What is the limit on the amount of extended tests a character can do during a day? I have not read how many hours the game is assuming you are putting into it.

For example, could I tune up my car, work on my new agent, and put the finishing touches on the flashbang I've been working on all in the same day? (Assuming that I have all the skills and equipment required to perform these tasks)

EDIT

As a technomancer could I make use of Macro to work on a matrix project and a physical project at the same time?

What about tasks that take a week or a month? Is that all I can be working on for that whole month? Or can I be working on other projects during that time as well?

It doesn't say you can't do anything else while doing extended tests. However given the following...

p. 64 SR4A & p. 58 SR4 Interruptions
"Unless otherwise noted, characters who are pursuing Extended Tests
can break off from their work and return to it at a later time with no
penalty. The gamemaster must keep track of how much accumulated
time the character spends on the task, calling for a test once the time
equals the interval period."

It implies the time must be spent on that particular task, not that you just happen to roll dice every interval. e.g. You aren't IC just happening to be working on whatever for a few minutes every day(for a one day interval task), you are actually spending that day working on it.

I believe the rule is that "1 day" worth of work is about 8 hours. As a GM if one of my players was attempting to do multiple Extended tests over the same period I would give them some penalties such as Sleep Deprevation, unless they had something like a Sleep Regulator that gave them more waking hours in the day. You can take breaks from your Extended tasks for "reasonable" amounts of time (up to the GM, but generally "long enough to do a Shadowrun") but you can't be working on multiple projects at the same time without penalties.

I take it you've never worked two jobs...

I'm not looking to meta game here. And I obviously am aware that my character would not be putting in "a few minutes" into building a flashbang. But most people that I know that make things on the side, or work on cars on the side, don't spend 8 hours a day on it. Nor do most mechanics take 8 hours to fix a problem with a car. They are simplifying for the purpose of the intervals, I get that. It just seems a little unreasonable to say that for the 3 months I'm working on my new agent I can't work on another project. Even taking penalties I think is a bit steep, but I guess it's better than nothing.

Given the rules passage that DireRadiant quoted, I'd say you could work on all three tasks at once, but you're going to be doing some combination of a: Taking penalties on your rolls due to sleep deprevation and other issues degrading quality of work as a result of overexertion/lack of rest and/or b: Not getting one roll per day due to spending fewer than 8 hours per day on each task.

So for instance (in games I was running), if you wanted to spend 4 hours/day on each of those tasks, you could do so with no penalties to your dice-pools, but you'd be getting only one roll every 2 days for each task, since you're only putting in a half-day's work on each individual task per day (But this would be the upper limit on how much time I'd allow before penalties start to accumulate, and this is assuming you don't have other stuff eatting into your time - characters with the Day Job quality aren't going to be able to put this much energy into personal projects). Or if you were say... spending 8 hours on the agent the first day, 8 hours on the car the second, and 8 hours on the flashbang the 3rd, continuing to switch between them until you finished, days spent on the car or the flashbang wouldn't count toward finishing the agent.

The book isn't clear, but I'd assume it assumes you're doing 8 hours a day of sleep normally. Sleep Regulator lets you get by with 3 hours of sleep a night. This leaves 16 hours a day normally, and 21 hours a day with the sleep regulator.

I'd personally let someone do two tasks a day briefly, but after a while go 'Come on, dude. You need entertainment. It's a character, not a wargame persona.' I might go more lax on it if it's something the person adores but even then, people need to do other stuff -sometimes-. I would /not/ let them double up on time though, as you can only focus on one thing for so long.

With the sleep regulator, I'd be a lot more lenient on the 'come on dude...' as they'd have 5 hours of entertainment on top of the 16 hours.

Ah, I like that ruling. It pretty much accomplishes what I wanted. Thanks for your help everyone.

Basically what I had been doing is a mix between what you and the above post says. I actually wrote out my characters day to day activities (while not on a run that is). I have several hours of fun time built in, 7 hours of sleep, and 10-12 hours of build time blocked in. That time is broken up throughout the day though. I also have food and nap time blocked in lol.