Ask HN: Have you ever not done anything on work whole day?

I think you have to forgive yourself if that happens every so often but you make up for it by coding a lot the next day. Average it out. I knew someone that did all their work on Monday but made commits throughout the week. But the answer to what do you say at meeting is "still working on x."

Sometimes I'm blocked on something so I can't write any code, so I just say that I was blocked. Sometimes I have meetings all day and I didn't write any code so I say that I was in meetings all day and didn't get to work on any tickets. If I genuinely didn't do any work and wasn't blocked or in meetings, I just repeat the previous day's update. For example on Monday I worked on ticket ABC-001 and Tuesday morning my update was "yesterday I worked on ABC-001, today I'll continue on ABC-001, no blockers", and then I secretly went to the beach that day. Wednesday morning I will say "yesterday I continued on ABC-001 and today I should have a PR by end of day, no blockers".

It depends on why.

Some days you'll find yourself in meetings, reviewing code, and emailing/messaging others, but not writing code. You should recognize that this is work, and you should ask yourself whether this was the best use of your time. Which it may or may not be. Ask yourself, was it useful for you to attend the meetings and have those discussions?

Other days, you'll find yourself investigating how to do something, or starting down a path only to realize it's a dead end, and so have nothing to show for it. It's also work, and the best way to manage this is to document what you've tried, and time box work to make sure you don't waste too much time.

Other times, you won't know what to work on, or feel lacking direction. In my mind, the best way to deal with that is just talk to people - your manager, peers, etc., about what you are trying to do or what to work on.

It has never happened to me but I did have days when it was difficult to get started and I didn’t do much. I guess you can just say you’re still working on whatever you were working on. There’s probably no value in emphasizing you were stuck unless asked.

Productivity should be measured on a much larger scale (weeks/months). Day to day, productivity varies wildly. Some days your productivity is 0%, others it’s 300%.

How would you rate your productivity on a longer timescale? If you’re doing well then there’s no need to worry; it’s normal.

At standup, I’d say the truth - bashed my head against a wall to no avail. If this results in punishment, something is very wrong. You don’t get rewarded when you do a weeks worth of work in a day, so you can’t be expected to output a _minimum_ of 100% every day. This is how burnout occurs.