Huh, why were you flagged? I "vouched".
Anyways that's interesting. I actually did a personal study during the course of 1-2 weeks a couple of years ago. I kept track of how long I felt like I could give my undivided focus to my work and found that the number was 5.5 hours on average. People will be different of course, but that's as long as I felt I'd feel good claiming to have given it 100%.
Given that I had to work 8 hours in practice it felt like a bad strategy to give it 100% for 5.5 hours and then whatever (60%?) for the remaining 2.5, so instead I "diluted" that focus intensity throughout the day.
You make a good point about the diminishing returns! It sounds reasonable to me that it would likely be better to do 1 hours the next day instead of continuing by creating a mess on the remaining 2.5.
It's hard to measure, but from personal experience I'd say that it'd be worth more (given all externalities) to pay me for 100% focus over 5.5 hours compared to [whatever%] over 8.