[bborud]

I think the reason most programmers are relatively unproductive is that they don't step away when they are not being productive. Stepping away from work when you are not performing well has (at least) two positive effects. One is that you get some rest. The other is that the change of context is good for problem solving. It helps to go home and do something else while at the back of your mind you are still trying to solve problems. I try to avoid just hanging around the office when I'm kind of half stuck or fully stuck. Because I'm not really all that productive.

Programming really isn't about hours but about the quality of those hours.

For manual labor things are of course entirely different. But I'm not talking about manual labor.

(Of course, in some companies, programming is seen as a kind of manual labor where people naively assume that hours spent working translates in some linear fashion. To quote something an executive at a large company said in a meeting: "I don't understand how there can be more productive programmers and less productive...they're just writing code, right? So any developer is interchangeable with any other, right?".)

[IGotThroughIt]

> they don't step away when they are not being productive

I agree that taking breaks is definitely a good thing. The brain can only handle so much after all.