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Comment by vorhemus | Hacker News Reader

I don't think people who say they work 14 hours a day are lying. They just count in everything that is somehow related to their job, like reading about their business in the newspaper or thinking about work in the shower. And that's the crux of the matter, in jobs that don't have clearly assigned shifts or where attendance is measured, the boundaries between work and leisure become blurred. And then again, comparisons of who works how long are completely useless.

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Almost anyone that brags to others about how many hours they work typically count checking their emails while watching TV as work.

That is working though.

Exactly. I spent a decade plus in a job where emails came in routinely until 9-10 at night and often the CEO would send out something on the weekend. Even if I wasn't required to respond or the response was short, this is _absolutely_ work. Over and above that, spending a decade being literally unable to get away from work in that way is like arsenic poisoning. It was like "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm dead." It's insidious and terrible.

But you shouldn't publicly claim 12 hour work days if you watch TV during those hours, that's ridiculous. That gives a completely wrong impression and may push some who don't know better to actually try and work 12 hours.

I never understood people who bragged about working long hours. Why on earth do they believe that working long hours is something to be admired? I care about what people achieve. Not how many hours they spend achieving it. People can be super busy, spinning their wheels, without achieving much. I see that all the time. I call it “being incompetent”. Not something to be proud of.

I agree. I do maybe 6h of clocked in official work, then maybe 2-6 additional hours of reasearch, tinkering, learning, thinking, taking random notes.

But those hours are very blurry and come in random high bursts („being onto something“). They’re important and effective for me but it’s difficult to categorize them or even track them.

I alway liken folk who say they work long hours to Intel cpus in the megahertz race. Sure it runs at 6ghz but it’s useless for a laptop. Performance per watt is where the quality is. I equate that to be forty hours of work per week.

high performance per watt is pretty low value for those of us who haven't moved our laptops from our home/desk in the past 2 years. In fact the whole premise of a laptop has largely been erased under work from home restrictions. Most of the point was to have a portable machine so your employees felt the need/desire to take the device home and continue working after hours.

There's maybe a slight argument to be made for meetings, but even then you're supposed to be paying attention to the meeting, if not then why are you there? One person might need to take notes...

I can double my work if I start responding to all the pointless emails I get in my mail box.

I have more important things to do, like doing actual work.

how about i leave for my office 10 Am and return home 9-10-11 pm ? usually no sundays. 10 minute commute each side.

Just because you are at the office, doesn't mean you are actually working. Just like me sitting at my desk at home isn't actually working.

The difference is that in the office people pretend to be working.

But if you're there, you're working. You can't spend that time out at a stadium watching a ballgame, or hiking through a forest, or catching up with old friends over coffee, or fixing that stubborn door on your house, or with your family. You're at work, in work mode and your time and energy are alloted to that.

If you work for an agency, and sales is having a tough time closing a deal so there's no work for you today, but you have to be there anyway, ready to work or finding other things to do, maybe upgrading your tools, practicing/learning, then that's still work time. It's not leisure time.

Just because you don't achieve 100% uptime cranking out widgets non-stop at full productivity doesn't mean you're not working. We're people, not industrial factory machines.

You can say 'people are pretending' or 'that's not actually work', but it is. And saying that it's not is just denying reality by casting a moral judgment on it like that.

In the context of of this post I see working as the equivalent of being productive.

I agree with you that sitting at my desk or being in the office is work time regardless of what I am doing and therefore should also be paid.

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