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Personally, I have been observing my own technical work habits a lot recently. What I have noticed agrees with your narrative but disagrees with your point. H
by pclmulqdq 4y ago
Personally, I have been observing my own technical work habits a lot recently. What I have noticed agrees with your narrative but disagrees with your point. Here's the rundown:
* I can sustain hard mental labor (including but not limited to work) for about 50 hours per week total
* I don't know when I'm going to be in the best state to do that work, and it depends on a lot of factors
* Some of those factors are external, some depend on the project, etc.
* Sometimes, that mental labor needs to go somewhere else, and that subtracts from my overall work budget. That includes things like weird social situations, fixing something around the house, etc.
* I also spend a lot of time passively daydreaming about the last thing I worked on. This is often productive, but also often isn't.
* My productive output also varies a lot on those factors: some weeks, I can produce 60 hours of work, and others only 15-20
I think if you have bursty work patterns like this, it is actually beneficial to have more office days rather than fewer, to "catch" as much productive time and daydreaming time as possible. However, it's an even better argument for remote work, because that minimizes other forms of mental labor, like driving.
- robertlagrant 4y agoI think I'm like this. I've pushed myself fairly hard with technical work in the past, and got up to about 80 hours a week for weeks at a time, but about 50 is my useful maximum without diminishing returns.
- hnews_account_1 4y agoThe productivity in office suits certain work styles that are people heavy. The argument for and against remote work isn't as dependent on the productivity time as people think. Sure, some people are unproductive for periods between 9am - 5pm. Most people are not. That's why those times work. I am myself very productive during those times but only for analytical work. When I need to code, I have to be home with ANC earphones and get lost in the iterations (assuming I'm not stuck somewhere). The whole idiocy around 5 days a week 9-5 is because people think you have to be in office all that time. People can and do take random half days, hours off to go to the dentist or the doctor or to the post office or whatever the fuck. That's how it has always been. There are very few jobs that require you to literally never fuck off if there's nothing going on. Work adjusts around you if you're a productive person. Some of us can get stuck with shitty bosses and everyone empathizes with that, but for the vast majority of folks, the boss absolutely does not give a flying fuck about when you come in as long as he knows you're disciplined.