How many hours do you work per week?

[turbo]

School time cannot be considered work. I worked 15-20 hours a week whilst in school. Being in class does not count as working.

Engineering school might not be "work" in some sense, but if you intend to succeed, you'd better put in the time and effort. If you need to work outside of that framework to make enough money to make ends meet, it can add up pretty quickly. The "borrow and pay later" method of financing one's higher education may seem attractive, but I couldn't buy into it 30 years ago. It's stupid now and it was stupid then.

 

[KalamMekhar]

Engineering school might not be "work" in some sense, but if you intend to succeed, you'd better put in the time and effort. If you need to work outside of that framework to make enough money to make ends meet, it can add up pretty quickly. The "borrow and pay later" method of financing one's higher education may seem attractive, but I couldn't buy into it 30 years ago. It's stupid now and it was stupid then.

That is why you let the US Taxpayer pay for your college. Sure, you might end up having to kill someone. . . But its FREE college!

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I work 52 hours a week. Plus 4 hours a day on the bus.

 

[BobG]

40 hours (approximately)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

40-100+ hours a week. At times I have worked 120 hours a week. But then again, at times I have made $2K a day, so I can't really complain. The trouble was that to maintain that pace was a short and certain path to the grave, so I finally had to cut back and stop the travel.

What percentage of work hours do you think are productive?

I can see that at times, my efficiency goes over a cliff after twelve or fourteen hours. But it is also true that I have done some of my best work while nearly comatose from lack of sleep, in the middle of the night [like 3 AM]. So it depends on what I'm doing. If I'm going through the drudgery of something like writing code for hours and hours, there is a limit. I have learned to stop when I start staring a lot. And I always try to avoid doing any real math or physics when not well rested. But, if I'm calling upon my more creative side, the lack of sleep seems to be a plus at times.

Without a doubt, my career has been built [to a siginficant degree] upon ideas that came to me in the middle of the night - after many hours or days, or weeks, or even months, of being completely focused on the problem.

 

[rootX]

Without a doubt, my career has been built [to a siginficant degree] upon ideas that came to me in the middle of the night - after many hours or days, or weeks, or even months, of being completely focused on the problem.

Middle night works for me too, or even when I am sleeping, for strange reasons I am always very creative during those times. I would wake up, scribble on paper and try to go back to sleep. However, for some people showers work better.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Middle night works for me too, or even when I am sleeping, for strange reasons I am always very creative during those times. I would wake up, scribble on paper and try to go back to sleep. However, for some people showers work better.

Yes, I have solved academic [esp homework] and practical problems, in dreams before.

As for taking showers, that seems to greatly enhance my abilities as a singer.

 

[rootX]

Yes, I have solved academic [esp homework] and practical problems, in dreams before.

As for taking showers, that seems to greatly enhance my abilities as a singer.

There are always so many academic problems while none of much challenge and interest (@ undergrad level) that I can barely keep up with one for more than 30 minutes. I haven't been enough fortunate to find a problem that can appear in my sleep. I only solved work related practical problems in my sleep.

 

[HeLiXe]

Plus 4 hours a day on the bus.

That is cool. I need to get a bike

 

[HeLiXe]

Middle night works for me too

Me too! As you can tell I am always doing homework at this time and it is 2:30am here

 

[Pythagorean]

I can see that at times, my efficiency goes over a cliff after twelve or fourteen hours. But it is also true that I have done some of my best work while nearly comatose from lack of sleep, in the middle of the night [like 3 AM]. So it depends on what I'm doing. If I'm going through the drudgery of something like writing code for hours and hours, there is a limit. I have learned to stop when I start staring a lot. And I always try to avoid doing any real math or physics when not well rested. But, if I'm calling upon my more creative side, the lack of sleep seems to be a plus at times.

Without a doubt, my career has been built [to a siginficant degree] upon ideas that came to me in the middle of the night - after many hours or days, or weeks, or even months, of being completely focused on the problem.

I generally code and write research updates late at night. If I'm reading papers or doing handwork, or just thinking about an approach to a problem, I'll usually go outdoors somewhere and find a shady, windy spot (no bugs or sun).

I don't think I can really count hours though. I'm very sporadic. I sometimes do short bursts of work (minutes on, minutes off) then one night I'll start working on something and it will suddenly be 6am, another day I won't even think of work.

 

[drankin]

Actual hours worked... 5-6 hrs to be honest. After that I'm only good for mindless labor.

 

[my_wan]

There are always so many academic problems while none of much challenge and interest (@ undergrad level) that I can barely keep up with one for more than 30 minutes. I haven't been enough fortunate to find a problem that can appear in my sleep. I only solved work related practical problems in my sleep.

I dream in concepts and problems every night. Only rarely do I actually solve a problem in my sleep, but it does sometimes lead to ways of solving it after waking up. Rarely do I actually see an image in dreams, though I can create photo-realistic images in my head while awake.

I once sit down late one evening in the boat house to solve a problem. When I solved it, I figured it was just a few hours, but I notice light coming under the floats and thought I stayed up night. When I checked it was 24 hours later.

 

[Dembadon]

This thread reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies:

Bob Slydell: You see, what we're actually trying to do here is, we're trying to get a feel for how people spend their day at work... so, if you would, would you walk us through a typical day, for you?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah.

Bob Slydell: Great.

Peter Gibbons: Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door - that way Lumbergh can't see me, heh heh - and, uh, after that I just sort of space out for about an hour.

Bob Porter: Da-uh? Space out?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah, I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work

I usually work 40-50 hours in a given week.

 

[Jack21222]

I'm currently working 53 hours a week, though next week it's 64.
When the fall semester rolls around, I'll be back down to 32 hours (taking 16 credits limits the hours available to work).

Last semester, I worked 42 hours while taking 15 credits, so the fall semester should bring some welcome rest.

 

[Evo]

I'm also a night person. I would be writing proposals between midnight and 2 am. Working at home is great. If I had an epiphany at 3am, I could hop my my computer, access all of the systems at work and be productive. Amazingly, some of the people I e-mailed were also up working at 3-4am and would respond. We were a sick bunch.

Then our a-hole VP decided that unless people sat in the office they probably were slacking off, so they forced everyone to commute daily and fill out daily reports that had to show everything we did every hour. Productivity fell off so much that our division, that usually exceeded quota by 300%, didn't even make quota and it never did again. People quit, I also quit and went to a competitor.

 

[HeLiXe]

IAmazingly, some of the people I e-mailed were also up working at 3-4am and would respond. We were a sick bunch.

*snickers* That's great!

 

[rolerbe]

Uhmmm, do you subtract or add the hours you spend on PF?

 

[Pythagorean]

Amazingly, some of the people I e-mailed were also up working at 3-4am and would respond. We were a sick bunch.

Haha, I e-mail my advisor a report at 2 am and nearly instantly got a reply back from her. I think those are her productive hours as well.

 

[drizzle]

Uhmmm, do you subtract or add the hours you spend on PF?

If one would add them, then I'm working 24/7.

 

[DanP]

roughly 20

 

[HeLiXe]

Uhmmm, do you subtract or add the hours you spend on PF?

EGAD...>_> I hope no one else is keeping track of my hours on here///...

 

[Borg]

An average of 40 hours per week for me. My hours are very flexible. I'm on a two week pay period and my boss doesn't care if I work 72 hours in three days as long as I get my work done. I usually schedule my time so that I get a day or two off without having to use vacation time. As a result, I have over 330 hours of vacation built up. My boss might get upset if I took it all at once though.

 

[HeLiXe]

An average of 40 hours per week for me. My hours are very flexible. I'm on a two week pay period and my boss doesn't care if I work 72 hours in three days as long as I get my work done. I usually schedule my time so that I get a day or two off without having to use vacation time. As a result, I have over 330 hours of vacation built up. My boss might get upset if I took it all at once though.

This is the best! I once had a month and a half of vacation time and the company closed its locations in my state. It wasn't totally accrued because they closed mid-year.

 

[Borg]

Of course as soon as I write something like that, we have a major delivery at work and I ended up working over 60 hours last week. I'll definitely get most of the coming week off.

 

[HeLiXe]

Yayyy for beach day! and barbecued mahi mahi with pineapple, applesauce and a hint of barbecue sauce and jerk seasoning

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

Up until now, never worked a single second.

This semester I may grade some UGs work, something like 100-150 assigments to check, or in other words academic slave.