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Comment by welly | Hacker News Reader

Who works 200 hours a month? That's either five 10 hour days a week or roughly seven 7 hour days a week. My time off work is far, far too important to me to be working either of those options.

It seems I value working less than other people. I'm fine with that.

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To be completely honest I work 2 - 100 hour weeks per month. It is tough, but I work much better in bursts.

I then basically take a 2 week vacation, but nobody knows about it except me. I schedule good chunks of Git Commits to push during my off weeks.

In the off time, I still respond to email, and occasionally take meetings. Which might take an hour per day. But I don't do anything productive. I play a lot of Nintendo.

I think this style would work better for lots of people, but regular 9-5 companies would never accept it. Its basically how college students work during Finals week, then take a nice break. I always wonder how many other people are out there like me? I think there has to be some.

I've always joked about doing this, but I'm surprised to hear this actually works for you. How long have you been doing this? How far do you go for your vacations? What kind of team do you work on?

I work at company with about 50 people. Most of my projects are mostly independent, which helps a lot. Launching a new micro-site, automating notification systems, stuff like that.

I don't travel on my vacations, because there is still the chance I have to go into the office for a meeting. I just focus on relaxing and recharging. Working on my own projects, learning new stuff, and being easy on myself.

From the article it looks like he works 7 days a week, in two 3hr+ sessions. Not so punishing perhaps in terms purely of hours, but .. really? Not even one day off a week? In 2017?

> It seems I value working less than other people

I don't know anyone who works 7 days a week.

I work 7 days most of the weeks but its physical labor. (the mind is reserved for personal use) I've convinced myself that the joy of relaxing depends on how hard you've worked and that the longer you relax the less enjoyable it gets. You pretty much have to get back to work asap.

I stay productive by eliminating idle time between tasks. Switching should be seamless. If at any time you don't know what you are going to do after you've done the thing you are doing you are doing it wrong.

My coworkers all work harder than I do. End of the shift I've done just as much but they are totally worn out (when I go to my next job)

I do procrastinate for a total of 20 min or so by spending excessive attention on details. This amuses me greatly specially when it infuriates coworkers.

It is like a sport, the work it self is not important it is all about the experience. If I ever get bored with this routine I take 3 or 12 months off right at that very moment. The thought is very comforting. No way I'm going to push it into burnout.

> I stay productive by eliminating idle time between tasks. Switching should be seamless.

This is typically easier with physical labour I think (only 'typically': of course there are variations). Our bodies are far better designed for physical tasks than our minds are for purely mental ones. The latter mismatch forces a variety of coping workarounds, amongst which are task-switching costs.

It also seems that he works at least partially on his own stuff. For me personally, there is a big difference between working on something for someone, and working on my own ideas. The latter tires me much less.

This is quite true. I guess I don't count the hours I work on my own projects and learning.

I think this may be actually the source of much confusion in discussions of how much "work" is good.

My day off is usually 4-5 hours and then I work 7-8 hours on the following days. Since I have multiple projects, a full day of entertainment feels boring because my mind still wants to think about some of them.

For example, I spend some hours each month helping a local non-profit with their site and promotion. Switching to their simpler tasks is similar to rest for me.

Right. Reading that though does prompt me to identify very thoroughly with the 'work-to-live' rather than 'live-to-work' category. Even the characterisation of non-work (non-computing?) activities as mere 'entertainment' or 'rest' is deeply foreign to my way of being. At least 1 non-device/screen day is a crucial act of balance and independence to me. And I think the only way I could be 'bored' would be in solitary confinement in an empty cell. Otherwise there's too much to do, read, listen to, think about, etc.

Just goes to show how different people can be. Which I guess we already knew.

I should rephrase that to "some people"! And likewise, neither do I.

I'd be interested to read a follow up blog post titled: "How I got down from 200 productive hours a month to something a bit more reasonable for sanity and health's sake".

You can set your goal lower and still use all the described methods.

Yes of course. It's all good advice.

I did 100 hours plus my full time job 220 a month for the last 9 months. Helped me get more out of debt. Helped that I was doing different things. Helped and hurt in terms of switching mental mindsets.

Glad to be off of that train since September 1. Really takes a toll.

Umm, more than half of full-time US salaried workers? <a href="http://news.gallup.com/poll/175286/hour-workweek-actually-lo... My perspective is that working 40 hours a week is the rare unicorn of a job you'll only find in Europe or enterprise software. Every line operator in my plastics factory job got mandatory overtime for that much, too.

Of the 4 jobs I've had (in US), none have in any way encouraged people to work more than 40.

That was my first thought too. Maybe it works for some people but I think I would burn myself out if I was putting in 200 hours of work each month for an extended period of time.

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