alt Hacker News> When I’m not severely depressed I’m able to do two four hours blocks separated by a break in a day, and maybe squeeze out an extra hour or two on a fantastic day.
I do the same thing, it's always kind of puzzled me how people say they work 10-12 hour days. Realistically, it's probably nowhere close to 12 consecutive hours of deep focus. Sometimes it's easier for me to just take breaks and work whenever I have the motivation. Maybe it stretches into odd hours. Sometimes it's less than expected. Sometimes it's a waste of time because I didn't take the time to step back and gain more perspective. Hours never seemed like a good measurement.
I do think part of it is that when people are in really "high intensity" workplaces, there's social pressure to give the appearance of working hard. That could be part of it. I also think SWE (in SV business culture) tends to be more deliverable oriented as opposed to caring about the hours worked
I mean people don’t usually even do 8 hours of deep focus.
Also some things just have wall time. Sometimes it may take 3-4 hours to roll things out and test. Babysit some dashboards, cicd.
Working “12” hours may mean you get 3-4 attempts/iterations at something rather than 2-3. Over time that may add up.
It could also mean 6 hours of meetings followed by another 3-5 hours of coding + breaks
These aren’t deep focus, but they still take time.
I guess mostly agreeing you. My experience of working 10-12 hours is you are less efficient but you can get more done.
It’s rarely worth doing for long periods of time. But in some situations it can push things forward.