

How many hours are you productive per week and per day? - anupshinde

How many hours are you productive per week and per day ? And how many hours at a stretch?<p>For me - I have difficulty doing it more than 20-24 hours a week on an average. I&#x27;m fast at coding and problem solving - but that also means my energy wanes off faster within the first 4-5 hours and I am better off not working the rest of the time. Just in case you are wondering - I never had any problems related to productivity at my 40hr&#x2F;week job except that I had to endure the additional frustrating hours.
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henrygrew
I can only do 3-4 hours in the zone per day, if i take a nap in the afternoon
i'm able to get another 3 hours of the zone in the evening.Thus on a good day
it adds up to 6 hours of quality coding.I try to do planning and meetings in
the other hours.

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tmerr
Most _good_ ideas I have surface after a break from coding, be it a walk,
weekend, or night of sleep. Those ideas start depleting as soon my hands hit
the keyboard, and once they're gone I enter full code monkey mode. When I'm
conscious this transformation is taking place I usually hit up pen and paper
or a white board, which can buy me extra hours. It probably comes out to about
50% of time planning, 50% coding, and as long as I don't spend too much time
in the latter I can avoid getting burnt out. I figure if I have to try when
coding I'm doing something wrong though it's sometimes unavoidable.

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MattBearman
This may interest you - according to a study[0] the average office worker is
only productive for three hours a day.

I'm a freelancer working from home, and I find I work about 5 - 6 chargeable
hours / day. Of course some of those hours are more productive than others :)

0 - [http://www.employeebenefits.co.uk/news/only-three-hours-
of-p...](http://www.employeebenefits.co.uk/news/only-three-hours-of-
productivity-a-day/103618.article)

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dajbelshaw
Interesting. I've been thinking about this recently and, yes, while I can sit
in front of a computer screen for eight hours, I reckon I'm only _productive_
for six hours. So I try and work in three 2-hour bursts.

It's worth saying that my situation's slightly different in that I work for a
tech company, but I'm not a coder.

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antoinevg
30 minutes dropping kids at school & gym.

30 minutes breakfast, shower and HN.

3 hours of productive work.

Break for lunch and a hour's worth of random fun.

3 hours in the afternoon.

Done at 17h00.

Sustainable, and over a year it adds up to a frightening amount of code :)

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saturngirl
I find that my productivity goes down 90 minutes into a task. However, a 15-20
minute break does the trick and I find myself productive once again. The trick
is to weed out the distractions (especially if you work from home) - TV,
family, news/shopping sites, HN...

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alphagenerator
Code quality falls off dramatically after 4-5 hours. Unit tests are the last
line of defense in crunch mode, but even TDD doesn't prevent the bug onslaught
if people are tired.

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Avalaxy
At my dayjob I'm productive for around 7,5 hours per day (I work 8 hours per
day) which is incredible in my opinion. Then I put in some more freelancing
hours when I get home, usually around 2 hours per day.

I'm very bad at being productive when I work from home though. I could never
work 8 hours per day when there are no colleagues around.

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analogmind
3/4 hours max per day. When I'm really interested, it tends to be a little
more, but I can't hold that pace for to long.

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baristaGeek
In a regular week 12 hours (7am-7pm usually) from Monday to Friday and 4 hours
on Saturday; for a total of 64 weekly productive hours. I spend this hours in
college stuff, gym, volunteering and off course, coding.

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srpeixinho
Around 85hrs/week when I don't have anything else to do...

~5hrs/week when I do

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garrickvanburen
Depending on the day, 2-3hrs/project. I usually work on 3 very different
projects each day.

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lgieron
30-35 hr/week.

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khyryk
4-5 hours per day.

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atmosx
4-5h/day.

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yulaow
no more than 5hrs/day

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enesunal
approx. 4 hours per day.

