How many hours are you productive per week and per day?
18 comments
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.
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.
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...
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...
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.
It's worth saying that my situation's slightly different in that I work for a tech company, but I'm not a coder.
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 :)
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 :)
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Around 85hrs/week when I don't have anything else to do...
~5hrs/week when I do
~5hrs/week when I do
Depending on the day, 2-3hrs/project. I usually work on 3 very different projects each day.
30-35 hr/week.
4-5 hours per day.
4-5h/day.
no more than 5hrs/day
approx. 4 hours per day.
For me - I have difficulty doing it more than 20-24 hours a week on an average. I'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/week job except that I had to endure the additional frustrating hours.