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How Many Hours per Week on Average do you put in for your Workplace?
Can everybody concentrate on doing the good development 8 hours / day ?
As I found it is really difficult if you don't do something to relax yourself, and do you even still do some extra reading after 8 hours day time work ?
Thanks for sharing
I generally don't go by hours, but more by features/bug fixes. At the beginning of the day I try to plan out what I want to accomplish during the day. If it takes a little shorter or longer than expected, I generally don't mind. I just want my project to be at a certain spot when I finish my work for the day.
I am working from home. morning 3 hours,break, noon 2 hours,long break (kids+wife), nights, if I need 4-5 hours.
Never did, and don't think I can, do development for 8 hours straight.
I've been averaging about 15 hr/day on a project recently. I would split that up with 5-10 min breaks every half hour or so, just to stretch and take my eyes off the monitor, or grab something to drink. Even when I'm only running a regular 8 hr day I still like to take a quick break every 30 mins to remain focussed.
Differs from day to day. Depends lots on mood.
Generally I work on two (very different) things at a time. For example: iPhone app and server backend, or blog post. When one of the tasks becomes boring I switch to the other one.
I don't think anyone can do development for several hours straight. Everyone needs multiple breaks in between, to get your mind to change its focus and refresh itself. The key is to discipline yourself to only very short breaks, say about 10 minutes. Browsers have plugins that lock you out from surfing if you surf too long :) Or you can also try pair-programming. When there's another person working with you, you tend to concentrate more on the work than getting distracted.
I basically create my daily targets, once the daily target is achieved i stop coding, never look at the clock mate, just achieving daily targets.We divide big project milestone into daily targets and then try to achieve them.
For me it depends on what I'm working on. And it all boils down to inspiration. The more inspired I am, the more hours I can go straight doing productive coding.
I've had projects so interesting that I've spent 12 or even more hours a day for a few days straight. Every time I finish something I just want to continue with the next one or find a way to improve the previous day's work. Of course, this is not continuous work. I take breaks some times 10 or 15 minutes, other times 1 or 2 hours and then go back to work.
Then sometimes I get projects that are so repetitive (a bunch of reports, different views of the same data) that after 3 or 4 hours I just want to go home.
But normally on a regular project in a regular day, 8 hours of coding is too much.
I like to switch between large and small parts of code. I can work on a complicated part for a few hours, then I got to take a break and work on easy stuff like simple methods or documentation. This is where I will research a little if needed for the task at hand. Then I try and get what I can done with the rest of the day and get at least a little plan for what is next to do or fix/improve the next work day.
Along with everyone else, it is variable. Common factors I find in longer grind sessions are my interest in the current project, current implementation or pressure from above.
It is generally like going for a run. If you sprint the whole time, you cannot go for very long. Breaks and diversions are paramount if you want to be programming by 4 o'clock. If you start cranking out code at 8 and don't break for anything but lunch at 12:30, you'll probably be burned out for the rest of the afternoon.
I code from about 9 to 4.30. I spend the first 30 minutes in the morning catching up on blogs, newsgroups etc and email. I am religious about my breaks, 10, 12 and 3 and I frequently take a walk round the block to get my head clear.
After work it's mostly family time, but I normally squeeze in an hour or so on reading or my personal projects. It helps if you don't watch tv :)
A total of 10 to 12 hours a day (with breaks in-between) of reasonably creative work is about the maximum semi-sustainable rate for me -- I say "semi" because I can keep it up for several days, but definitely NOT forever -- a week at that rhythm leaves me, if not burned out, at least seriously singed for next week;-).
In longer-term perspective my motto is (and has long been) "aim for 40, settle for 50, 60 is right out" (that's productive hours/week in reasonably creative work such as design, coding, writing, &c) -- but I know other people have somewhat different thresholds (mine were a bit higher when I was in my 20's -- I'm in my 50's now;-).
to me it depends on how many interruptions I get during the day. But on a good day where I can remain focused I can write a lot of code. I have done 16 hours straight (with the pauses for basic bodily maintenance of course) but this is the exception. Usually I get 2-12 hours of coding in a day. Variance mostly due to interruptions, this is a big killer, as sometimes it can take me a good 30 minutes to get back in the thought process I was in before the tap on the shoulder. Get 6 of those per hour and your day is gone and got lucky to get 10 good lines of code done (appart from generated boiler plate stuff).
sight... but that`s all part of the fun I guess !!