Tell HN: I work 3 hours a day and I am proud and productive | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: I work 3 hours a day and I am proud and productive

18 pointsMaven91114 comments

I work 3 hours a day.

The setting: overloaded, taking on mulitple roles, work keeps piling up, people on the management side are not technical - but most of the tech workers don't complain and just what they got to do ...or they leave as some have done)

How I cope with it now: I couldn't stop thinking about work..at night and even on the weekends. I felt I was going to have a (light) nervous breakdown. But now...I tell myself that my goal at work is not to solve provlem xyz or get project xyz stamped as done. My goal is to come in and do 3 hours of work. Yes 3 hours that is it..but the hardest and best work that you can do while trying not to compromise quality...what ends up happening is that my 3 hours are sometimes better then my 8 hours of slow crap. And if I don't do anything else or my productivity drops that is fine... What ends up happening is that by working in this super fast pace, I can still continue on at a slower pace yet feel satisfied that I did my job and that I have something to report too for the next meeting (we have daily progress update meetings).

Have any of you used similar techniques ?

I recall a post, I think it was here, that floated by me that said something like the most productive people only actually do about 3.5 hours of solid focused work a day. Now I wish I could find it.

I think this might be the one you're talking about: http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-do...

HN discussion from a few days ago here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3222725

I can see this, think of it sort of like a football game where you have breaks in between each play, you may spend 10 solid minutes intently coding but then usually you would then divert attention for at least a minute or two, sometimes longer. However, the fact is, that with software development, anytime you are thinking about anything related to a task it is basically working, all work isn't done while intently starting into an IDE.

I think it was a story that studied gifted young violinists in Austria or Germany- the study said that while average students "worked" all day from 9-5, the gifted ones split work and play- they worked in spurts of a few intense hours, followed by personal time.

I seem to recall that what was more important than the amount of time spent studying, was that the students were engaging in deliberate practice; they were putting in focused work intended to extend the boundaries of their skills. I think the analogy here would be that three hours of focused work (door closed, phone turned off, no checking email, no interruptions unless the building is on fire or someone is dying) would produce more, better quality results than 8 (or more) hours of work broken up by dozens of interruptions.

I still get distractions and end up doing filler non technical work during those first 3 high-speed hours, but I try to go at a pace as if the world is coming to an end and I need to give my work its full and qualified attention that it deserves...just like I use too when taking tests during my university days

We have a gym at work and i have felt an amazing refresh when I go gor a midday workout, but sadly it looks bad to leave work to workout during normal office hours, and the gym is too packed during lunch for my taste

I remember seeing a similar number. I think it was in a blog post. I know it was different from the study regarding violinists' practice habits; this was someone discussing (their?) work habits in an office.

I can't say that I do, but my uncle is a hardware engineer and he typically accomplishes an entire day's work in a few hours a day so that he can spend time with his daughter, go to the gym/do yoga, and generally be awesome (like drive around in his Maserati etc..)

He has the life..

Is your uncle a freelancer ? As for me, I still have to be in the building physically for 8 hours, but getting 3 fast paced solid hours each day feels great

No, he isn't a freelancer. He doesn't have to be in any building, just make sure the work is done.

About the same, 8 hours in the building, about 4 doing hardcore work, the others working on lightermanagement type stuff, research, future project planning, non deliverables

I have a lot of administrative crap to deal with too, I end up doing those in my 3 hour sprint along with the technical since they are easy wins and I cant deal wuth the fact that I have 8 outstanding items to do, 5 of them are non technica and can be done in 40 mins. In the past, i use to do one or two and felt like I needed a break and just ended up being bogged down with all the context switching

at a job I've had they actually told us that they expect 5 hours of work out of us and the rest would just be wasted time, meetings, filler crap, etc so I guess 3 hours is just taking that to the extreme

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