How many hours do you actually work per day?

[NonnyMouseketeer]

I'm a relatively junior lecturer around 3 years out of phd. I have a permanent lectureship and it's my first full time job, I went straight from bachelors to phd with no 'normal' job in between, which may have impacted my productivity and discipline.

I work in the social sciences at a Russell group uni where expectations of research output is high but there is no expectation for us to be in the office unless we need to be. We are left to our own devices, and my research involves no lab work. After speaking to colleagues (albeit from other disciplines) who moaned about 70 hour weeks, I decided that for 2019 I would track the hours that I actually work and what I worked on in a spreadsheet.

The results are quite shocking, and I'm glad my line manager can't see them!

I'm tracking in 15 minute timeslots. If I pop to the toilet or grab a quick drink I don't take time off the spreadsheet, but for everything else (e.g chatting to my husband about something, social media/news browsing, popping some laundry on) I deduct time. The results are terrible - I'm working between 4 and 6.5 hours a day. I may be 'at work' longer, usually 8 hours, but this is the actual productive work.

I would have estimated that I work a 45 hour week (I made a conscious decision post PhD to stop being a workaholic, so I knew it wouldn't be that high) but in reality it's much less. Granted it's January and teaching hasn't started, but bloody hell!

In a way, it's reassuring that I don't have it as bad as I thought, but I'm feeling a bit guilty that I'm not doing more. Has anyone tried something similar? How many hours do you work? Is there just a limit to how much productive work we can do in a day, or am I just lazy? 🙈

There is a LOT of evidence to show people massively overestimate how long they work. No one concentrates 70 hours a week. I work about 25-30 productive hours including experiments.

(I work in pomodoros so I generally do 50-60 poms a week)

I think the only question really is whether you are doing everything that is expected of someone at your current level or which will help you to meet your own aspirations for promotion. If you are doing that in the hours you currently work, then that's great.

I would also guess that the first few weeks of the year are not entirely representative of how you usually work. I have spent 13 hours this week just in committee meetings, but I don't do that every week, it just so happens that all three of the committees I am on needed, for different reasons, to meet this week when most people are available.

I probably get about 5.5 hours of work a day, getting up at 5:30 and working from 5.45 -630 am
Gym 6:45 -7:30
Shower and arrive at office at 745/8
Make coffee in office
Start up computer
Chat to everyone I pass (large open plan office)
8:30 Check emails and write some nick nacks up/read reports etc
9:30 feel peckish, go up to kitchen and sort out some porridge
Wait for the micro
See Julia from finance who has a new grandchild/ asks when I’m getting married/ tells me about her window cleaner/ aibcient relative etc.
945 Check on porridge that passive aggressive aled has taken out so he can cook his strudel or whatnot.
Help Martin with the photocopier
Put porridge in micro
Return to desk at 10
Make some phone calls.
10:40 Pack away desk and walk to car.
drive 35 VERY RURAL Miles
12:15 arrive for 12:30 appt.
Fanny about until about 12:45 - meet with client until about 1:30

1:30Drive to 3pm appt 20 Miles in opposite direction
230 arrive: plan meeting and type up last appts notes in car before 3pm appt

3pm as above fanny about for first 15 mins
Finish at 4

Drive back to office- arrive anytime between 440 -530 dependant on my location and traffic

Do any admin tasks whilst chatting to other people

Leave between 600 and 630pm

Do you work more hours if you’re sitting in the office rather than at home?

Humanities academic here:

I tend to work 6 days a week: Saturday is my library/archive day & I generally spend around 6-8 hours in 2 chunks reading and note-taking on Saturday.

Weekdays I start at around 7am at home, clearing emails while eating breakfast.

3 to 4 days a week I get into the office at around 9:30am unless I have an 8:30 or 9am meeting. I'm usually pretty flat out teaching, meetings, supervisions & doing admin until around 6pm, without a definite lunch break - I put soup in the office kitchen microwave while I'm doing some photocopying or filing (I must be one of the highest-paid filing clerks in.the.world).

I try to stop at either 5:30 or 6pm to get to the gym for at least an hour. Then home. I don't work in the evenings unless I have a deadline, although I'll often do emails & other busywork (writing references, writing up narrative feedback) while watching telly.

The one or sometimes 2 days of the working week that I don't have to go into the office, I start writing at around 8am, stop at 12, go to the gym, start again at around 4pm and stop around 8pm.

So I suppose that's a solid 8 to 10 hours each working day of the week, plus 6-8 hours on Saturday (or sometimes Sunday if I'm doing something non-work on Saturday).

Regularly around 50-60 hours a week I guess.

To add: sometimes I work in the office until around 8pm to get stuff finished. If I have a writing deadline, I tend to get up at 5am and write like fury until 9am. Then do my normal day.

I am a research scientist at a Uni, albeit not a lecturer or RG, but I take roles like marking, interviewing, outreach, seminar lead, PhD supervision.

I have many Fixed Term Contracts on distinct projects. Tasks for any of them continue long after the FTC ended. I keep a spreadsheet (like private sector) of how many hrs on each. I allow for 2x15min paid breaks/ 7.5 hr day deducted from the project I'm most underworked on.

It's hard to genuinely work more than 7-8 hrs/day. I get too tired. In spite of nominally being 100-120% FTE, my productive hrs average max. 33/wk. I've exceed all targets & produced extra deliverables so no guilt.

I'm glad it's not just me that finds it hard to be productive for long periods. I worry that because I've never had a normal non academic job, with more structure, that I'm somehow lacking in discipline that other colleagues seem to have. For instance, I find it hard to stay in after 6 and do a late night as a couple of you mentioned as my tummy starts to rumble and I find it depressing to eat dinner in the office. I'm also really not a morning person (I've had issues since childhood, my parents couldn't even get me out of bed on Christmas Day!) so whereas colleagues often start work at 6,7 am I'm still snoozing. After my first week of tracking I was so shocked that I was motivated to buy a sunrise alarm clock and start getting up earlier! 6.15 is the earliest I've managed so far, and it's painful 😖

Today I was in the office 9-6 and worked productively for 7.25 hours. I find I tend to take half an hour - 45 mins for lunch (just at my desk browsing t'internet) and I find I sometimes need a break in the afternoon when I hit a wall (today I walked to the shop and back which takes 45 mins).

I just hit a wall where I can't do any more, unless it's either something that's genuinely really interesting to me or something I can do mindlessly with a podcast/tv on in the background. I often come home with the intention of working in the evening but I find it rarely materialises.

I'm going to keep tracking and see whether it increases. I'm also very shocked at how much time I spend on admin! Mainly emails.

@Phphion I'm doing okay but not amazingly. No one has raised any concerns about my performance, but I feel like I'm not fulfilling my potential, possibly due to lack of discipline.

I work part time and flexibly now I have a small child. Because it's sometimes odd hours, I keep a spreadsheet, and record actual productive hours. It's about 30 productive hours a week on average, and I feel way more productive now, than when I was spending evenings at the office!
I would say tracking is useful because of this, and thinking about actual productive time, rather than just being at work. I rarely feel disadvantaged from physically being at work for fewer hours

I work 9.30 - 3 Mon/Tues/ Friday. Those days I tend to work solidly including through my lunch- take my children to school and pick them up those days. On Wednesday I take them to school and then catch a
9.30 train south.I work on the train arrive and head into work immediately, On these days I might finish at midnight- whilst it's ostensibly work it can involve dinners and drinks.
I start again the next morning with breakfast meetings and work through the day. I leave my other office and head home on Thursday evening. Usually arriving back in time to see the children before bed. I enjoy my job, I work very hard when I am working.

I hate working in the office however there is an increasing need to 'be seen' although it seems some places have managed to evade this.

I hardly get anything done as I constantly have people interrupting what I'm in the middle of.

I think it's pretty normal to be sporadically productive as an academic. I work in fits and starts, both on a daily basis and over the course of year. So, I may have large patches of being unproductive but then write a book quite intensively over 6-7 months. Similarly, over a day I'll faff for part of it and be very focused for other parts of it. I used to beat myself up about it, but realised that a) this is just how I work and b) that 'downtime' is often productive - it's when my brain figures stuff out, percolates ideas, etc. My working habits have not changed since having children, despite everyone telling me that you magically become more focused once you have kids because you have less time.

Overall, I'm probably as productive as my contemporaries in my field, if not more than, in terms of the amount I publish, present, etc. I'm in the humanities, if that's relevant.

So, are you counting email as 'productive work' or not? It seems there are days I do nothing BUT email...

I work flex time due to my health, so have been keeping a spreadsheet for some years now that tracks my work. And because I love spreadsheets and also wanted to keep track of teaching vs research, I tracked the type of work I was doing as well (and in particular one teaching task I was trying to point out the overwhelming effort of...). I work about on average 42 hours a week - including email :) - I try to make sure I keep it above 40, and it ranges 40-45 or sometimes up to 50-52 during realy crunches. But those weeks are always followed by something much less as I physically can't manage. This does include nearly all my time physically at work; I've actually had to make an effort to try to get to coffee once a week otherwise I never speak to anyone else if I'm not teaching or in a meeting. I work more on days I don't go in, but that's because I don't need to spend the commuting time!

The thing that shocked me when I started doing this was how I had so many tiny bursts of minutes - I'd be working on a paper, then not able to think of what to write, so spend 3 minutes checking email, then back to 10 minutes paper, before I was off to check something in my online class materials, etc. I made an effort to actually stick to the task at hand, and I think I've gotten more productive.

I do some work every day (including Saturdays and Sundays). It is also very rare that I go on holiday and do no work (if nothing else I will be reading research related books). As others have said the amount of work varies according to the time of year.
And if you go for a walk because you've been sitting for a long time but spend the whole time thinking about your current research and planning in your head, is that wor or just exercise?

I carry my phone and use voice recognition to make notes as I walk. I get some of my best ideas when I’m walking - it clears my head and gets me thinking directly.

Agreed about the fact that leisure time, particularly exercise, can also be work time. I've had some of my most significant mental break throughs (particularly figuring out nuances in an argument or my overall take on something) while 'not working' (usually while exercising, sometimes while staring out the window, sometimes even when 'procrastinating' more actively e.g. on here or social media).

I think this is such an interesting question. I went through a long period of feeling guilty because I seemed to be working fewer hours than some of my colleagues. But I also started to notice a real culture of competitive busyness in my dept - a few significant offenders who moaned constantly about never having a spare second to themselves, spending every weekend working, so so so sooooo bussssyyyyyy etc - and actively decided to distance myself from that. Funnily enough their research outputs were way below mine (and in some cases non-existent) and their teaching was often poorly evaluated as well...

I work very flexibly now. Most days I'm in the office by 7.30am because I'm a morning person and that's when I'm most productive. But by 4pm, unless I'm doing something that I really enjoy, I've pretty much switched off! I rarely work past 6pm and try not to take work home in the evenings. I will use weekends to catch up on bits and bobs and I do answer emails and read work-related stuff, but again I try not to 'properly' work at the weekends unless absolutely unavoidable.

I will have days in the office when I manage a solid 6-7 hours of sustained work (not including teaching), but that's rare because the nature of my role means I get interrupted by staff and students almost constantly. Other days I might work at home and potter a lot.

It all works itself out in the end. I never miss deadlines and I achieve ahead of many of my colleagues. I would say that I probably do 30 hours of 'work' per week and many more hours of 'semi-work' - reading, thinking, discussing. I'm sure I could work harder but, meh. Most of my best ideas come when I'm crocheting in the garden or wallowing in the bath

I'm bad for breaking off from writing to look at Mumsnet/add to the supermarket shop but also think things through while walking/exercising and answer work emails at soft play.
I rarely work evenings or weekends unless I'm at a conference or have a really short deadline.

Senior RG academic here. I’d be very concerned about a junior lecturer doing 4 hours (on a full time contract). 6-7 hours productive time is totally ok though.

If it’s closer to 4 I just can’t see how you’re winning grants, writing papers, establishing collaborations, present your work, supervise PhD students, do your teaching and marking, and contribute your bit to the running of the department if you’re only working half the contracted time.
Can you go into the office more/schedule tasks a bit more tightly/get some mentoring?

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd update as I've been time tracking for a couple of months now. I find I'm working between 27 and 42 hours a week (actual hours productively working, not just hours in the office/at my desk). Usually around the 35 hour mark, which is what I'm technically contracted to work. I find I only get close to/over 40 hours a week if I work on the weekend. I find it really hard to see how people are working 60/70 productive hours a week - hats off to them if they truly are because that seems totally unachievable (and unsustainable) to me.

I feel a bit guilty as my School recently did a survey where the average self reported working hours were mid to high fourties. But on the other hand, it's a job, and if I work too many hours my hourly rate becomes pitiful. I feel there's a culture that money shouldn't matter in academia and that we should want to spend every waking hour working on our passion projects, but I do feel it's a dangerous rhetoric perpetuated by universities to get us to work all hours under the sun for free. It's a job and we need to be compensated accordingly and have time to live our lives.

When I first began time tracking I kept aiming for a higher number of hours each week, then I caught myself and took some time to reflect. I feel that aiming for between 35 and 45 hours is reasonable for me - I don't feel like I'm shortchanging the university, I feel I'm able to fulfil all of my responsibilities to a good degree (of course, with research if never feels enough) and clear my inbox each week, I feel satisfied that I'm earning a reasonable hourly rate for my work, and I have some free time each day/week for friends and family.

Anyway, just my reflections. The next challenge is actually booking some annual leave...

I don't think anyone could work effectively for 10 hours a day 7 days a week for a prolonged period anyway- they may be at their desks for a long time, but productive work hours are nowhere near that. Research shows people do about 3 productive hours a day in a typical 8 hour at your desk scenario so you are doing more than fine!

It also differs by person, I'm a very concentrated worker and blitz stuff, my husband is a plodder and literally would stay for 12 hours going slowly through stuff. We have both done fine with our chosen methods.

This is an interesting article about how basically most of the crap stuff (meetings, checking email) could be removed and you could work just 3-6 hours in a state of flow and get more done. This chimes with my experience of writing (I use pomodoros to get writing done). Unfortunately you need everyone else to agree that meetings are mostly crap (our staff meeting used to take 2 hours and literally not one proper decision would be taken) so it's not just about individual change:

hbr.org/2018/12/the-case-for-the-6-hour-workday