# How I got to 200 productive hours a month

**URL:** <https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-got-to-200-productive-hours-a-month/3492>\
**Category:** Akrasia\
**Created:** [September 22, 2017, 9:03pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-got-to-200-productive-hours-a-month/3492 "2017-09-22T21:03:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![apolyton](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/apolyton/32/1965_2.png) [@apolyton](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/apolyton)\
**Post date:** [September 22, 2017, 9:03pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-got-to-200-productive-hours-a-month/3492/1 "2017-09-22T21:03:39Z")

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A thorough article on personal productivity, quite surprised there is no mention of Beeminder ☹

> **[How I got to 200 productive hours a month](https://qotoqot.com/blog/improving-focus/)**
>
> A tested approach to improve your focus and productivity

and HN discussion  
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15309393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15309393)

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**Author:** ![andrewlu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@andrewlu](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/andrewlu)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2017, 5:09am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-got-to-200-productive-hours-a-month/3492/2 "2017-09-25T05:09:59Z")

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I’m not that surprised, because the article is focused on how to be productive for longer, whereas—at least for me—the value of Beeminder is in making sure I make consistent progress towards my goals. In fact, the more productive and focused on my primary tasks I am, the more likely it is that my secondary tasks will get neglected (hence my primary use case for Beeminder).

P.S. This article and the HN comments literally just made me realize I’m a workaholic and so is everyone I’m surrounded by, because 200 (~6.7 hours/day if you work on weekends, which I do) actually seems on the low side to me. Though it’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison, because my friends and I are young and don’t have children to take care of, and a good amount of our work is only moderately-demanding like reading, instead of writing or coding.

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**Author:** ![wswld](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/wswld/32/1565_2.png) [@wswld](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/wswld)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2017, 8:36am UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-got-to-200-productive-hours-a-month/3492/3 "2017-09-28T08:36:28Z")

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I have a theory that one can’t have more than 5-6 productive hours a day. If we only count real, uninterrupted production time, like writing code. I’m not very fond of organizational stuff, like writing emails, project management and etc, in my book this time, if not wasted, isn’t well spent. So, speaking for myself here, I just can’t do more than 4 sessions of 90 minutes of uninterrupted productive time without a major drop in output quality. I asked around and almost all my coleauges at different workplaces confirmed this limitation.

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**Author:** ![bcool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e4f/32.png) [@bcool](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/bcool)\
**Post date:** [September 28, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/how-i-got-to-200-productive-hours-a-month/3492/4 "2017-09-28T16:23:14Z")

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You’re not productive until you use beeminder…?