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Comment by futureshock | Hacker News Reader

Good for this person. Seriously. I have a friend like this and he is happy as heck.

For everyone else: don’t beat yourself up. Most people can crank through a max of 20-30 hours of deep intellectual work a week. You are still a wonderful and successful person, even if this other person can sustain 100 deep work hours.

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Umh... What about a case of ~7-10...? Like, don't get me wrong, I know I am doing way too little, and I am working on improving this, but at times, certain limitations regarding this... I just can't help but beat myself up.

Honestly, if you're getting decent reviews at work then that's plenty.

I don't think this is very uncommon. I know a lot of people seem to spend a lot of their waking hours generally "ruminating" on their coding work but only 5-10 actually sat down and implementing the solutions at the keyboard.

I also know people who can happily be constantly coding for 8 hours a day like it's a stream of consciousness, but I don't think that's everyone.

Hmm… How are the other aspects of your life? Do you like your job? Are you burnt out or depressed?

I really think it has a lot to do with the situation and expectations. And probably you as well. I think it’s completely plausible to deliver expected value in 7 hours, though you are probably looking at either a very meeting heavy role or just a bit more of a chill role. 1/3 of the code written, but written fit to purpose, performant and with high quality is still outstanding value. Many, many employees at your organization deliver zero or negative net value.

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