The problem I used to have back in the day was that I didn't separate hours that felt productive from hours that actually were productive.
I could that 24 hour coffee & pizza fuelled session and push out a stupid amount of code. I could do that 60-80 hours week with the team and feel good about the work that I did.
Then I started measuring what was produced. Both in quantity (delivery rate of stories) and quality (how many stories returned with bugs) and other things besides. And compared that to what was pushed out in shorter days.
The short version is that what felt productive wasn't. That we produced more better quality stuff when we worked fewer hours. On several different occasions when I've had the opportunity experiment somewhere around 5-6 hours of productive work within 7-8 hours of working day seems to come up.
(The thing I find most fascinating about this was that several teams slipped back into stupid hours, despite the numbers, because the culture couldn't adapt to working less.)
No I'm sure that there are the odd outlier cases. The folk who really are productive over longer periods. But I'd strongly suggest trying to experiment and measure. Otherwise you might be doing what I was: confusing what feels good with what actually is good.
I could that 24 hour coffee & pizza fuelled session and push out a stupid amount of code. I could do that 60-80 hours week with the team and feel good about the work that I did.
Then I started measuring what was produced. Both in quantity (delivery rate of stories) and quality (how many stories returned with bugs) and other things besides. And compared that to what was pushed out in shorter days.
The short version is that what felt productive wasn't. That we produced more better quality stuff when we worked fewer hours. On several different occasions when I've had the opportunity experiment somewhere around 5-6 hours of productive work within 7-8 hours of working day seems to come up.
(The thing I find most fascinating about this was that several teams slipped back into stupid hours, despite the numbers, because the culture couldn't adapt to working less.)
No I'm sure that there are the odd outlier cases. The folk who really are productive over longer periods. But I'd strongly suggest trying to experiment and measure. Otherwise you might be doing what I was: confusing what feels good with what actually is good.