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A comment on Ask HN: How many hours do you work?.

Re:Ask HN: How many hours do you work? by feedthebayer on Wednesday August 26, 2015 @05:25PM (#10126123)
I think the average person's capacity for deeply focused work is generally considered to be around 6 hours per day. I've found that to be the case for me as well. However, I can be maxed out at my day job, but go home and work on an unrelated side project for several more hours.

I highly recommend Cal Newport's blog as he writes phenomenal content on "deep work", the importance of focus, and how to maximize your "deep work" output. --> http://calnewport.com/blog/about/

Separate out "deep work" (design, coding, problem solving) from "shallow work" (email, social media). Do as much deep work as possible every day, but then fill in the rest with shallow but necessary work.

P.S. My average day-job working time is 8 hrs.

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Re:Ask HN: How many hours do you work? by fantominous on Wednesday August 26, 2015 @06:31PM (#10126422)
> I highly recommend Cal Newport's blog as he writes phenomenal content on "deep work", the importance of focus, and how to maximize your "deep work" output. --> http://calnewport.com/blog/about/

I used to read his blog quite regularly in college - perhaps I should go back and reread some of his stuff again.

I found his piece on deliberate practice also worth a read: http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/11/11/if-youre-busy-youre-do...

> Separate out "deep work" (design, coding, problem solving) from "shallow work" (email, social media). Do as much deep work as possible every day, but then fill in the rest with shallow but necessary work.

That's an interesting thought - in general I've noticed writing email and attending meetings tend to require far less mental strain than focused work.

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Re:Ask HN: How many hours do you work? by kspaans on Thursday August 27, 2015 @03:34AM (#10128064)
My work day is 9 hours (with a 1 hour lunch). I track my time and find that about 25% is spent taking breaks from 'working'. The path of lease resistance for me is to work for 45 minutes and then take a 5 to 15 minute break to walk around the office, check HN, get coffee/water, etc.

So yeah about 6 hours of 'working' on an average day at the office for 9 hours.

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