[norswap]

I personally can't even work 8 hours a day. And I mean really work. Even if including lunch and coffee breaks, that's still a lot. With meetings, answering to mails & other stuff, it might be doable.

I doubt that I get more than 4 productive hours most day (and I have almost no meeting to attend or mails to answer). I'm seriously curious about where I stand compared to the average of programmers. I'm guessing below average, but not that much; I'm also guessing nearly no one can code productively 8 whole hours.

[mkingston]

Lately I've been finding that if I perform specific tasks in a focused manner I can be highly productive for the best part of eight hours (say 7.5+ out of 8). By this I mean that if I need to code, I code. If I need to think before I implement something, I set my chair to the laziest position I can (away from screen/keyboard) and I zone out and think. If I need to discuss with another team member, I do this. The key, at least for me, and at least in the past couple of months, is to never try to focus on multiple things at once.

Two other factors that I can't discount with certainty: I've been reasonably enjoying my work lately, but this isn't particularly unusual (I do feel that there's probably some feedback effect from my increased effectiveness). And I don't have many distractions, maybe 4-5 per day. More might wreck my effectiveness.

[chippy]

Eight hours solid coding and typing, or eight hours using your brain?

Often one line of code can be written in 3 hours, after spending that time debugging, researching, learning.

[norswap]

Using your brain.