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Ask HN: How many hours per day are you working?

8 points by evrimfeyyaz ↗ HN
If you are tracking your time, how many hours of focused work are you doing per day on average?

What I mean with focused work is only the time that you are working. Not counting the time you take a break, not counting the time you go to the bathroom, not counting the time you get up to drink water, etc. If you don't stop your time-tracker during non-work activities, please mention it.

15 comments

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the_cramer
Software developer here. I work about 6 hours concentrated on stuff before i notice a drop in cognitive abilities. That's not counting the short breaks for toilet, getting coffee etc... Then it's roundabout 5-5:20 hours. These breaks normally don't get me off the topic very much as i can continue thinking about what to do next or crunching on a solution.

But after that time I start to mix things up and make mistakes. So I really wish 6 hours were the actual work time... but in reality I have to work 8 hours a day.

evrimfeyyaz
I think you meant "6 hours... counting the short breaks." In any case, I think six hours is a good number.

So, you have to put in eight hours of actual work? A usual workday is eight hours, but I'd say most employees probably do less than four hours of actual work every day.

Are you a freelancer or an employee, if you don't mind my asking?

the_cramer
You are correct. 6 hours including the breaks.

I am an employee at a large distribution company for IT hard and software. I think there are many factors that play into how long a productive day really is:

Type of work - is your job requiring brainwork all the time or maybe you have some work in-between that just requires execution prime to thinking work?

Environment - how good are you shielded from distractions?

Communication - do you really need to be shielded? Maybe you need a steady communication to proceed with your work. I'm thinking about the guys at stock market e.g.

Type of breaks - This is a big one and up to personal preference to a degree. Are you forced to take a break? Is it a hard force or a soft force (telephone vs. mail). Do you have to respond immediately? A big problem for me e.g. is interruptions when i'm in the middle of it. It takes a fair amount of time to get back into the zone.

If this happens i often like to refer to this article: http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/ It's hard for people to understand why interruptions can be very harmful for work.

So if i say 6 hours, this is the maximum for me to work concentrated on one topic. Interruptions diminish this number, shorten my concentration timespan and often make the day not as productive (subjectively).

edit: formatting

evrimfeyyaz
I agree, this method probably works for a "maker" and not a "manager" (or a person whose job requires them to move between tasks a lot).
vdataservices
I would say between 6 and 7 hours per day working at the office, but as I'm connecting once at home and doing more online research that could lead to action, it could be up to 8 hours a day.
evrimfeyyaz
That's really interesting.

- If we say you take a 10 minute break every 50 minutes, you would need almost 10 hours to work 8 hours. - Let's say lunch for 30 minutes, dinner for 30 minutes. We're at 11 hours. - If you're sleeping for eight hours, we're at 19 hours.

This is a very very strict, and probably somewhat unrealistic schedule, and you only have five hours left after this. Realistically, there would be a lot of other small things that add up to a few hours, going to the bathroom, responding to people on WhatsApp, cooking, etc.

Are you really good at managing your time and getting started, or do you only focus on work and try not to spend time on hobbies and other activities?

thedevindevops
We have a real meeting problem in my workplace, I'm at work the standard 7.5hrs but usually 5.5-6 of that is calls
insaneisnotfree
Same problem here, it seems like solutions like mixaba, squawk, watercooler might be an option
chrisbennet
I'm getting over being sick so I'me only working occasionally and only for a few hours but I used to work 5 billable hours a day (anything after that was gravy). I probably spent 7-8 hours a day at my office.

I keep a log. If I was working and you called me, I would stop the meter, talk to you and start the meter again when I started working. If you were another client I would record my hours working for them. I have a log for every client. I did not stop the clock for bathroom breaks.

evrimfeyyaz
This is close to my experience as well. If I want to do anything else that day, such as cook, exercise, relax for an hour, maybe practice the guitar, the maximum I can do is around five hours. For anything above that, I have to be super strict and/or give up other activities.
chrisbennet
I used to get most of work done in the morning when I had the most mental energy. If I could, I would avoid interruptions - answer emails after lunch, etc.
robodale
6 hours of actual heads-in-the-code software dev work. It does vary, sometimes I get nearly 8 hrs, but meetings/etc drop it to the average of 6.
tothrowaway
I tracked my productive time down to the minute for 4 years when I was working for a consulting company. I could do 4-6 hours of actual programming work in a 9 hour time span. Any more than that, and I was exhausted.

I'm a solo dev now. I don't keep track of my time religiously but RescueTime reports I'm coding 3-4 hours a day plus 1-2 hours of email.

wprapido
3-5h a day, if lucky. Being busy or looking busy doesn't count as working.
ThroAway200612
I would love to hear your answer because I do this too, and the numbers may seem shockingly low. Posting under a throwaway just in case some manager sees this and judges me.

I have been scrupulously tracking focused time for years, since I was in college. I "stop the clock" when I sit back to daydream for a few minutes, check the news, or use the bathroom. I also generally don't include meetings unless they're small meetings where I need to be fully engaged.

The result is that for me about 150 minutes of real work feels like an ordinary productive day at my not overly demanding dev job. 180 minutes is doable on a daily basis but I have to be pretty disciplined. If I set my goal to 240 minutes work begins to consume my life and I often stay late to make it up. Days when I have done more than 5 hours of work by this definition are really rare, I either get so stuck on a problem that I am consumed by it (super rare) or have some really impending deadline that blots out everything else (rare). I know if I put in 240m I'm doing a really solid day's work every day.

In college while taking 18 credits of graduate courses I could get by on 4h studying/homework per day, but had to bump it to 5h near the end of the term.