Without going into too much detail about what I do, I’m in the second year of a full WFH job that has great benefits. The official company rules are that we have to work engaged for 8 hours per day (no paid lunch) and everything we do is recorded to a time sheet so that different projects with different budget sources are billed for our time. The work is mostly very deep work focused and very technical and requires a lot of focus while you’re doing it, and typically there’s only around 2 hours per week of meetings.
My friend who referred me to the job said they basically do a pomodoro method for their day in terms of scheduling breaks (so they were only working around 6 hours per day), and for the first year I’ve been fine working 5-6 hours per day and charging 8, and no one has noticed or given me any cause for concern since I always got my work done in a timely manner.
Now I’ve been moved to a new project where the budgetary flexibility is a lot tighter and I’m struggling. One of the tasks is to summarize scientific papers and we are given 30 minutes per paper, meaning I’d have to do 16 per day to keep up, and we have to report to our supervisor if we go over billed hours and we have to have a good reason to justify it. Humans are only supposed to do deep work for 2-3 hours max each day, so I’m not sure how to meet their demands without recording 8 hours on my time sheet but working 12+ hours per day in actuality.
Anyone have any advice on this? I know my situation isn’t as bad as most people on here, but I’m not sure how to manage this without burning out.