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Comment by hcoura | Hacker News Reader

I have recently started working remotely and dealing with my own productivity as opposed to have some expectations of work hours has been an interesting challenge.

Since I log my own hours I became full aware of this 6 hours "ceiling" in the long term, for a few days I could work for many more hours, but that would have a big price to pay in future productivity. In the beginning I felt bad, as if I was not able to produce as much as other people leading to a lot of anxiety. As I realized that my actual productivity was going up, compared to my older self and other peers, I embraced it.

Now I work 6 productive hours and to me that's 8 hours of work, my results are better month by month, my quality of life is better and my anxiety is more controlled. Everybody wins.

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Please, please, please let everybody come to this conclusion. How much better would the world be as place. I’ve wasted many hours of my time at work, not working, which is so sad

I personally allocate the work day into one 4-hour block as my "big pipe", one 2-hour block as my "little pipe", and let the other 2 hours be "fluff". For limited intervals, I can combine the two pipes into one "mega pipe", to get a "big pipe" task done faster, but it takes a toll over time. The "big pipe" can also theoretically be split into two more temporary "little pipes", but in general, I usually want to have the "big pipe" around to get something important done, and multitasking on three things creates too much organizational overhead, so that also takes a toll.

"Fluff" time is for sitting in meetings or writing reports, as work functions, or for just looking busy. I intentionally avoid doing real work that requires any focus or creativity in the fluff slot. After six hours of real work, any more time spent doing the same thing starts to become counterproductive. So just leave it for tomorrow.

I have been more productive while explicitly dedicating 2 hours a day to getting nothing useful done, than when trying to stay focused on one thing for 8 hours, and ending up goofing off, getting sidetracked, or procrastinating for some amount of time anyway.

That's the theory, anyway. My current employer doesn't keep my pipelines reliably filled. During the dry spells, I have a hard time expanding the fluff slot to more than two hours, and end up doing stuff like coding stupid CLI games, or vectorizing the company logo, or setting up a new vanilla VM that I might not ever use.

That's exactly how I do with my work day. 2-hours / lunch / 4-hours / stop working or anything else less demanding

Don't ever yield to the temptation of working more remotely because you save on commuting time etc. and can be in the flow for longer. Once you do that 4-5 years, you are likely to be long-term burned out. Balance your brain by doing completely different things in your real life, don't work past 8 hours.

Yeah, I always try to keep that in mind.

Based on what I have seen, even 6 productive hours is a high bar even in people that stay in the office 10+ hours a day. Simple things like getting a drink of water or going to the bathroom often take far longer in a cubicle farm than at home. Add having nothing to do, random IT problems, chit chat, checking the phone or other web browsing etc, and the average IT worker might be doing 3-4.

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