[mattrp]

I agree that morning time is most effective and I’m not a morning person. I also agree that contiguous time is vital - usually 4-5 hours. What I’ve noticed is that once I achieve something in that 4-5 hours it’s very difficult to go on to repeat the feat in the next consecutive time block. It’s far better if I go for a run, bike, golf, hang out for the next time block than it is to sit there and struggle with the next code task. But this has been the case whether I’m coding or doing any other kind of work. That said, there are days maybe once or twice in a seven day period where I will code for 8-12 hours straight and the entire time is productive. I think it comes down to energy conservation. Just like runners can build up to run a marathon they usually don’t keep running marathons every day afterwards (although I knew a guy once who did that for something like 30 days straight). So what should one do in their downtime? I think planning and communicating is often seen as non work. I also think meditation is definitely not seen as something one should do on the clock. Yet when I read about billionaires daily habits, they often take naps in the day, meditate, etc. I think Dr. Dre was said to meditate twice a day during the time he was involved in Beats. (My memory is bad so if it wasn’t him it was somebody like that). Anyway I don’t think pay structure necessarily needs to change but maybe the constant monitoring and feelings of guilt if you aren’t pulling desk time should.

[nextos]

Hardy famously admitted he worked only 4 hours in math, and spent the rest of the time watching cricket in Cambridge.

Software is probably quite close in intensity to pure math, so I don't see anything wrong with this!

The 8 hour workday makes no sense outside agriculture and industry. And even here, due to automation, people should be spared from such a long day anyway.