even after spending 3 hours a day on chess i can't improve my USCF

What tournaments are you playing in?

What tournaments are you playing in?

Your opponents are also improving you know

i just probably lost a bunch of points as I lost to a 1500 and 1400 in a five round tournament

Well why'd you make this post ya dingus!?  Ya want insight from others or not?  You're probably not improving because you won't accept help.

Honestly? You know I'm working at this full time currently and I don't see how you can make rapid progress only working on Chess three hours a day. Your competition is working harder and in many cases - has a lot more experience. You need to outwork them in order to surpass them. 

it does matter

Not even remotely. There are guys playing multiple 45+45's and/or 90+30's online, every day, in some cases. That's just their playtime. They study obsessively, too. Tactics, endgames, theory, master games. The higher your rating goes, the harder they work, the more time they spend. That's Chess. 

But no - three hours a day, on average, is absolutely nothing. That would be a light workload for Call of Duty. 

I can't. Before everyone says "Your practicing wrong" and "You aren't improving", I know that I am improving because all my online ratings are going up. However, I just can't improve my online USCF rating. I'm not looking for an explanation by looking at my games, I'm looking for a general cause for this type of thing. Here is my chart:

Here are the dates:

As you can see, in a total of 9 months, my rating only went up 60 points. Plus, after the tournament I just played, my rating will probably be 1275. I don't know why I have this curse of not improving my uscf rating.

You need to increase it in order to become better - not as. That's the point. 

Reasonable is entirely subjective. What was a reasonable amount of time spent on basketball to Michael Jordan is overly obsessive to the point of insanity to almost anyone else. The same would hold true in any venue. You get what you put in. There's no time limit and there are no rules to improvement. Feel free to spend 18 hours a day on this if it makes you happy. 

Did you ever take onto consideration that:

A) You're not the only one improving

B) Your eyes are probably hardwired for looking at a virtual board, not a 3D one.

Your opponents are also improving you know

i just probably lost a bunch of points as I lost to a 1500 and 1400 in a five round tournament

If you're 1700 blitz (and rapid) here, I think you should not be doing that badly.

It doesn't matter if someone is spending 100 hours a day on chess, if they're rated 1200 then they're 1200 and you should be better than them during the time of that game.

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Maybe show us a game? Are you being outplayed? My guess is you're not. My guess is at the beginning of the game you think you should have a winning position by move 15 or 20, so you make risky / silly moves... and then those moves don't work out.

I played a 1300 OTB not too long ago. You know what the strategy is for players like me who are much higher rated? Just to play a long game. It doesn't matter if the position is equal on move 20, it doesn't matter if it's equal on move 40... as long as the game goes on, they'll eventually blunder something. My job isn't to try to win, my job is to keep a solid position for a long time and wait for an opportunity.

If you had a mindset like that I wonder how you'd do.