How many hours a day are you working on it?

We can't compare to Fields medal award winners.

Most IH needs to put in the work to get consistent outcome.

That said, it depends on what you mean by work. I could be thinking about a problem 24/7 for few weeks and only code 3 hrs and get something out. Did I work 3hrs or those weeks or the years I've built to have the ability to think and execute?

I used to work in an office and I can confidently say that everyone in that office did about 3 hours' worth of focused work per day. The rest of the time they were talking, checking socials, doing busywork that didn't really push the needle, etc. etc. So yeah, I think this is about right. Though, I'm sure it ebbs and flows for most people according to workload and enthusiasm.

Personally, I'll take working efficiently over working long hours any day. I'm all about deep work!

3 hours in the zone, the rest of the day trying to get there...

Me and my cofounder built Squeaky with about 1-3 hours of work a day around our day jobs. I'm working on it full time for a few months now, but there are no set hours and it depends on what feels right. Some days I get a couple of hours work in and then have family responsibilities or I'm just not 'in the zone', others I can get deep into something and do 8-10 hours. I really love the flexibility and I feel that's really what work should always be like - nobody is perfectly attuned to be 'productive' from 9-5 each weekday.

Well, I believe there is a difference between working 3 hours on a Math problem and developing an app for the same time. The former exhausts you. When developing an app, we can go on for a longer time since it's less brain-intensive. The number of hours invested depends on the kind of work, IMO.

50-70 hours a week

If I did three hours a day, my business would not be off the ground yet.

For me it's a minimum 10 hours a day and that's seven days a week most weeks. I often work longer. There's a couple of occasions, on release days, when I've done solid 30+ hour sessions.

I'm not smart. The only thing I outsource is bookkeeping and social media. I do everything else; coding, design, sales, demos, onboarding sessions, support, marketing and everything in between.

I do take holidays - although I'll typically still do one to two hours a day while I'm away. And I do watch every F1 qualifying and race from beginning to end ;-)

I'm doing a solid 12 hours/ day. Experiencing long amounts of flow. Love it. Also helps that the project has a nice feedback loop with getting a few sales each day.

I bookmarked this post about how to be efficient with your time a while back and it has really helped me out. Because that's the name of the game, right? If you don't want to work long hours, then you have to work efficiently, and work on what matters.

One of the most meaningful pointers for me was to do less... seems counterintuitive since being efficient is about doing more, but it makes total sense. Stop doing the meaningless tasks. Focus only on what pushes the needle.

6 to 8 hours daily. I am not a Genius, so there's no option for me except dedication and hard work.
And I don't see the value of such discussions about worktime. It's all about personal preference, as long as you feel comfortable doing it.

You lost me on "genius" XD If I was a genius maybe 3 hours day would work for me. Since I am not I need to stick to my 12 hours until my mrr takes off

There is no single rule that we can apply to business persons regarding working hours per day. It will always be based on each individuals personal preference and the stage their business is at.

Read Deep Work by Cal Newport to learn more about deep work and its effect.

I work, am a student, and do about 3-4 hrs a night on my websites. It's a lot, but at least I'm never bored. Also, who needs sleep, am I right?

If you really like something, I don't know how can one work only 3 hours/day on it.

My struggle is to not work too much. Meeting friends and going out, all became secondary—I'd rather stay home and build apps.

That's what deep work is all about. I get anywhere between 2 and 4 hours of deep work in a day. But work consists of more than deep work, so the real number is higher.

For the last 4.5 years I've worked about 2-3 hours, Mon-Fri on https://stackless.dev. It's a massive platform that took a TON of design- which I didn't really consider 'work' so I did that stuff on the weekends. I think more than 3 hours of coding a day is too much.

Cool share! This is inline with the way hunter gatherers work (estimated that they “work” 15 to 20 hours a week) with about 20 hours of what we might consider household chores/preparing meals, and the rest is essentially leisure time. I’m always wondering about how we might do things in the most “human” way possible. Might it be that 3 hours of work a day is a very human way to work?

3 hours sounds about right if you are fully concentrated on your tasks. For me that is almost never a case unfortunately

I usually work 1 - 2 hours on my side projects every night