The working week - which is best?

Maccy said:
You might need to try a few different hours/options and pick which works best for you, we're all different so ultimately can't give you the "answer" sadly.
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True, but I'm getting a lot of insights and ideas from people's replies. There's merit in seeing what works for other people.
 
h4rm0ny said:
True, but I'm getting a lot of insights and ideas from people's replies. There's merit in seeing what works for other people.
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Ah, I'm not suggesting for one moment that you ignore the suggestions in this thread - quite the opposite in fact. I'm merely suggesting that you may need to take a few suggestions and create your own schedule that works best for you :)
 
MikeTheNative said:
How does any of this help OP?

:D
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Oi! :D

Now I'm going to have to edit my response saying how useful that information is. But I'll have you know that I do in fact have difficulty maintaining focus after 3-4 hours of mentally demanding work. So from this we can infer that I am indeed hyper-efficient/intelligent.

I actually think breaking the day down into 2x3 hours rather than 6 as someone suggested earlier is quite good. I like it if I can somehow still manage to keep the hours up. Maybe do a 3x3 on Monday and Tuesday to make up for it.
 
I was self employed for a few years working from home and I found just working a "normal" work week worked for me. Mostly because my wife works a normal 9-5 and I do school runs. However given how flexible you can be that often entailed maybe doing an early morning or a later night then using those hours to do other things.

Different strokes for different folks mind. :)

*edit, being disciplined is the key whatever you do, it can be quite distracting being at home
 
Maccy said:
Ah, I'm not suggesting for one moment that you ignore the suggestions in this thread - quite the opposite in fact. I'm merely suggesting that you may need to take a few suggestions and create your own schedule that works best for you :)
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I'm taking a little from here and a little from there. I'm currently working out how I can accommodate two of the suggestions that particularly appeal to me: Blocks of three hours and finishing mid-day on a Friday.
 
For me, I always thought working condensed hours would be awesome until I started doing them. On a 10-11 hour shift, I get very drained by the end and my productivity drops off substantially.

I think there is a lot to be said about a 'traditional' shift pattern as you get a few hours to yourself every day and you don't feel too drained by the end.
 
I find when doing challenging work I can go for about 4 hours in 1 go before I start to drop off. If you don't mind working in the evenings I'd be inclined to try a split day.

5 days of:

07:00 - 11:00

19:00 - 23:00

This gives you a good 8 hours in middle of the day. It depends on your hobbies as well. I tend to structure my working hours around going to the gym in the middle of the day for example.

I work from home and my day looks like this:

08:00 - 11:00

12:30 - 17:30

Gives me 1:30hr to go the gym and I eat lunch at my desk.
 
If it was me:
Take a few weeks off.
Realise I havn't done any work
Do a couple of 90 hour weeks to get it done before deadline.
 
LiE said:
I find when doing challenging work I can go for about 4 hours in 1 go before I start to drop off. If you don't mind working in the evenings I'd be inclined to try a split day.

5 days of:

07:00 - 11:00

19:00 - 23:00

This gives you a good 8 hours in middle of the day. It depends on your hobbies as well. I tend to structure my working hours around going to the gym in the middle of the day for example.

I work from home and my day looks like this:

08:00 - 11:00

12:30 - 17:30

Gives me 1:30hr to go the gym and I eat lunch at my desk.
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I quite like this. I do actually work quite happily in the evenings. It's the middle of the day to late afternoon where everything just sags for me. I don't know if that's a natural cycle for me or a product of my current working pattern. I do know that I wouldn't be able to go straight to bed after work, though. I need a little wind down time for my mind to stop whirring so I might have to bring it forward a little. Plus if I'm going to have a definite start at 7:00 am I will need a little time at the end of the previous one to do things like have an evening shower, etc.

Possibly this:
7:00 - 11:00, 14:00 - 17:00, 19:00 - 21:00 on M/T. (9hrs)
7:00 - 11:00, 14:00 - 17:00 on W/Th (7hrs)
7:00 - 13:00 on Fri. (6hrs)
- on Sat (0 hrs)
8:00 - 11:00 on Sun. (3hrs).

That's only 41 hours so I may have to stretch it a little. But in theory they're 41 very effective hours and Summer is coming where I could probably add a little without feeling I'd lost the whole day or keep Saturday afternoon as my overflow for when I had to do more hours.
 
Are you a morning person, or an evening person?

That is the starter for 10.

Then what else do you need to do in your week?

Gym time?
Walking time?
Family time?

All those will leave you with a point of reference. I would probably seek to half day and Friday and Monday and overload the Tue/Wed/Thu but that is me and I often work long hours anyway so it's been the norm for 20+ years.
 
I would say it really depends what work/life balance you're after, plus any out of work activities.

I WFH and have reasonably flexible hours (although core hours is something like 10am-3pm), so some mornings i've started early and done a 07:30-15:30 shift if my partner has also had to get up early. If she's had a later start, then sometimes i've not got up and started until 09:30.

I do have some flexibility in terms of if i needed to do a half day Fri, then that wouldn't be an issue, but probably would be more of an issue if i wanted to do that every Friday. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to do a 4 day week, and then have Friday off.

Also if you've got no fixed hours, you might find some evenings (especially this time of year when it's dark, wet and cold out) you might be able to slot a few extra hours in, and have some extra time off during the day.
 
as has been said numerous times its totally down to you and your other commitments. When i was young, free and single I did some similar project based contracting and basically racked up my hours whenever i fancied it - would work through the nights sometimes so i could go out during the day, would wake up early and do an hour before getting up in the morning sometimes - weekends were fair game as well :)
 
All about contiguous blocks for me. Optimal is roughly 20 hours on / 10 hours off, but that's tough to fit around other people.
 
D.P. said:
From a maximum productivity side, 6 hours a day of hard mental or physical work is optimal, but then you are working 7 days a week (although you can achieve more in 6x6hours than 5x8).
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Is there some research to support this out of interest? I've heard of the idea of doing shorter more productive days but is not taking a weekend/working 7/7 days a week a good thing? I'd have assumed that after a while that lack of a break could take its toll and undermine the productivity advantage of short productive days.


Tbh.. I think we can all be a bit different in this respect in terms of what works for us productivity wise - some people hate open plan offices and like to be isolated, others are more productive/focused/less likely to procrastinate when there are others around or they're working in a team etc... some people are better than others at slogging through something etc..etc..
 
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