Averaged out over a week, I probably come in under 2 hours a day of good productive work.
I tend to work in bursts of up to 6 hours at a time, maybe twice a week if I'm lucky. Those bursts account for pretty much everything good that I've put out over the last few years, and I've learned not to try to tackle anything important when I'm not in that mode.
Other, normal days, I start out by checking the surf report. If there's no swell (and I don't feel like climbing that day), I'll just wade through low priority bug reports and other mindless things like text changes and layout tweaks.
This approach works surprisingly well, since it means that I get maybe 4 days of "Weekend" scattered throughout the week, and am thus usually pretty fresh in the morning. It doesn't quite fly at an office job though (I usually limit myself to one day off for surfing when working an on-site contract), but frankly I find that to be a competitive advantage.
I tend to work in bursts of up to 6 hours at a time, maybe twice a week if I'm lucky. Those bursts account for pretty much everything good that I've put out over the last few years, and I've learned not to try to tackle anything important when I'm not in that mode.
Other, normal days, I start out by checking the surf report. If there's no swell (and I don't feel like climbing that day), I'll just wade through low priority bug reports and other mindless things like text changes and layout tweaks.
This approach works surprisingly well, since it means that I get maybe 4 days of "Weekend" scattered throughout the week, and am thus usually pretty fresh in the morning. It doesn't quite fly at an office job though (I usually limit myself to one day off for surfing when working an on-site contract), but frankly I find that to be a competitive advantage.