People will tell you things ... This is a topic that: a) people really like to brag about, b) it's hard to separate "hanging around" hours from really produc

People will tell you things ... This is a topic that: a) people really like to brag about, b) it's hard to separate "hanging around" hours from really productive hours, c) even if you can distinguish those, it's a major pain to accurately track them (do not trust what anybody says just from remembering). Do not worry to much about raw hours numbers. Focus more on quality of these hours. In my experience, the difference in productivity / results achieved between "good" and "bad" hours can be staggering. Well rested me can easily outcode several tired overworked stressed mes :). Forcing yourself heroically to work more when you already can't can be very counterproductive (game industry notorious for permanent crunch times sometimes does self-reflection [1][2]). Working many forced hours can make sense when you have some external situation where additional benefits of getting something done by deadline outweigh loss of productivity. But even there, you are only borrowing it from your future self. Yes, I had situations where hunkered down and produced magnificent amount of results working crazy hours every day, but at the end I got literally sick and was unable to do any intellectual work for quite some time afterwards. [1] http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php [2] http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-pres...