I've heard such varying tales about the actual hours academics work (ranging from 35 to 80 hour weeks) that I'd like to gauge some opinion on here...particularly as we cover a large variety of disciplines.

I know some academics who must pull 80 hour weeks to produce their huge publication lists. Now while I'm not lazy, I do prescribe to the old adage that one works to live, rather than lives to work.

So, in reality, what would you say is the average working week for an academic in your department? And for those of you who will pursue an academic career, how many hours to you intend to work per week?

To be honest most of the academics in my dept teach 2 hours a week, every other week (not every week), and within the past 5 years have produced 1 book and a handful of journal articles (two of which were the same bar the opening paragraph). So, about 3 hours a week then.

I reckon 35-80 hours is about right... in my department, there are some who do their 9-5 kind of thing, and then others who work all hours and send emails in the middle of the night... Unfortunately, it seems that the ones who work more hours are more successful (i.e. write more papers/get more grants) than the ones who have a life outside work.. I can hope that looks are deceiving and it's all about working smarter, not harder?!

Its very hard to tell in my department. Those who teach, you see around a lot. But academics who only teach one or two lectures a year, you hardly see, they all work from home 90% of the time. My sup reckons that 2-3 publications a year is good especially for the start of your career so I guess its more about pushing publications out, rather than spending hours in the office. In my experience 2-3 hours 'good' work is worth 2-3 days worth of messing about in an office looking like you are doing work - I am very suspicious of clean desks at the moment! I think clean desk = no work!

and then there are those who publish dozens in a year, average more than a book every second year from the start of their careers, organise huge grants, mammoth projects, and have a full family to manage too, plus teaching plus supervising plus travelling to a hundred countries...

Yes. true. they exist..

how? dont ask....am still learning how to manage time and balance stuff!

Most academics in the dept I'm in seem to do the 9-5 thing really, it seems to be the PhD students who are running round at all hours of the night and weekend! Having said that, I know that some of the profs put in a lot of extra hours in the evening and take few holidays, usually related to research proposals/grant applications and writing up of papers/presentations for conferences etc. I guess there are more hectic times and more chilled times....tho I swear my supervisor is having a permanent manic episode, I honestly don't know how she fits everything in- I guess some people are just super-people!