
Ask HN: How many hours per day are you working? - evrimfeyyaz
If you are tracking your time, how many hours of focused work are you doing per day on average?<p>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&#x27;t stop your time-tracker during non-work activities, please mention it.
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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.

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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.

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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/](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).

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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

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wprapido
3-5h a day, if lucky. Being busy or looking busy doesn't count as working.

