Lisa Belkin has a good article on productivity in the workplace on the The New York Times.

“The average full-time worker doesn’t even start doing real work until 11:00 a.m.,” he writes, “and begins to wind down around 3:30 p.m.”

I am a little guilty of this one sometimes. When I get into work I check all my email, check the RSS feeds in NetNewsWire and read the new stuff on Coasterbuzz. I start working around 9:30 or 10 and usually keep going until lunch time if I can stay focused.

A lot of this time though is spent keeping up with new technology news, Flash and HTML news and things related to my job. So its not all wasted time.

“The longer you work, the less efficient you are,” said Bob Kustka, the founder of Fusion Factor, a productivity and time-management consulting firm in Norwell, Mass.

This is one that really gets me. I am asked to work long hours for long stretches of time at sunKING and the longer I go, the less productive I become. Pretty soon I am making mistakes, staring at my screen while searching for a file, and overlooking simple code bugs. Working longer doesn’t mean more work is getting done!

A few companies are taking the concept of “watch what I produce, not how I produce it” even further. At the headquarters of Best Buy in Minneapolis, for instance, the hot policy of the moment is called ROWE, short for Results Only Work Environment.

There workers can come in at four or leave at noon, or head for the movies in the middle of the day, or not even show up at all. It’s the work that matters, not the method. And, not incidentally, both output and job satisfaction have jumped wherever ROWE is tried.

When I sit here at work, sometimes I waste time cause I am not in the mood to work on what I have to work on that day. I have to force myself to try and get anything done, then I am out the door at 5:30. Not much gets done.

I always say that if I ever start my own company that I would ask my employees to be available by phone form 9-5, and they could get their work done when and where they want.

I am starting to realize that my day to day happiness is not just related to sun light and warm weather, but also sticking to a fairly strict waking schedule. The last two days I have been as grumpy as I am in the winter, and I think I know why. I haven’t been setting my alarm and have waking when its too late to sleep in anymore and I have to rush into work. When I set my alarm I usually have a happy and productive day.

My first batch of home brewed beer, an American IPA is currently fermenting in my basement. Heres how it all went down.

After boiling the water it is time to pour in the pre-mashed malt. This stuff is very thick and slow to pour out. And sweet to taste.

These are the pellet hops that came with the kit. Basically just hops compressed into a pellet for easier measuring. This bowl went in the boiling malt and water within the first five minutes of boiling.

The malt, hops and water boiling after about 30 minutes. It smells really good.

Here is the finished beer with the yeast poured in. It is now in my basement fermenting. In two weeks I will have to bottle the beer, adding priming sugar to add carbonation.