Another way to look at this is the level of detail of problem you try to solve each day. Every day that I'm working, I try to implement 1 feature. I'll often implement 2 or if I'm lucky 3, and sometimes I'll lose a little ground and take 2 or 3 days to implement something. But averaged out - 1 feature per day results in steady forward progress and keeps clients and bosses happy.
It turns out (for me at least) that the level of problem that fits into 1 day most optimizes my productivity. I don't waste time on low-level minutia and I don't let tasks slip into being too broad.
So if you consider a 4 hour workday and imagine this pipelined, then the other half of your day goes into preprocessing the next task with your subconscious. This is where the real gains are made, because as far as I can tell, the subconscious has no real abstraction limit. I'll often sleep on a seemingly insurmountable problem and wake up the next morning knowing the answer.
Put all of this together, and most days I don't do more than 4 hours of work. Sure I'm at the office 6-9 hours, but I find than any more than a single 4 hour stretch of being in the zone each day is not sustainable and actually lowers my productivity. Luckily my workplace realizes this and currently has 6 core hours where it's encourages to be in one's chair, but this has been as low as 4 hours and isn't heavily enforced when overall productivity is up. I highly recommend a policy like this to any leads/managers out there looking to find nonlinear speedups, especially on projects mired in scope creep and overages.
It turns out (for me at least) that the level of problem that fits into 1 day most optimizes my productivity. I don't waste time on low-level minutia and I don't let tasks slip into being too broad.
So if you consider a 4 hour workday and imagine this pipelined, then the other half of your day goes into preprocessing the next task with your subconscious. This is where the real gains are made, because as far as I can tell, the subconscious has no real abstraction limit. I'll often sleep on a seemingly insurmountable problem and wake up the next morning knowing the answer.
Put all of this together, and most days I don't do more than 4 hours of work. Sure I'm at the office 6-9 hours, but I find than any more than a single 4 hour stretch of being in the zone each day is not sustainable and actually lowers my productivity. Luckily my workplace realizes this and currently has 6 core hours where it's encourages to be in one's chair, but this has been as low as 4 hours and isn't heavily enforced when overall productivity is up. I highly recommend a policy like this to any leads/managers out there looking to find nonlinear speedups, especially on projects mired in scope creep and overages.