My own really short story, I (sysadmin/ops/programmer) currently work remotely about 4 hours per day, and I'm way more productive than when I worked 8.
- I work to my own schedule. There's no artificial start time. If I feel like I've got something to contribute at any point I sit down and do so. If I feel inspired or get in the zone I'll do 6 or eight hours, if I don't I'll do none, or just a couple of hours.
- Conversely, if I don't feel up to it, uninspired, tired, whatever, I can stop. Taking a break/nap and coming back to something is incredibly valuable.
- I'm so much less stressed than when I was working an 8 hour job. Way more relaxed, so my mental state overall is way better.
- If I sit down and program/operate for 4 hours I spend the rest of the day effectively letting my brain churn on problems. I'm still thinking about the problems that I am working on, I have way more "shower moments".
6 months ago I worked an 8 hour per day job (from home still) and my own personal observation is that I'm way more effective in 4 hours now than I was in 8 at my old job. I feel productive.
This might not work for other people obviously, maybe I just need/like a larger proportion of my time to be thinking time over implementation time.
I agree, working 4 hours a day will feel more effective than the last 4 hours of an 8 hour day, but the question is whether it's actually twice as effective. And perhaps it's so for very high level tasks, but I'm pretty sure for some things you just need to clock in the hours, like closing 100 tiny bugs because you're launching in a few days.
I agree, though a lot of the time what I need to do requires just thinking about stuff, sometimes I need to plough on and just do stuff. 6 hours of coding something, writing, whatever. When that happens I just do the work.
I'm lucky in that I can work the hours I need to work. Last week I did days that lasted 4, 6, 1.25, 1.75 and 4 hours (the 1.x days I had other stuff on).
