, it's hard to have a useful conversation about productivity.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#64I get around 3-4 sustained development productivity (of course, there are always other non-development related tasks to do).
If necessary, I can push this to 7-8 hours a day sustained for about 4 days, but then I need days to recharge afterwards before I really get anything done again.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#65I'm pulling 10 hours a day of intense productivity out of 12-14 hours worked. New-ish job, exciting stuff and a culture which sets aggressive goals.
I've traditionally been a 6-8 hour/day producer and jumping up to 10 has been hard. I'm learning to put myself in the zone even when I don't feel it organically - like a form of mindfulness meditation. I also isolate work-time: if I'm in the office or in one specific spot at home I'm working and doing nothing else - no mail, no Twitter, no browsing. And I finish working before switching modes (so work doesn't lurk in my head all night). Jury is out on how long I can sustain this - if I had kids I can't imagine how I would so it. But on the upside, this pace has made my attention more acute, and on weekends when the work is put away I crave productivity on my side projects.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something like this happens to me too. I have a week where I get massive work done, then 2-4 come, where I can't get up to do anything at all.
Do you think that's a sign of periodic depression? I've been going through a bit of a rough patch, and I was struck by how my mood could sap my motivation to the level where I felt like I couldn't bear to work. It was very revealing; I had often wondered how depression could actually prevent people from going to work, and now I feel like I've come to understand how much that state can interfere with the ability to fu…
I have similar work habit and, though I wouldn't say it was due to depression, I will become guilty and/or anxious when I'm in one of my low-productivity phases.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#67It varies a lot. Some days it's about 2 hours, on my most productive days its nearer 12, but that can't be kept up for many consecutive days.
My hypothetical ideal is for most days to be around 4hrs emphasis on planning, coordination and preparing for flow, then if I don't hit it, just go home, otherwise work as long as it makes sense.
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ba…
> Each unsuccessful attempt got him a bit closer to being able to make a working light bulb.
Wikipedia on the merger between Edison and Swan - "The lamp bulbs manufactured by the company were almost entirely to Swan's design."
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#69An 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.
Something like this happens to me too. I have a week where I get massive work done, then 2-4 come, where I can't get up to do anything at all.
"Anyway, not trying to armchair psych"
But I will. If "can't get up to do anything at all" includes loss of appetite, inability to find enjoyment in things you usually enjoy, excessive sleep, and generally depressed mood, I'd suggest you ask your doctor about possible a possible bi-polar II diagnosis. Especially if the "productive" week also coincides with significant challenges to your ability to socialize.
(I am not a medical expert, but have spent signficant time with someone with bipolar - treatment can help, a lot)
Re: Poll: how many productive hours do you have in a day?
#70The problem I used to have back in the day was that I didn't separate hours that felt productive from hours that actually were productive.
I could that 24 hour coffee & pizza fuelled session and push out a stupid amount of code. I could do that 60-80 hours week with the team and feel good about the work that I did.
Then I started measuring what was produced. Both in quantity (delivery rate of stories) and quality (how many stories returned with bugs) and other things besides. And compared that to what was pushed out in shorter days.
The short version is that what felt productive wasn't. That we produced more better quality stuff when we worked fewer hours. On several different occasions when I've had the opportunity experiment somewhere around 5-6 hours of productive work within 7-8 hours of working day seems to come up.
(The thing I find most fascinating about this was that several teams slipped back into stupid hours, despite the numbers, because the culture couldn't adapt to working less.)
No I'm sure that there are the odd outlier cases. The folk who really are productive over longer periods. But I'd strongly suggest trying to experiment and measure. Otherwise you might be doing what I was: confusing what feels good with what actually is good.