[peterkelly]

If I'm in the flow, I just keep going. My only hard-and-fast rule is that I'll stop if it gets to about 4am, because I find it very difficult to get to sleep if there's sunlight outside. I haven't always been this disciplined and sometimes used to go right through until I dropped from exhaustion, but discovered that was unhealthy.

Having said that, I almost never get started before midday, and often it's only in the early afternoon or sometimes even the evenings after a lot of online procrastination. I have some days when I'm extremely productive, and others where I really just can't get into the zone to do much of anything at all. In the latter case I'll just write the day off and try to make something of it in terms of relaxing. I make no distinction between weekdays and weekends, so I'll just work whenever I'm in a productive mood.

I'm also a remote worker; my client is on the other side of the world, and I bill by the day. So I have a high degree of freedom over which hours I work, and to a certain extent, the amount of days I work each month.

Butts in seats and meeting a quota of 8 hours a day is entirely pointless, and serves neither you nor your employer. The only things that matter are, in order: 1) your health & work/life balance, 2) the value you bring to your employer.

[emp_]

Amazing how I wrote this post without typing anything in it, I bill by estimate so if something is estimated 40 hours and I do it in 2, I can get more work or just chill, I usually book my time around 200 "hours" a week and some good weeks I work 18 real hours and the bad ones around 70, pays extremely well but has very little margin for error so the bad weeks have to be rare. I had 18 straight months of good weeks and now I'm in a 6 week streak of bad ones, great/awful clients make or break this system.

[yurishimo]

How do you handle deployments on those "40" hour projects? I understand that you provide that much value, but it the client thinks they are paying for hours, even if not directly, seeing a contractor push code in 2 hours and then bill me for 40 has to hurt a bit.

Obviously if your estimate is devoid of any hourly numbers, this conversation is moot.

[emp_]

Those are closed price projects, they do use hours for reports and all but its really a fixed payout for a fixed amount of features.

[murukesh_s]

> and others where I really just can't get into the zone to do much of anything at all

Have you checked your sleep pattern when this happens? I have noticed if I did not get enough sleep (Because I was in a flow or anything else), it will catch up with me the next day. Can't concentrate no matter what until I get some rest again.

[peterkelly]

Oh yeah, definitely. If I don't get enough sleep, the next day is completely fucked. I'd say a good night's sleep is the single most important factor in ensuring I'm productive. It's something I struggle a lot to get right, especially when I'm on a roll in a late night coding binge but know I'm going to pay for it the next day.