If you could choose how many hours a day you could work to work at your optimum level what would it be?
I find that after about 6 hours my brain kind of melts and the last 2 hours of an 8 hour work day are pretty much useless.
So I would say that a good schedule would be about 6 hours a day, 6 days a week. With Friday off. That is 36 hours a week compared with 37.5 hours for a 9-5.30 job. 3 hours then a 3 hour lunch break then another 3 hours.
Work: 11am-2pm. 2pm-5pm lunch Work 5pm-8pm. Dinner 8-9pm. Down the pub 9pm-12pm. Sleep.
I don’t understand how so many varied jobs all demand that people work 9-5. No matter how physical or mental challenges of the job.
How can any human being concentrate for 8 hours at a time? We haven’t evolved to do that. We evolved to hunt animals which requires a lot of walking and then short bursts of concentration as we kill the mammoths or real in a fish.
I think that some developers say they are fuelled by coffee. So what we’re saying is that we need drugs (e.g. caffeine) in order for a human being to cope with working hours.
I think this quite an AngloSaxo problem since France and Spain have a different work life balance and often have 2 hour lunch breaks although this practice is dying out.
I like 3 hours in morning, 2 hour lunch (really doing any kind of sports for lunch requires 2 hours), 3 hours in the evening and when I work in such a place that allows me to do this or in the eyes of some co-workers, ‘get away with it’, then I am much more productive.
The American way of 8 hours at your desk, and long commutes to work, from work, and to and from lunch are recipes for a long-tail decline in health and productivity. That said I have worked for American and Swiss companies that allowed 3, 2, 3 and I was very happy working at those places compared to higher paying places.
Wow. I want to move to Switzerland! What kind of jobs were these? Freelancing? Did you work 5 days a week? Did they care how many hours you worked as long as you got the job done?
No, in Switzerland the actually hours are 8.4 a day or 42 a week so 3.2, 2, 3.2. Worse than the US. And you must be there for the entire 42 hours. It’s not like the US were I can pick any hour between 8 - 6 and know that much of the traffic are folk playing hooky from work or school. Although people play hooky at work in Switzerland too. You have to, to take care of personal business at times although some are just shopping.
I kept the same hours 3, 2, 3 at one US job too in the DFW area…it has to do with productivity. It you are productive for those 6 hours they don’t care about the other 2, especially if they know you’re running or swimming or what not. And one place I worked well, some places expect you to arrive like a train schedule, but not necessarily leave work like a train schedule (but of course that’s more common, lol).
Ideally I’d like to work non stop and no breaks, until things start to go terribly wrong.
Those times things go smoothly are my precious, and I don’t want to cut my inspiration. But other times I’m just burned and uninspired and I gotta rest.
You can’t really put a schedule to that.
-09.00: Arrive at work
09.00-09.30: Coffee and a biscuit, check work schedule, emails
09.30-10.00: Surf internet
10.00-10.30: Chit-Chat to team members about nothing in particular
10.30-11.30: Surf internet
11.30-12.30: Blitz through as much work as possible
12.30-13.30: Lunch, go for a walk
13.30-14.00: Check emails
14.00-15.00: Sit through boring and ultimately pointless teleconference meeting
15.00-16.00: Realise how behind we are in the project and work like a maniac
16.00-17.00: Feeling the eye fatigue after that effort, so go for a short walk, have a friendly chat or two, start to unwind for the day
17.00-17.30: If everyone looks busy send some emails for 15 minutes but if its a quiet day prepare to slink out
17.30- : Out the door like a bat out of hell to catch the next train home
So, even though I’m at work 7 hours a day I don’t work non stop either.
It sounds like SmellyDogs works for the government or a contractor for the government. I once was flown out to an interview and to my embarrassment as I was taken for a round to meet various employees we invariably caught them surfing the internet and not at a tech site for mathematics or telecom either.
If it’s a job I don’t really care anything about other than to make money, about 6 hours is all I can take in a day and 2 days off a week. Even then I tend to want to shoot myself after doing it for about 4-6 months. If it’s something I love, a hobby such as game design, I don’t even notice the hours going by. All my waking hours are dedicated to it and 35 hours can fly by and seem like 6. Like hippocoder said, the hours merge into some kind of binary stream of madness. I don’t fuel myself with caffeine or any other drugs - fun and the determination to complete the next task are my fuel.
I’ve found to be most productive I code for between 60-90 minutes at a time, while taking a break of at least 10-15 mins. There is some research into this I think, something to do with attention spans focusing on one thing being similar to sleep patterns. Stops me from getting distracted from cyber loafing as much anyway
I’m with you on that. Found out the same, which is that after 6 hours the oven is out. I guess since most people don’t work productively 6 hours in a row the companies forced 8 working hours in hope the employees will eventually reach the 6 productive hours within this time frame. Though with 8 hours you are mostly forced to stay at lunch as well, which makes 9 hours in total. Day over.
There are five basic steps to implementing the technique: Decide on the task to be done Set the pomodoro timer to n minutes (traditionally 25) Work on the task until the timer rings; record with an x Take a short break (3-5 minutes) Every four pomodori take a longer break (15–30 minutes)
No real rule here , but i usually ( when possible ) start around 6am after a good breakfast, a little break around 10am then keep on till 14pm.
Then take time for whatever I want to do …I even can get back evening on working a bit ( not so late ).
I feel my brain work better early morning than late evening ^^
