[markcmyers]

On your quiz, the average answer is "3-5 hours," and this squares with recent research suggesting that in an 8-hour day, mind workers are doing actual work about 3 1/2 hours on average. The rest of the day is spent on snacking, gossiping, Facebook, etc.

I'm a highly motivated independent developer and writer, and I've been studying my own work habits to try to become more productive. I use toggl — https://www.toggl.com/ — to track my time throughout the day. I'd work 12 hours a day if I could, but I can't. I run out of gas after 2 hours, 3 hours — and sometimes 8 hours. My limit on tedious, fussy, boring tasks is about 2 hours, after which I'm not much good for anything. My limit when I'm writing a book is 3 to 4 hours. If I'm building something out of code or working in Photoshop, sometimes I get addicted, and then I can go 8 hours. Addiction seems to be the only thing that gets me close to being as productive as I'd like to be. Sadly, I can't choose to focus only on the types of tasks that I'm addicted to.

My sense is that most people — probably including your boss — have never measured how much cognitive work they themselves can do before their brain is fried. I'm talking about real work, not meetings. Meetings use almost no brain glucose at all, so are a way to pad "working" hours without increasing fatigue substantially. I'm convinced this is why meetings are so popular in corporate America.

As long as no one is measuring, it's easy for everyone to kid themselves that they're good for 8 hours and that everyone else should be, no matter how unrealistic that may be.

[samizdatum]

Sometimes, at the tail end of a day, I'll be sitting in front of my computer, with a clear idea of exactly what I need to do and how to do it... and yet I'm just sort of sitting there stupidly, because my brain feels fried. It's the same sensation you get when you crank out one too many reps at the gym- you're sending all the right signals, the nerves are firing, but your muscles just don't work.

When I get this fried brain feeling, I've found that eating something sugar-rich, like a piece of chocolate, can attenuate this feeling- not completely, but enough to get me out of the paralysis and started, at least. I don't know how much is placebo, but hey, it works, so I'm not complaining, and there seems to be at least some studies supporting the existence of similar effects.

[hanniabu]

> I'll be sitting in front of my computer, with a clear idea of exactly what I need to do and how to do it... and yet I'm just sort of sitting there stupidly, because my brain feels fried

Thank you for that comment, I thought this was just me....definitely makes me feel a little better

[remyp]

I absolutely agree that this seems to be why meetings are so popular. It's the business equivalent of two exhausted boxers "hugging" each other.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I spent some time with google looking for the references to no avail, but from what I recall, the SEI (Software Engineering Institute) agrees with you. Measured across thousands of projects, the average number of hours of actual software development is 2-4 hours per day.

In my experience with teams actively and accurately tracking time, the average is about 2.5 hours for most development work. It can spike up, but the spikes are typically not sustainable for more than a few days. Even then, the higher number days are typically spent doing design documentation or other non-coding tasks.