Throwaway for maximum honesty: I am pretty sure I spend at least 75% of my time "at work" not working. HN, Reddit, messing around with side projects or learning a new language or framework. This has been the case for my entire working life.
I seem to get as much done as other people (sometimes better) so part of me wonders if I'm not as unusual as I feel. Part of me wonders if I should get evaluated for ADHD, since I find it such a struggle to focus on my work. And part of me is just frustrated with myself, that theoretically I could spend like 3 good hours at work each day, get more done, and have more quality time to myself.
The best way to describe ADHD is: The TV is always on, but you don't get to choose the channel.
Some things are easy to focus on—I can sit down to program for a bit and lose track of time for 5 hours. On the other hand, if something is boring, it's mind-numbingly boring.
It was the worst while I was in school, since teachers and professors just thought, "oh, he's unmotivated" when in reality it was more along the lines of, "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper." (Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)
Anyway, if it affects your life and managing it yourself isn't working (give it an honest effort, of course) definitely speak with a doctor. While too many parents think their kids have ADHD when the kids are really just, well, kids, trying to cope with ADHD without some sort of guidance sucks. A lot. It's amazing how much more productive you can be if you get some help coping with it.
I never thought I'd have to create a throwaway for HN, but here I am
This is me.
On a good day, I might work for 3 hours of my 7 hour day. On a bad day, 1 hour. Somehow, I get the work done, and even get praised for it, though it's not taxing or particularly good code. I think my firm is afraid to lose me, and let me get away with too much, but that could be paranoia / imposter syndrome. That said, my productivity is on a par with others I work with (surpassing some) and I don't consider myself to be a better coder than they are.
I spend the larger part of my day on side projects, learning new languages, trying new apps, painstakingly reorganising my local file system, reducing the size and complexity of my dropbox folders (even though I'm using less than half of my free space), reading HN, tinkering with electronics at my desk, reorganising my workspace, blogging, reading, listening to podcasts or audiobooks (I find I can't do anything that involves typing at the same time, but I can do graphics)
I have curtailed my reddit / browsing a lot, but its still more than I'd like.
Lately, I've decided that my job is not challenging me enough, and I want to leave it. And so I blame that on my lack of focus. But if I'm honest, I've always been like this. In previous jobs, in college, in school, I've always done the minimum required to get by because I have other "more important" things to do.
I'm easily distracted. I don't think I'd go so far as to say I have ADHD, but I do have trouble focussing on tasks when a computer is involved. I have a theory that this is a side-effect of the modern computing experience itself. Switching tabs and multitasking is so easy these days, with the amounnt of RAM / Bandwidth / CPU we have at our disposal, that doing several things at once is very tempting. I barely bother to close apps. I would normally have 4-5 VS windows, Android Studio, Photoshop, Sublime, etc all open at once, and while I'm not switching between them every five minutes, I might alt-tab to one by accident and lose an hour fixing some bug or trying some thing out.
There were some college projects that really captured my interest, but those were an exception.
I had this same issue until I stopped visiting Reddit completely (even in my off work hours) and gave up my addiction to news. It's amazing the difference it has made in my productivity.
In "Office Space*, the guy says he spends all his time appeasing his many bosses and only gets 10 minutes of real work done in a week. At my corporate job, I spent at least two hours a day doing necessary tasks that didn't really count towards production, but would cause problems if not taken care of. I also routinely cleaned up messes left by the people being actively rewarded by management for their speed who achieved that by doing sloppy work.
I do freelance work these days. My corporate experience helps me not stress overly much about how little actual work seems to happen. There are always a bunch of tasks necessary to getting other things done that "don't count" as work.
This really hits close to home for me. The first four years of my career I had the exact same sentiment. I would be able to complete my work in the first few hours of the day and just screw around after that. It was often misguided and didn't accomplish much other then learning random factoids. 15 months ago I finally brought myself to see a psychiatrist for depression, and between therapy and medication I was able to snap out of it and get on my feet again. The only thing is, while I started to love what I was doing again, I still felt no true inspiration to focus on something that wasn't truly challenging. And that turned out to be a major issue for me, and I had conversations with my therapist and she recommended I consider getting treatment for ADHD. One of my friends came by that weekend and happened to have a few extra extended release aderall, so I split it up over the two weeks between my next appointment with my psychiatrist. But I knew almost immediately after taking aderall that I likely had ADHD. I had a moment of clarity where my own thoughts didn't consume me while I worked for 30 minutes. The last time I felt that was probably a decade ago when I was still considering going to school for music performance. I've now been on medication for ADHD for a month and it's had a profound impact on my quality of life. I used to always be tired, regardless of how much sleep I got. I would find myself having difficulty in completing what should be minor tasks with any bit of precision. I was making so many little mistakes here and there that I didn't realize how much of an impact it was having on my morale.
This is a really long and roundabout way of saying, there's no reason not to go see a therapist and a psychiatrist if you feel like it's starting to impact you're quality of life. The worst thing that happens is you go to a doctor and get a comprehensive health examination to rule out any other factors or you take medication for a month that doesn't help.
Over the first 15+ years of my career as an engineer and engineering manager, I've repeatedly surveyed colleagues and friends in engineering roles about this question. I've asked it of people I consider low-performing, all the way to folks I'd consider 10x developers.
I have never met a single software developer who, when pressed to give an honest assessment and when "working" is defined along the lines of "actively defining, coding, or debugging a feature", self-identifies as working more than 50% of the time. There are occasional stretches of 12+ hour working sessions, but they are very rare.
I'd say I've asked this of over a hundred people.
This isn't to say these people only do 4 hours of work a day. Often, peers have described how they hit a wall at work, go home, and then work on personal projects in the evening.
I've come to the conclusion that is generally impossible to do mentally intensive tasks for more than 4 continuous hours over the long term.
Arguably, time spent reading HN is a legitimate part of becoming/remaining a good developer. Certainly, spending time socializing with coworkers is a required part of work, many places. Spending some amount of time unwinding at the office is arguably required for mental health and therefore a functional component of remaining a worker -- does that count as working?
"Working" is an ambiguous category, it seems to me. One definition of work (call it "productivist") says that we're only working when we're literally producing something valuable. A more organizational view might hold that "work" is whatever you're socially (often implicitly) required to do to keep your job (whether measurably productive or not). And a third more holistic definition would include stuff like exercise or professional development that are not always directly "required" by anyone, but that you might go crazy without doing...
I've learned a tremendous amount from reading HN. Sure, there's lots of posts that are time wasters, but so much good information for a developer is concentrated in one place makes it valuable and useful.
I probably spend half my time not working. I'm burnt out though. After a few years at my current position, I just don't care.
Why is this?
I've had a few promising projects languish because my manager is slow or hesitant to allocate resources. That's a bit demoralizing. When I'm on a path to production for a functioning system I get caught up in the devops meeting vortex. That's a waste of time and it takes several weeks to get any sort of resolution. In these cases my time is mostly spent looking for workarounds and not "working". I feel there are a lot of politics and favoritism in the company, and my manager (and our team) is not on the right side. It's demotivating to have your work ignored because you're not a priority. I don't know how anyone stays for more than a year.
Edit: In the first few months I worked on random on-going projects, but was quickly made lead on some new projects. It was good at first, but after about 9 months I'd say most (90%) weeks I don't put in anywhere near 40 hours of work.
The sad thing is I've always gotten a raise (double digit in two cases) and full bonus every performance cycle.
I've finally started looking for another job.
Does anyone have recommendations? I'm really looking for a company that enables their individual contributors (engineers) to actually get shit done.
Work for a startup, preferably one that is already somewhat profitable. I have worked for this type company my whole career and this "devops vortex" you speak of is a foreign concept. I run a small IT dept and we have one 30 min staff per week plus a one-on-one for each dev. And they code and solve other problems all day, and of course surf the web or socialize to break up the day too.
Some days almost the entire day. I'll read, watch videos, do some tutorials. But its offset because usually when I do this it's because I'm hung up on something and it just isn't going to get solved unless the ole brain has time to do its subconscious thing.
Letting the subconscious work through a hard problem while doing something else is a truly underrated trick. Taking a shower or going for a walk also works wonderfully.
Speaking as a solopreneur, I work only 3 hours a day, more like 3 x 50 minutes laps with 15 min breaks in between.
Also each lap is dedicated to one activity, first is manufacturing where I work on my project (the actual coding part), second is traffic (this is the dreaded marketing/outreach part) and finally is the optimization part (seo, increasing conversion rates, improving design, etc).
I've seen that the diversity of this work prevents you from getting bored and also is very good for your sites because if you keep working on just coding your sites seldom make any money.
The 3 hours limit is because after that i can happily watch tv, spend time with my family or just work on my other hobbies besides computers guilt free.
P.s. When you try to do as much work as you can, i believe you still only get 3 hours of work done - yet you feel guilty of not doing enough which causes unhappiness.
I've been an employee for like 20% of my career and a the rest I've been a freelancer.
I never worked more than 4 hours (of real work a day). There's the occasional super productive day where I have done over 8 hours of productive work, but that's the exception, not the rule.
I usually work around 3-4 hours of productive work daily. Heck I'd even say 20%-30% of that time is not even productive (meetings, emails and necessary yet unproductive things).
When I worked for companies doing 9 to 5, I wasted a looot of time doing nothing: reddit, fb, and stuff. I also recognize that I need that distraction to do some real productive work.
I'm very fast and productive when it comes to actual work, but if I don't get the procrastination time then I just become a blurry mess of a brain and take 10 times longer to do the same things.
I think procrastination time is also important and necessary.
I just completed a course on Coursera (Learning How to Learn - https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/). One of things mentioned is that our brain has a focused and diffused mode and both are needed for us to learn.
So, I guess, something similar happens when we are working. You need both focus time but also a down time to achieve things. Of course, too much procrastination is also not a good thing.
But there are SOME DAYS that I work 150%! ("in the flow")
So how to achieve flow consistently?
One of the few things that works for me is to get started working first thing in the morning: no news, no HN, until 10am, etc. When I can do this, I know I'll have a productive day.
Does this cause a productive mental state, or is it merely a symptom of it? I suspect it's causal (based off what I know of brain chemistry), but I could definitely be wrong on that part. Like, "get assigned bullshit work, can't focus on it because it's bullshit, end up on HN" is definitely also a plausible story to me.
I'd like to see where people are from if they're replying to this thread. I wonder how cultural norms affect effectiveness (do Americans work less at work because of the work-oriented culture which requires them to stay at work longer for no reason?)
I work in the USA and i would say I'm about 30-40% productive, maybe less. My productivity is strongly related to the density of meetings throughout the day: My productivity killers are relatively short gaps between meetings (<45m) during which i am completely unable to focus because of the anticipation that i will soon be completely distracted. So if I have three 1hr meetings with 45minutes gaps between them, my daily productivity plummets to nearly 0. Open office plan also doesn't help with staying focused.
> do Americans work less at work because of the work-oriented culture which requires them to stay at work longer for no reason?
I don't think US workplace culture is extreme in that regard. I usually look at East Asian work culture when it comes truly weird workplace norms and traditions.
My family lived in Japan for a short period, and my father told me that he and his colleagues had to wait for their boss to leave every night before they could leave work. Now that's extreme.
Significantly less now that I work remotely, on my own schedule, and at a reasonable company. I get 6+ hours a day of real work in, usually more, but try not to overdo it. (For awhile I was becoming a bit workaholic without the boundary between work and not-work, spending 10+ hours at it.) I take breaks and do spend a little time on HN or Stack Exchange to clear my head, but I don't do Reddit, webcomics, facebook, or any random sites during work. That's my relax after work stuff, done on a different PC. So in terms of productivity, I'd say around 75-85% work, 15-25% slack most days.
I previously worked an 8:30-5:30 where management measured productivity by the butts-in-seats metric, scheduled a lot of meetings, and was quite anal about punctuality. I was lucky to get 4 hours of serious work in most days (between all the interruptions, bureaucratic stuff, and having to work based on my manager's sleep schedule). Sometimes I ended up doing more work at home at night than I did while 'at work'. Maybe 50% productivity, often less.
Before that I worked at a 9-5 where we had to record our time per task so specifically that we even had a task to enter the time spent filling out the timesheet. I could have done better there about focusing on solving problems and improving business if I wasn't constantly distracted by the clock ticking and all the estimating and meetings about estimates and deadlines and timesheets. Maybe 50% productivity.
Hm. Given an average week, probably on average 35% of my day is not working. Average being a reasonably interesting bug and/or project to sink my teeth into. Somedays I'll work 10 hours. Others I'll work 4 to 6.
Unlike most people, if I finish my work in 5 hours, I go home. If I'm not going to be working, I'd rather not be working at home. I've never had any complaints about work quality or throughput. I have had one complaint about not being seen in the office.
I have recently gone freelance/self-employed and I have quickly missed the reality of being able to not have to question if I'm actually getting work done every minute of the day. The truth is, I can't do brain-intensive work for more than maybe 5 or 6 hours.
I have a follow up question: For the time that you spend "not working" would you prefer to "work"?
For me the answer is "absolutely!!!". Reading through some of the responses, it really seems that people are mixed. Either their "non-working" time is spent with side projects/training or they have become demotivated by problems with the work flow on their team.
For me the latter is by far the biggest problem. I was just thinking the other day that, as programmers, we need a kind of statement that indicates what we expect from the organisations we are in.
To be honest, I really want to work instead of write stuff on HN, so I'll leave this as an exercise to the interested. As an example, I think it is reasonable to expect to be able to spend whole days writing code (which means that someone else has to go to the meetings, and someone else has to clarify requirements, and someone else has to prioritise). There should be some clear resolution of differences of opinion (whether that be in technical direction, or whatever) -- a programmer shouldn't have to spend time arguing. A programmer should expect to have spaces both for interacting with groups of people and for quiet contemplation. I sure there are other (and better) ideas, but that's what I have off the cuff.
I got sick of feeling like I am wasting my life away at work not working, so I submitted my resignation. Time to get on doing my own things so I don't feel I'm wasting my little yet precious time alive. After a few meetings, I am not quitting yet. I have been re-classed from salary to hourly and I will be able to have fewer and more flexible "hours" so that I can get out and do my own thing and side projects (which require business hour meetings/calls/etc).
Reading this thread has made me feel a whole lot better about myself. Been struggling with burnout and have been working on side projects a good 50% of the time while I overestimate projects to give me larger buffers. I just don't give a fuck anymore. I thought I was alone.
(Yes, I know it's wrong and I want to be more productive, but I hate the work I do and I hate the culture here. So I want to start my own thing.)
Developer here. Going by my time Rescuetime logs, 62.5% of my time is spent outside of the IDE or any other work related application. I do not enjoy this work and spend a lot of time walking around/thinking about the problem/surfing non work sites.
I spent 60-70% of my time not working because even though I'm working with interesting technology, it's stuff that won't get used by almost anyway, my peers don't seem interested, my manager is absent and the requirements are all over the place (symptom of nobody caring, whatever is done is okay as long as it impresses, for some random definition of "impresses)...
... so it needs to be done to check an item in a list but nobody cares. If nobody cares, I don't care either, which makes me think I'm wasting my time, which leads to depression, feeling burnt out, procrastinating even more, etc.
Unfortunately I'm paid hourly and remotely, so while getting settled, checking an email or two, getting coffee, etc are all things I would do as part of a normal workday, I don't tend to log those hours or get paid for any of it
[+] [-] throw832649|9 years ago|reply
I seem to get as much done as other people (sometimes better) so part of me wonders if I'm not as unusual as I feel. Part of me wonders if I should get evaluated for ADHD, since I find it such a struggle to focus on my work. And part of me is just frustrated with myself, that theoretically I could spend like 3 good hours at work each day, get more done, and have more quality time to myself.
[+] [-] barsonme|9 years ago|reply
Some things are easy to focus on—I can sit down to program for a bit and lose track of time for 5 hours. On the other hand, if something is boring, it's mind-numbingly boring.
It was the worst while I was in school, since teachers and professors just thought, "oh, he's unmotivated" when in reality it was more along the lines of, "I'd rather cut my toenails with a rusty butter knife than write the paper." (Okay, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)
Anyway, if it affects your life and managing it yourself isn't working (give it an honest effort, of course) definitely speak with a doctor. While too many parents think their kids have ADHD when the kids are really just, well, kids, trying to cope with ADHD without some sort of guidance sucks. A lot. It's amazing how much more productive you can be if you get some help coping with it.
Just my $0.02.
[+] [-] badworkguy|9 years ago|reply
This is me.
On a good day, I might work for 3 hours of my 7 hour day. On a bad day, 1 hour. Somehow, I get the work done, and even get praised for it, though it's not taxing or particularly good code. I think my firm is afraid to lose me, and let me get away with too much, but that could be paranoia / imposter syndrome. That said, my productivity is on a par with others I work with (surpassing some) and I don't consider myself to be a better coder than they are.
I spend the larger part of my day on side projects, learning new languages, trying new apps, painstakingly reorganising my local file system, reducing the size and complexity of my dropbox folders (even though I'm using less than half of my free space), reading HN, tinkering with electronics at my desk, reorganising my workspace, blogging, reading, listening to podcasts or audiobooks (I find I can't do anything that involves typing at the same time, but I can do graphics)
I have curtailed my reddit / browsing a lot, but its still more than I'd like.
Lately, I've decided that my job is not challenging me enough, and I want to leave it. And so I blame that on my lack of focus. But if I'm honest, I've always been like this. In previous jobs, in college, in school, I've always done the minimum required to get by because I have other "more important" things to do.
I'm easily distracted. I don't think I'd go so far as to say I have ADHD, but I do have trouble focussing on tasks when a computer is involved. I have a theory that this is a side-effect of the modern computing experience itself. Switching tabs and multitasking is so easy these days, with the amounnt of RAM / Bandwidth / CPU we have at our disposal, that doing several things at once is very tempting. I barely bother to close apps. I would normally have 4-5 VS windows, Android Studio, Photoshop, Sublime, etc all open at once, and while I'm not switching between them every five minutes, I might alt-tab to one by accident and lose an hour fixing some bug or trying some thing out.
There were some college projects that really captured my interest, but those were an exception.
[+] [-] dntrkv|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mz|9 years ago|reply
I do freelance work these days. My corporate experience helps me not stress overly much about how little actual work seems to happen. There are always a bunch of tasks necessary to getting other things done that "don't count" as work.
[+] [-] imjustsaying|9 years ago|reply
It's probably not as unusual as it feels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iiOEQOtBlQ
[+] [-] yoodenvranx|9 years ago|reply
Perhaps all the other people are also as unproductive as you? ;)
[+] [-] abuani|9 years ago|reply
This is a really long and roundabout way of saying, there's no reason not to go see a therapist and a psychiatrist if you feel like it's starting to impact you're quality of life. The worst thing that happens is you go to a doctor and get a comprehensive health examination to rule out any other factors or you take medication for a month that doesn't help.
[+] [-] snowpanda|9 years ago|reply
I would highly recommend doing this, I have ADHD and knowing I wasn't crazy, and that it has a name, has helped me a lot.
[+] [-] mars4rp|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hardworkerthrow|9 years ago|reply
I have never met a single software developer who, when pressed to give an honest assessment and when "working" is defined along the lines of "actively defining, coding, or debugging a feature", self-identifies as working more than 50% of the time. There are occasional stretches of 12+ hour working sessions, but they are very rare.
I'd say I've asked this of over a hundred people.
This isn't to say these people only do 4 hours of work a day. Often, peers have described how they hit a wall at work, go home, and then work on personal projects in the evening.
I've come to the conclusion that is generally impossible to do mentally intensive tasks for more than 4 continuous hours over the long term.
[+] [-] decasia|9 years ago|reply
"Working" is an ambiguous category, it seems to me. One definition of work (call it "productivist") says that we're only working when we're literally producing something valuable. A more organizational view might hold that "work" is whatever you're socially (often implicitly) required to do to keep your job (whether measurably productive or not). And a third more holistic definition would include stuff like exercise or professional development that are not always directly "required" by anyone, but that you might go crazy without doing...
[+] [-] austenallred|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Imagenuity|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psyc|9 years ago|reply
Almost spit out my Coca-Cola brand carbonated soft drink. Thanks for the laugh!
[+] [-] lazythrowawayd|9 years ago|reply
Why is this?
I've had a few promising projects languish because my manager is slow or hesitant to allocate resources. That's a bit demoralizing. When I'm on a path to production for a functioning system I get caught up in the devops meeting vortex. That's a waste of time and it takes several weeks to get any sort of resolution. In these cases my time is mostly spent looking for workarounds and not "working". I feel there are a lot of politics and favoritism in the company, and my manager (and our team) is not on the right side. It's demotivating to have your work ignored because you're not a priority. I don't know how anyone stays for more than a year.
Edit: In the first few months I worked on random on-going projects, but was quickly made lead on some new projects. It was good at first, but after about 9 months I'd say most (90%) weeks I don't put in anywhere near 40 hours of work.
The sad thing is I've always gotten a raise (double digit in two cases) and full bonus every performance cycle.
I've finally started looking for another job.
Does anyone have recommendations? I'm really looking for a company that enables their individual contributors (engineers) to actually get shit done.
[+] [-] robind2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 9erdelta|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1_player|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naspinski|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superasn|9 years ago|reply
Also each lap is dedicated to one activity, first is manufacturing where I work on my project (the actual coding part), second is traffic (this is the dreaded marketing/outreach part) and finally is the optimization part (seo, increasing conversion rates, improving design, etc).
I've seen that the diversity of this work prevents you from getting bored and also is very good for your sites because if you keep working on just coding your sites seldom make any money.
The 3 hours limit is because after that i can happily watch tv, spend time with my family or just work on my other hobbies besides computers guilt free.
P.s. When you try to do as much work as you can, i believe you still only get 3 hours of work done - yet you feel guilty of not doing enough which causes unhappiness.
[+] [-] 0wl3x|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw112358|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alltakendamned|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csorrell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] webjac|9 years ago|reply
I never worked more than 4 hours (of real work a day). There's the occasional super productive day where I have done over 8 hours of productive work, but that's the exception, not the rule.
I usually work around 3-4 hours of productive work daily. Heck I'd even say 20%-30% of that time is not even productive (meetings, emails and necessary yet unproductive things).
When I worked for companies doing 9 to 5, I wasted a looot of time doing nothing: reddit, fb, and stuff. I also recognize that I need that distraction to do some real productive work.
I'm very fast and productive when it comes to actual work, but if I don't get the procrastination time then I just become a blurry mess of a brain and take 10 times longer to do the same things.
[+] [-] imarg|9 years ago|reply
I just completed a course on Coursera (Learning How to Learn - https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn/). One of things mentioned is that our brain has a focused and diffused mode and both are needed for us to learn.
So, I guess, something similar happens when we are working. You need both focus time but also a down time to achieve things. Of course, too much procrastination is also not a good thing.
[+] [-] IpV8|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philipyoungg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swah|9 years ago|reply
But there are SOME DAYS that I work 150%! ("in the flow")
So how to achieve flow consistently?
One of the few things that works for me is to get started working first thing in the morning: no news, no HN, until 10am, etc. When I can do this, I know I'll have a productive day.
[+] [-] ThrustVectoring|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slizard|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goodoldboys|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iLoch|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] natoliniak|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cyph0n|9 years ago|reply
I don't think US workplace culture is extreme in that regard. I usually look at East Asian work culture when it comes truly weird workplace norms and traditions.
My family lived in Japan for a short period, and my father told me that he and his colleagues had to wait for their boss to leave every night before they could leave work. Now that's extreme.
[+] [-] throwaway_jazze|9 years ago|reply
Significantly less now that I work remotely, on my own schedule, and at a reasonable company. I get 6+ hours a day of real work in, usually more, but try not to overdo it. (For awhile I was becoming a bit workaholic without the boundary between work and not-work, spending 10+ hours at it.) I take breaks and do spend a little time on HN or Stack Exchange to clear my head, but I don't do Reddit, webcomics, facebook, or any random sites during work. That's my relax after work stuff, done on a different PC. So in terms of productivity, I'd say around 75-85% work, 15-25% slack most days.
I previously worked an 8:30-5:30 where management measured productivity by the butts-in-seats metric, scheduled a lot of meetings, and was quite anal about punctuality. I was lucky to get 4 hours of serious work in most days (between all the interruptions, bureaucratic stuff, and having to work based on my manager's sleep schedule). Sometimes I ended up doing more work at home at night than I did while 'at work'. Maybe 50% productivity, often less.
Before that I worked at a 9-5 where we had to record our time per task so specifically that we even had a task to enter the time spent filling out the timesheet. I could have done better there about focusing on solving problems and improving business if I wasn't constantly distracted by the clock ticking and all the estimating and meetings about estimates and deadlines and timesheets. Maybe 50% productivity.
[+] [-] justrudd|9 years ago|reply
Unlike most people, if I finish my work in 5 hours, I go home. If I'm not going to be working, I'd rather not be working at home. I've never had any complaints about work quality or throughput. I have had one complaint about not being seen in the office.
[edit] clarified the 35% bucket
[+] [-] neal_jones|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steveax|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikekchar|9 years ago|reply
For me the answer is "absolutely!!!". Reading through some of the responses, it really seems that people are mixed. Either their "non-working" time is spent with side projects/training or they have become demotivated by problems with the work flow on their team.
For me the latter is by far the biggest problem. I was just thinking the other day that, as programmers, we need a kind of statement that indicates what we expect from the organisations we are in.
To be honest, I really want to work instead of write stuff on HN, so I'll leave this as an exercise to the interested. As an example, I think it is reasonable to expect to be able to spend whole days writing code (which means that someone else has to go to the meetings, and someone else has to clarify requirements, and someone else has to prioritise). There should be some clear resolution of differences of opinion (whether that be in technical direction, or whatever) -- a programmer shouldn't have to spend time arguing. A programmer should expect to have spaces both for interacting with groups of people and for quiet contemplation. I sure there are other (and better) ideas, but that's what I have off the cuff.
[+] [-] jrs235|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway184827|9 years ago|reply
(Yes, I know it's wrong and I want to be more productive, but I hate the work I do and I hate the culture here. So I want to start my own thing.)
[+] [-] dylanha|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomatohs|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw110|9 years ago|reply
... so it needs to be done to check an item in a list but nobody cares. If nobody cares, I don't care either, which makes me think I'm wasting my time, which leads to depression, feeling burnt out, procrastinating even more, etc.
[+] [-] jonahrd|9 years ago|reply