I have noticed that a lot of people treat work as a social event. They spent a significant amount of their day shooting the shit. As an introvert who can't stand smalltalk, I don't. I think 40 hours or more makes sense for employees who spend half of their day chatting or surfing the internet. When I'm at work, I am working. I still do more than 40 hours, but I'm not sure if it's sustainable. I was recently asked to increase to a minimum 48 hour workweek and turned it down because I know it would upset my work life balance and not increase my output.

Like... it is. "Company" has roots in the latin word Pan or Pain, as in bread. Con Pan, literally who you break bread with, as in "we had company for the weekend".

Assuming 8 hours a day you're spending 1/3 of your work week with these people. It doesn't have to be a social bonanza every day but if you dislike making smalltalk with these people, or are actively disdainful of their chatting and web surfing then maybe you should change jobs. Cuz it sounds like you're spending a lot of time around people you straight up don't like.

Nah, they're actually fantastic people, and I don't begrudge them their small talk. I just don't join in, and am noting that it's a difference in time accounting. Our work is fascinating and there's a lot of bigtalk too. And actually I'm totally happy to small talk with them in a social setting, I just don't like to be at the office when I'm socializing.

Please don't. If you commit to a 48 hour workweek you're taking a loan on your future health. When that due date comes you'll pay it back with interest...

Thanks for the reinforcement. If I wasn't a surfer I might go for it but I won't let them take my sessions :-)

Yeah most studies I've seen shared online put us at about 4-5 hours of useful work a day. This seems to be what I settle into at home when left alone too.

It can of course go higher when you have a specific goal and you're running on adrenaline or are truly enraptured by what you are working on. But a typical 8 hour day is often packed with chitchat, meetings, administrative busywork and so on to help pad out those hours.

I did work one place that stressed to us to allocate no more than 5.5 hours of work-work a day when estimating jobs due to the above, and it seemed roughly accurate.

I agree, I have about 4 - 5 "good hours" a day. But I'm expected to deliver 6 - 6.5 billable hours a day in my job (exluding admin work). It's frustrating as I know that a billable hour before 10am and after 4pm is worth far less than a billable hour between 10am and 3pm. It's especially frustrating when I'm expected to work on something that involves a high cognitive load all day long due to tight deadlines. Account managers, project managers and sales people seem to think that all work is the same and you can work at max capacity all the time, regardless of the complexity of the task.

As a SWE, I have 20 productive hours a week, approximately. The other 20 are wasted, and I would be better off just not being at work and relaxing. Unfortunately, "that's just not how things work".

Same here, software developer. Any code added after 3pm is full of bugs and little mistakes to fix the next morning. Not worth it. Now I just slack off when I feel like it but it's not the way

Why not become a remote consultant?

This.

Sometimes I get more done in 15mins of my personal projects before work than a day of work, due to meetings or being blocked. Companies are usually not nearly as efficient as they could be.

I think 90% of work gets done in the first four hours for me.

This is why I opt into an 8am - 4pm schedule - I can usually squeak out just a bit more productive time if I start before anyone is online or in the office.

For me, I feel like it is highly dependent upon what I’m working on at the time. Some projects are motivating and 40 hours a weeks isn’t enough—I want to work more than that. Other times I work ~40 but a lot of it is wasted by by working inefficiently (when the drive to work on the project isn’t high enough to outweigh fatigue)