For the past one and a half years I’ve done time tracking of work for school (and less rigorous tracking of time towards other pursuits). This was also a time period where I was training myself to be better at deep work.
My main intents for time tracking was to know how long work actually took so I’d get better at making future time estimates. Also during this time, each week I would time block out when I was going to work on what for the entire week, and I had something like a 95% success rate with that. (deviations came mostly from a mix of “I’m not in a good physical state because of an unusual reason for staying up late” (which were fixed by having enough slack to just take a nap) or a few “lost purpose/this work sucks” slumps (dealt with via realizing what felt dumb about the work and letting myself feel okay with doing the minimum))
I ask about how you’re framing “productive hours”. I’d generally only 3-5deep work hours in a day. I’ve yet to try (thought now I’m curious) but I’d be confident that I couldn’t do 12 deep work hours a day. Though I could definitely do “12 hours a day that I reflectively endorse and that was all aimed towards things I care about”.
What sort of “12 productive hours” are you shooting for?
I think there are people who do it (ex: John Carmack). But I used to play competitive chess when I was younger and would regularly put in 6-7 hours after school. I didn’t have to pay any attention in school, but I definitely think I can achieve around 8 hours of deep work a day consistently.
For the past one and a half years I’ve done time tracking of work for school (and less rigorous tracking of time towards other pursuits). This was also a time period where I was training myself to be better at deep work.
My main intents for time tracking was to know how long work actually took so I’d get better at making future time estimates. Also during this time, each week I would time block out when I was going to work on what for the entire week, and I had something like a 95% success rate with that. (deviations came mostly from a mix of “I’m not in a good physical state because of an unusual reason for staying up late” (which were fixed by having enough slack to just take a nap) or a few “lost purpose/this work sucks” slumps (dealt with via realizing what felt dumb about the work and letting myself feel okay with doing the minimum))
I ask about how you’re framing “productive hours”. I’d generally only 3-5deep work hours in a day. I’ve yet to try (thought now I’m curious) but I’d be confident that I couldn’t do 12 deep work hours a day. Though I could definitely do “12 hours a day that I reflectively endorse and that was all aimed towards things I care about”.
What sort of “12 productive hours” are you shooting for?
Programming mostly.
I think there are people who do it (ex: John Carmack). But I used to play competitive chess when I was younger and would regularly put in 6-7 hours after school. I didn’t have to pay any attention in school, but I definitely think I can achieve around 8 hours of deep work a day consistently.
12, I’m not so sure about—but I intend to try.