Ask HN: How much time do you study at work? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How much time do you study at work?

Do you plan it like at least hour a day or do it only if necessary? Usually I read at least few pages of a book a day + watch youtube or pre-downloaded video course with floating VLC player.

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Since WFH I spend my official 8h/day like this:

- 2h extreme focus (solve problems by designing solutions, write code) - 2h casual work (answer slack, review code) - 1h meetings (if any) - 1h reading (tech books)

I don't work 8h/day anymore (even though my employee contract states 40h/week)... my productivity is the same as before (when working from the office) but my mental health has dramatically improved.

I think it's more important to realize that it doesn't matter how much time you spend studying everyday. Instead the main thing is to make sure you spend time frequently, no matter how small the interval.

Spending as little as 15 minutes everyday is going to prove way more effective than spending 2 hours each day for only a week and then nothing for a year.

What you will realize after some time is that the 15 minutes that you spend everyday helps you know the overview of what's going on, and once you start discussing such things, you feel good that you know something. And knowing that small something will motivate you to know more.

So my answer - it is not fixed. But I make sure I spend at least 15 minutes each day studying/reading on something new and relevant to my work.

Zero, management screwed the company culture and there's no individual time anymore: you're constantly pairing with people and you don't have time for learning or anything else.

Before I used to learn whatever I needed for the job when required and I often kept a podcast in the background.

getting new job might help?

I’m pretty enthusiastic when I learn something at work. But the learning comes from a task I seek/was assigned. And I’ll do work appropriate for my skill level. Starting small and growing in complexity. Naturally to do the work there’s a bit of reading and understanding. Indeed starting out, doing a small change, is mostly an activity if gathering context on the code base and tools. But just enough to do a reasonable job at my assignment, and to get feedback from peers.

Instead of “studying” during work I write about my learning process and document my learnings. These are artifacts others find useful, so I’m still building work products.

But if it interests me enough I will read books on it in my own time.

My company has 1 day / month you can use as an educational day off. In addition to that i would say about 10-20% of my day - i do a lot of consulting and architecture work so i like to keep up with the newest developments.

There is no official limit, we have access to Pluralsight and plenty of internal resources and as long as your work is getting done you can use them.

Personally an hour a day sound like what I do, but it's not really planned ahead.

A lot, but in form of reading docs and blogs on the tools i use, it is fun imo

> study at work?

I work at work. If I need to learn something to solve a problem then I take as little time as possible and do that entirely ad-hoc.

Hahaha, apparently some of you are reading this in a rude tone. Please, try not to. I'm not in your situation. But, good for you with time and energy to burn.

I've been doing what I'm doing in my career for 20 plus years. I've landed a cushy job at a tiny studio doing Netflix and Disney Kids tv shows.

There's no need for me to study. The turnaround is fast. The quality is relatively low compared to two hundred million dollar Marvel movies. I show up, I'm personable, I do my job efficiently, I leave on time.

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