How many hours a day do you actually spend working?

[darylbowden]

Depends.  On actual work that pays me, somewhere between 50-75/week most weeks.  If you include the DMF, it goes up considerably.

[silvy1200]

i do field service for industrial gas turbines all over the country, sometimes outside of it. my work hours/travel vary day by day. my company has limited us to 16 hour days, sometimes it's like that for weeks! LOTS of overtime. but of course if nothing is broken i am hanging out at home getting payed still, sometimes for weeks at a time too  . the catch is i am on call 24/7 and really limits my riding time.

[teddy037.2]

clicked 8, because that's the normal day job. 12 if I'm on shift at the night job.

this week, it's been 10 days, and like tonight, 14 w/the night job.

and weekends? wtf is a weekend? those have been revoked until well into next month 

[superjohn]

My job currently involves me writing up all sorts of proposals and then waiting for them to be approved. The approvers usually take entirely too long, so I often get to sit around with nothing to do, until they come up with new requirements and I have to re-do the proposal. So, about 4 hours of work a day. The rest of the time is sitting on conference calls and listening to people whine.

[Timmy Tucker]

I own a construction company and I usually put in 10-14 hrs a day. A short day for me is about 6-8 hours. I've slowed way down from what I used to work several years ago. Every day was 16-20 hours. Did that for about 2 years. One day I realized that I hadn't had a single day off in 4 months, so I decided to dial things back a bit.

[Tommy T.]

I assume that by the term "work" you mean either making money or grubbing out a subsistence existence some way.

Answer is ZERO. 

I suppose I do a couple of hours a month speaking to the guys that run my investments.  Social Security and my retirement pay are direct deposited so I don't even have to mail a deposit slip to the bank.

When I was working as a lawyer in a big firm, I spent 9 hours a day in the office although nearly half my time was spent keeping current on legislation, judicial decisions and regulations that impinged on my work and on collegial interaction with my partners and long-term clients.  Those activities were essential to the work that I actually did, but were in fact done mostly for my own enjoyment and were not directly billed to clients.  Most of my billing was based on the size of the transaction.  The transactions were in 8 to 10 figures left of the decimal point and at the hourly rate that the firm booked me at, I effectively billed around 25 hours per week on average. 

Tommy T.

[Jarvicious]

Depends on call volume, which depends on the time of year.  Christmas?  I hate myself.  This summer has been pretty mellow though, so I guess anywhere from around 2 hours on a really really bad day up to 12+.  I suppose it wouldn't be that bad if I actually liked my job.....

For all you chaps on call 24/7, I sympathize.  Hanging out, camping, drinking beers, then having to drive 90 miles one way to a job will really jack up your weekend.