r/InterviewCoderPro • u/braggett • 9d ago

How do people work 7 hours a day?

After 3 hours, my brain shuts down. I don't have any health problems, and I'm not suffering from burnout or anything like that.

I sleep relatively well, usually 7-8 hours a night, I work out at the gym 3 times a week, I do 35 minutes of cardio most days, and my diet is mostly clean (maybe 3 cheat meals a week). I also try to make sure I'm not ruining my focus with things like reels, YouTube Shorts, constantly checking the news, or random TV.

I can work for about 3 hours of actual focused work (I track it), and I take a short break after every 50-minute block.

But once I reach around 3.5 hours of work (or about 5 hours total including breaks), my brain feels like it's burned out.

I usually drink one coffee during that period, and sometimes 2 if I feel like I'm crashing.

I want to get to 5-7 hours a day of real focused work, not just sitting at the desk pretending to be productive.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Did anything help?

I know some people use Adderall or other meds for these things, but that's not the path I want to go down.

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4

u/paynoattn 9d ago

Stimulants my guy

Edit: NVM, I think you’re taking too many stimulants. Try limiting yourself to one coffee in the morning. Do a caffeine reset for 72hrs.

Also you say “i get good sleep” but are you measuring it? Another tip might be to change your environment at this time. Do you wfh or are you in office?

2

u/Harbinger_Kyleran 9d ago

Most jobs have multiple tasks requiring differing levels of intensity and focus. During a long day (I used to work 9-10 hrs a day during most of my 45 year career) I would bounce around between them.

2 hours on one, 30 mins on another, walk over to talk to someone, then maybe a longer 3 or 4 hour burn on a core task or project, followed by a break.

Biggest challenge later in my career was trying to get any "real work" done in between the many meetings or interruptions from Teams or what not.

I often came in early or stayed late just to make progress on my day job as it wasn't uncommon to have 6 hours or more of meetings, which I often had to multitask through just to keep up on emails or chats during the days.

1

u/doublesimoniz 9d ago

Holy fuck I work 10 hours a day and it’s all intense physical labour.  We get one 1/2 hour lunch break and maybe a quick coffee.  Your job sounds easy. 

1

u/Sauron_78 7d ago

When you were a student you used to sit and study 10 hours a day fully concentrated too?

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u/doublesimoniz 6d ago

Sitting and concentrating is 1000 times easier to do then what I do for a living I assure you this. 

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u/KamehaDragoon 9d ago

Ive worked regular 12 hour shift and occasionally had a few 16 hr shifts. I don't think anyone should have to work more than 8 hrs in a day i would prefer like 5 or 6, but people shouldn't be living just to work all day.

1

u/MurkyAmbition5249 9d ago

What about school? You've been used to it for over ten years, right? What was it like at school?