In this past job which was the first one that didn't track time at all, I still wrote down my hours every day and still tried to balance it to +/- 0 at the end of the week, if not possible then end of the month.
After a while (months?) I did what everyone else seemed to do. Just eyeball if it's either roughly 40 hours per week or if the last days/week was very stressful tread a little more careful, or if nothing seemed to work and I was distracted make a mental note to catch up next week.
That said, I enjoyed most of my time there very much and often would be doing exploratory stuff that I might have done on my own time anyway, so sometimes I took some extra time to evaluate one more possibility and used some spare time. Other times I just did some private stuff only veeery distantly related to actual work stuff and chalked it up as "learning".
So yeah, probably not a really helpful answer. But if you're having fun and are learning a lot a few more hours won't hurt. If a fun evening of spare time does not include programming (which I guess is true for at least 50% of programmers) then don't put in extra time. I think I've mostly done "I have a guilty conscience if I leave a lot sooner" but I also try really hard to not slack off during my 8 hours and count them as working hours. And yes, if you have that "Today I achieved more in 6 hours than the whole last week" then absolutely stop working, it's probably true.
That said, I enjoyed most of my time there very much and often would be doing exploratory stuff that I might have done on my own time anyway, so sometimes I took some extra time to evaluate one more possibility and used some spare time. Other times I just did some private stuff only veeery distantly related to actual work stuff and chalked it up as "learning".
So yeah, probably not a really helpful answer. But if you're having fun and are learning a lot a few more hours won't hurt. If a fun evening of spare time does not include programming (which I guess is true for at least 50% of programmers) then don't put in extra time. I think I've mostly done "I have a guilty conscience if I leave a lot sooner" but I also try really hard to not slack off during my 8 hours and count them as working hours. And yes, if you have that "Today I achieved more in 6 hours than the whole last week" then absolutely stop working, it's probably true.