24 ms·

Working fewer hours would make us more productive

312 points by cpeterso 11y ago

harryf 11y ago
Interesting somewhat related talk from Tony Schwarz in the Leading @ Google series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tke6X2eME3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tke6X2eME3c "Demand is relentlessly rising. Our capacity is not keeping pace. The traditional solution to higher demand has been to invest more time. Unfortunately, time is finite, and most of us have no hours left to invest. Energy, however, can be systematically expanded --- and it can also be regularly renewed. To operate at our best, we need four energy sources: physical (quantity), emotional (quality), mental (focus), and the energy of the human spirit (purpose). This talk will focus on the role of energy in fueling sustainable high performance, and in motivating others." ...which relates to the work he does at the Energy Project - http://theenergyproject.com/ http://theenergyproject.com/
Rainymood 11y ago
>and the Dutch people are better known for their love of cycling We don't 'love' cycling it's just highly ingrained in our culture and it's way cheaper than owning a car, especially with our awesome public transport. >But what about tackling the issue at its roots? What if everyone had a shorter working week? We would be healthier and happier, and society would be less unequal and more sustainable. Is it? How is this article different from pure speculation?
- moomin 11y ago
  Well, it's not speculation to compare Britain to Denmark, which have comparable living standards, levels of technology, &c but different attitudes to the working week. No-one in Denmark/Germany is a slacker, btw. They're just really productive when they're actually at work.
  - troels 11y ago
    Minor quibble, but the Dutch live in The Netherlands. The inhabitants of Denmark are called Danes.
    - moomin 11y ago
      Pretty sure it's also true of Denmark. :)
sjclemmy 11y ago
It seems to me that the spirit of long working hours stems from the idea that a worker is an interchangeable 'machine' with a capacity to provide effort and the idea that more time spent (literally) at the coal face will yield a better return on capital. This holds true in an industrial context where there is a large pool of workers, the work is low skilled and unions are weak. A workers ability to provide time is the only concern that the employer has. Where I live, in the North of England, this factory mentality still casts a long shadow over working conditions and practice. I think a 40 hour week is way too long to actually have a balanced life and I've consistently burnt-out where the pressure to work 50/60 hours a week is strong. I'm not surprised that DavCam is wanting to keep the 48-hour opt-out - if you are an investor / owner of capital, do you care about the long term well being of the people making effort to give a return on your capital over a short term (5 years) when people are interchangeable? You simply want to increase the return on your investment.
moomin 11y ago
The article makes the fundamental error of assuming that if you worked ten hours less, someone else would get to work ten hours more. But other than that, it's a pretty good article grounded in actual fact.
- briandear 11y ago
  Right. That 35 hour workweek in France has resulted in higher unemployment not lower.
  - DrScump 11y ago
    Correlation isn't causation. Somebody needs to check the parallel-universe France that has a longer workweek and check its unemployment rate.
- hatmatrix 11y ago
  Yes, it would only work in sectors where the labor is more or less fungible, but these types of articles always seem to overgeneralize the effectiveness of reduced work hours.
  - moomin 11y ago
    With that said, even with a single person it's amazing how much productivity you gain by actually going home and doing other things (including sleep).
golergka 11y ago
I agree that shorter hours are likely to be beneficial, but why are people trying to achieve this by passing a law? I think that this can be achieved with a softer approach. Imagine that when you sign up for a job, you select how many days per week do you want to work, from 3 to 6, with proportionate wage scale. That you can select what hours do you want to work. That it's easy to change this arrangement while you're already working. Now, why is this fantasy not a reality? Not because of laws; laws allow this. But: 1) These creative arrangements require non-standard agreements, and a lot of additional bureaucracy, because in a lot of countries, all the bureaucracy machinery allows it, but is really not optimized for use-cases like that. This can be solved through careful policy work, removing necessary paperwork, streamlining processes, etc. 2) Economies of scale. Having a full-time 40h/week employee that gets X money as salary is cheaper than having 2 half-time 20h/week employees that get X/2 money because of management overhead, cost of their office spaces and other stuff like that. This would be solved if 20h/week employees would understand this and get X/2-Y money. Also, a lot of these scale issues are being solved by modern world anyway, because we're learning to telecommute, work together in more effective ways, automate management tasks, etc. 3) Culture. And I think this is the most important one. It's not in the laws, it's in the people's heads. We need to convince people that one person wants to dedicate work 60 hours per week, spend free time that's left on professional education and succeed in his career, and another is quite OK to work for 20 hours per week, get less promotions, learn less new stuff and earn less money, and spend all his free time with his kids. We need to stop labeling the first of these persons as "successful" and second one as a "failure": it's OK to be both of them. And they need to be able to work in the same office, on the same project, fully understanding difference in each other's views and being mutually acceptful. I don't know how to do that, but it seems that this cultural change is already slowly happening. Still, advancing it would bring the real change much faster and more effectively than writing new laws.
- lmm 11y ago
  The only way to change culture is through law. Look at seatbelt use: decades of public awareness campaigns did nothing, but once it became a legal requirement people switched. Also laws are the way to prevent a race to the bottom. If it's legal to work longer hours people will, and everyone else will do so to compete with them. Compare OHSA, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ .
kbart 11y ago
Totally agree. I don't see how people can be productive working >60h/week and doing mental job. I find 30h/week to be perfect as I can't keep concentrated more than 3-5 hours straight, so that makes two streaks (2-3h) and a coffee break working day Monday till Friday. If I'm forced to work longer hours, I find my mind wandering around, rewritting the same code over and over or reading HN. Of course, there might be some short-term mission critical periods when I can honestly put ~10h/day, but it's an exception that must be justified, not a rule.
umeryounis 11y ago
Can't disagree with anything here really. I think one of the problems is that some people in powerful positions in companies want to do long hours themselves, so expect those under them to do the same. They see someone putting in long hours as hard-working and diligent, even though in reality they are probably being very inefficient and producing shoddy work.
glasz 11y ago
let's start by just cutting aka not doing ALL THE BULLSHIT that is being done. all the needless crap. ding 50% time saved. "what" you ask? take a serious look at your inbox.
- lmm 11y ago
  If you have to have your bum in the seat for 40+ hours/week to get paid, why would you bother? The "bullshit" gives you something to do when you're too tired to be actually productive.
- Scarblac 11y ago
  That bullshit is what we call the economy, much more than 50% of it doesn't need doing. Without a basic income, we need that bullshit though.
- jerf 11y ago
  If your inbox is full of bullshit, try taking proactive steps to clear it out. If it's a waste of corporate time, you have a basic professional responsibility to do so. If you fail, it is likely because it wasn't as bullshit as you thought. The cogs may be sexy and obviously doing work, but the grease turns out to be vital too. But my "if" isn't for mere rhetoric... you may well succeed, because bullshit does build up too. The only way to find out is to try. I've had it go both ways.
robinwarren 11y ago
I'd like to believe this article, and in fact strive myself to reduce my working hours one day and have more time for all that other good stuff the article mentions. Shorter weeks could bring a lot of benefits with them to those who can enjoy them. Some problems I have with the article however: 1. Working less may well not result in getting more (or the same amount) done. The article mentions a correlation between shorter working hours and higher productivity. As always, correlation does not equal causation. Most likely those countries with shorter work weeks are developed countries which have higher output per capita than less developed ones not because working 40 hours a weeks is more productive than working 80, but that utilising a higher level of technology gives superior output. 2. The idea that because the Dutch apparently spend all their free time riding around on bikes means the brits would if given more free time is a joke. We'd spend it doing the things we enjoy (damaging our livers?), not suddenly become some imagined healthier happier version of ourselves. All in all a pretty poor article I think as a result of the above isssues.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > The article mentions a correlation between shorter working hours and higher productivity. As always, correlation does not equal causation. Most likely those countries with shorter work weeks are developed countries which have higher output per capita than less developed ones not because working 40 hours a weeks is more productive than working 80, but that utilising a higher level of technology gives superior output. The article is comparing the UK (long working hours, terrible productivity) with Germany (short working hours, very much better productivity). It's unlikely that there's much difference in the technology available. And they both surely know about all the modern methods of organising a workplace. I mostly agree with point 2, but > We'd spend it doing the things we enjoy (damaging our livers?) Maybe the reason so many british people drink too much is because they're working too much, and they're (mis)using alcohol to wind down.
  - Alan01252 11y ago
    Purely anecdotal I know, but since giving up my job in the city and going freelance I have indeed spent far less time drinking and far more time exercising. A quick one after work was far too common. I buckled far too easily to peer pressure and conformity. After all it's the done thing to do right? A crap day at work is solved by a pint (or three) after? And a good day at work... well that could be considerably more ;)
branchless 11y ago
Until we have control over land prices via land value tax we will always work a full week. Land prices are set by credit which will expand to fill all labour less food / heating costs. Only when land is cheaper can we opt out of working 40 hours and this will see a general reduction in the average working week. Until then we are all banker bitches.
- c1sc0 11y ago
  Who is this "we"? Just curious & trying to understand your thinking. Can you elaborate?
- cubano 11y ago
  There are plenty of places, all over the world, where land is quite cheap, so I don't quite follow your thinking here.
- m52go 11y ago
  I believe the argument is directed toward salaried workers, so reducing hours would not reduce pay, so land/rent costs are irrelevant.
throwaway7767 11y ago
I changed my working arrangement to 80% recently, so now I work four 8-hour day weeks. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you can make it work. I have wednesday off, so the week is divided into two-day stretches. Not sure if I'm any more productive (maybe), but I'm a lot happier. I suspect some coworkers are going to follow my lead, now that the precedent has been set.
- wslh 11y ago
  I don't think your plan is for everyone since if you need to be synced with a team not working on Wednesdays is negative in the long run.
  - throwaway7767 11y ago
    I never said it was for everyone, but I suspect people magnify the expected issues a lot. Everyone knows I won't be here on wednesdays, so we try to arrange things so I'm not a bottleneck during that time. If some really important deadline shows up, I'll just work the one wednesday and take thursday off instead, it's not a big deal. I haven't needed to yet though. Besides, assuming you're not on a really tiny team, if many parts of your project hinge on one person with no available backup, you have bigger problems related to project management.
    - daveguy 11y ago
      Or you're an early startup. Sometimes hinged-on-one-person is all you have because there are only a few people with some non-overlapping talents.
      - ktistec 11y ago
        The definition of a really tiny team.
      - s73v3r 11y ago
        And? If you know that the person isn't there on Wednesday, you adapt.
briandear 11y ago
The climate change argument is a terrible one. Lower consumption? In the same article it argues that the work would be spread over more people. So, using the article's logic, same amount of productivity, more people providing it. For 50 hours of work, you deploy 2 people, thus causing 2 units of fixed costs to be incurred for the same productivity. Same variable costs, twice the fixed cost. This is just wacky.
henrik_w 11y ago
In the same vein: "Bring back the 40-hour work week" "150 years of research proves that long hours at work kill profits, productivity and employees" http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...
dustingetz 11y ago
Mythical man month actually says the opposite, because even if longer hours have diminishing returns, the organizational overhead from adding people to the team is worse. Maybe the descrepency here is short view (a couple years to build a startup) vs long view (mature organization over an entire business cycle) edit ----- Secondary source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3547965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3547965 Quoting the secondary source: "From a business point of view, long hours by programmers are a key to profitability. Suppose that a programmer needs to spend 25 hours per week keeping current with new technology, getting coordinated with other programmers, contributing to documentation and thought leadership pieces, and comprehending the structures of the systems being extended. Under this assumption, a programmer who works 55 hours per week will produce twice as much code as one who works 40 hours per week. In The Mythical Man-Month, the only great book ever written on software engineering, Fred Brooks concludes that no software product should be designed by more than two people. He argues that a program designed by more than two people might be more complete but it will never be easy to understand because it will not be as consistent as something designed by fewer people. This means that if you want to follow the best practices of the industry in terms of design and architecture, the only way to improve speed to market is to have the same people working longer hours. Finally there is the common sense notion that the smaller the team the less management overhead. A product is going to get out the door much faster if it is built by 4 people working 70-hour weeks (180 productive programmer-hours per week, after subtracting for 25 hours of coordination and structure comprehension time) than if by 12 people working 40-hour weeks (the same net of 180 hours per week). The 12-person team will inevitably require additional managers and all-day meetings to stay coordinated.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Not really. It's the unit size that matters. Mythical man month said the ideal basic organization for delivering work output is modeled after a surgical team. If you model after traditional military units, the infantry squad is the equivalent to that team. Under the mythical man month org structure, the atomic unit of work capacity is that surgical team. You can't do more surgery by putting two more surgeons in the OR. But you can add new teams and get more output. I think the analogy works in the military context as well -- a general doesn't ask for <X> more individual soldiers, he asks for more battalions/regiments/divisions.
zekevermillion 11y ago
That working fewer hours ==> increased productivity is also a mathematical tautology. Productivity being a function of output and hours, with output generally being somewhat sticky as hours change.
- trebor 11y ago
  I think your definition of productivity is off a bit. You need to account for "effective" productivity. My hours might be 40+ but how many of those are truly focused and productive? Hence, working less time with (theoretically) better focus and reduced stress/strain would be more productive.
  - zekevermillion 11y ago
    It's not my definition, but an econo-bs definition that involves aggregating $ value output, hours worked. So any study that discusses productivity will always find, at least over any short period, that hours are inverse to productivity as they cannot move in perfect lockstep. However, as an individual, your experience may (and probably should) vary quite a bit from what you might predict in the aggregate!
- appleflaxen 11y ago
  how do you define tautology?
lordnacho 11y ago
My circle of friends are what you call professionals. They spend an awful lot of time at work, most of it on looking like they're working. There's a fair number of jobs where the work itself is not hard or time consuming, but where a culture has grown where everyone needs to justify their position. This skew incentives; if you're a junior, you end up doing a bunch of little things that can pass as a laundry list of things someone had to do. If you're senior, you can gun for getting credit for grandiose sounding things like "strategy". Junior people end up in meetings all day, which if you're senior, you end up calling everyone into. Everyone sits around until late to demonstrate worth. A lot of these jobs could be done remotely, on any schedule with a sensible number of hours, by just about anyone who can read and write. But because of the culture, they end up being done by the only people who have 100 hours a week, namely singles in their 20s who are just out of university, in some very expensive location. These people then have families to feed and get stuck propagating the same sick culture. I don't see the law as providing a solution. Nobody enforces the 48 hour contract in Britain. When did you last hear about a City sweatshop being liberated by the police? The way to change the culture is actually, believe it or not, startups. Yes working hours can be horrible in startups. But in an environment where a lot of firms are startups, there will be more variation in the working culture. Certain firms are already showing the way forward with flexible hours, remote work, and other family friendly practices, without compromising on quality.
- amyjess 11y ago
  Or, for that matter, defense contractors. I'm enjoying having a job where not only do I only have to work 8 hours a day, I'm not even allowed to work more if I wanted to.
- jaynos 11y ago
  >They spend an awful lot of time at work, most of it on looking like they're working. Guilty. If I could switch to a 4 day work week, I'd get the same amount done, but spend a bit less time on Hacker News and other distractions. Hell, let me work a 2 day week and I'd cut out all distractions to finish what was needed.
  - 11y ago
rodionos 11y ago
I signed up for a gym that apparently went on an initiative to improve its employee culture. The gym is really nice, not as good as Equinox in Palo Alto, but close enough. So one of the initiatives was to close the gym during holiday seasons so that staff could enjoy vacations schedules just like everyone else. Lo and behold, they closed the gym between December 20 and January 5th. Just when I was planning to catch up on things. They can count on my cancellation. What I'm saying - do you want to live in a world that is functioning 80% of time?
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  Is this sarcasm? My gym AND my favorite bar were closed all holiday. Why would you be at either of those places? You should be enjoying yourself like everyone else during this time.
  - amyjess 11y ago
    Maybe GP's idea of enjoying themselves is going to the gym. And my idea of enjoying myself is going to the bar.
- jontayesp 11y ago
  We should respect other people's time off if we want others to respect our time off. Is it really so hard to find some other way to exercise for a month?
  - rodionos 11y ago
    Why not close supermarkets out of respect for labor unions as well, for 2 weeks. I think the solution lies somewhere else - such as automating humans out of retail and services to the extent possible. For instance, speaking of gym, I would keep the facility open staffed just with with security and reception. Shut down non-core functions: new member office, group sessions, cafe etc.
    - ljw1001 11y ago
vinceguidry 11y ago
I cut my hours down to around 35 a year ago. The reduced stress made me more productive than when I was working 40 hours. If I thought I could get away with chopping it down to 15 hours I would. I don't have a high enough workload to get into flow state most days. Chopping the week down would both make me more productive and allow me to enjoy work even more. But actual tasks don't come in very frequently.
eneifert 11y ago
I've worked the standard 40-? hr/week programming jobs for years and about a year ago I took on a project where I was the only developer and before I took the job I made the decision to work about 20 hours a week. Turns out that 20 wasn't quite enough so I ended up doing 25-30. Looking back I think 25-30 hours is about as efficient as I could have been as I gave the best hours of my day. But when it came to the last month before the release I found I did have to give some more time to get it done on time. Short bursts of working long hours seem to be effective for me, but I also noticed that I needed to take some time off after the project. It's been a great year and I've really enjoyed the other things I was able to do with my time. If you are able it's worth considering even if you take a little less pay.
deleted 11y ago
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moosov 11y ago
I'm interested how much time people generally spend for work, let's have a small poll - https://guaana.com/quiz/hn-how-many-hours-you-work-in-a-week https://guaana.com/quiz/hn-how-many-hours-you-work-in-a-week
- eneifert 11y ago
  Another great poll would be, how many hours do you feel you are productive in a day.
  - moosov 11y ago
    True and this question gives us much more information - https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-productive-in-a-day https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-p...
yason 11y ago
I worked at 50% capacity for some years. It was just great until I chose to want more money for the time being and returned to 70% capacity. That was just great, too, until I realized that I was as productive as a full-time guy without the full-time pay so I eventually went back full-time but trying to keep my output roughly on the same level as I had been getting good reviews all the time. However, last year I got tired of the full hours and a bit depressed because of lots of factors that prevented me from getting things done, and after one realisation I took a month off. Coming back to work I figured I shall be going with working full hours for three months and then taking a month off again. So that comes to three months of spare time and nine months of work annually. The realisation was about working patterns. For a programmer like me, the best productivity comes in bursts so I'd happily do three ~12-hour days and keep two days off as opposed to working the official 7.5 hours (in my country) every day. This has always been so, even as a kid. I could work on something really intensively for a few days and then I needed to do something completely different. The newest realization was that it works on longer timescale too. I can work three months and do my absolute best, and then relax and have time for my own things. This sort of a contract――relax pattern is quite reminiscent to life and nature itself. I feel much at home between the pushes and pulls. I'll see how the first year will turn out to be. Over the years I've also realised that staying productive is mostly just about conserving these important productivity patterns. A lot of what happens at work eats away from these patterns but if you can keep them mostly intact then you'll get productivity by default. That is, assuming that you love programming. Hint: if you're known to occasionally spend hours on hacking something at work at an intensity where nobody can pull you away from it, it's a good sign that you love programming.
- givinguflac 11y ago
  This sounds amazing and I'm happy you've found a solution that works for you. Unfortunately in my experience this scenario is basically impossible for 98% of people in the US - I assume when you say 'my country' that you are not from the US?
  - yason 11y ago
    I work in Europe but I'm actually employed by a very much US company. Practically my whole team is in the USA and other than receiving salary locally I have surprisingly little to do with the European subsidiary. I also work from home a lot because working at the office would be effectively telecommuting, too. Decisions such as my unpaid time off come from the US. My employer is not a particularly conservative company and it helps that my boss is great and if he has to cross-check something with his boss, his boss is great too. And it probably helps to have a somewhat senior position (next milestone: ten years) and having made my mark years ago. But most importantly: getting your shit done. If you can get your shit done you're in a much better position in getting everyone to agree on more flexibility into your job because companies need to get shit done. Wise employers recognize that it's of everyone's benefit, including theirs, to keep productive employees in a loose leash with more freedom of choice rather than impose binary requirements on how and when to do the work. If my employer wasn't wise like this some other company would be enjoying the fruits of my productivity as I would've left them years ago. Even if you work at the very best companies and love your work, work is still always work and it will at some point become too much, meaningless, source of frustration, or any combination of those.
hatmatrix 11y ago
> Productivity – output per working hour – improves with shorter hours. Yes, but total output = number of hours x productivity. So even while productivity diminishes, your total output can increase if you increase number of hours.
cryoshon 11y ago
Most conversations about working fewer hours are really conversations about how much the personal resources of workers can be drawn upon without providing extra pay before there are negative productivity consequences. This article ties in directly with some ideas I've been exploring recently [0] involving personal resources of workers and time/productivity management of workers [1][2]. The concepts of worker personal resource management and worker time management are largely foreign to the places I've worked, much to their detriment. Instead, the strategy could be described as "colloquial management", a mishmash of half-remembered concepts from business school or worse, the playground. If a worker can quantify roughly how much time and energy each task at work will take up, a clearer picture of how to be the most productive in the least amount of time will reveal itself. Employers perpetually hide in the ambiguity of the employees' time and effort, hoping to make a profit out of asking for too much and motivate their workforce by periodically throwing a tiny bone to the most masochistic over-achiever. A tabulated rubric describing to the employer exactly how much time is spent on each task and how much mental and physical energy the task takes relative to the worker's actual capacity for these energies would show exactly how wasteful it is to over-work people. Longer hours deplete worker mental energy and physical energy resources whether or not there is more work being done. Once these resources are depleted, worker efficiency drops precipitously. Additionally, periodically depleting these resources leads to worker burnout. I also suspect that workers resent longer hours whether or not they are necessary, leading to weakened ability to refill their mental energy reservoir due to poorer mental health in general. [0]:http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/04/how-to-survive-late-capitalism-as-a-worker/ http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/04/how-to-survive-late-capitalism... [1]:http://cryoshon.co/2015/12/23/time-management-tips-hot-from-the-hiv-research-lab/ http://cryoshon.co/2015/12/23/time-management-tips-hot-from-... [2]:http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/01/how-to-decide-what-to-prioritize-at-work/ http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/01/how-to-decide-what-to-prioriti...
moosov 11y ago
So, let's be honest - how many hours do you feel you are productive in a day ? https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-productive-in-a-day https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-p...
- LesZedCB 11y ago
  I'm annoyed that it said the "Most Voted" before I even had the chance to look at the options. That immediately tainted my ability for an unbiased response.
justncase80 11y ago
I recently read an interesting book called Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy. It was written in 1887 but could have been written yesterday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward It was basically about a guy who accidentally travels forward in time (sort of like idiocracy) except he finds himself in an American Socialist Utopia. It was a really good book in general but there was one idea in particular that the author had, which seems pertinent here. Essentially in this utopia everyone gets the same pay check and the opportunity to work. Instead of getting paid more money for a demanding job you get "paid" in less hours. Meaning, all jobs start out at, say 40 hours per week. A job that doesn't get any applicants would decrease the number of hours it demands and correspondingly, the number of open positions would increase. Eventually an unappealing job would decline to a number of hours where someone would be willing to do it. For example, that coal mining job that nobody wants to do? Well it pays the same as every other job but you only need to do it for 4 hours a week. You can work more of course if you want but you get the same paycheck. The rest of that time you can do whatever you want, spend time with your family or do art or whatever. Also, in For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs by Robert A. Heinlein there are some very interesting ideas about American social economics, including a social credit system. Which I believe is a pretty old fashioned idea that we have almost completely forgot about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us,_The_Living:_A_Comedy_of_Customs#Economic_independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us,_The_Living:_A_Comedy_o... This constant back and forth about work hours and minimum wage and the inexorable pull towards wage slavery makes me think its time to explore some completely lateral options.
- myth_buster 11y ago
  Humans have incredible propensity to acclimatize to the environment. That's the only reasoning I could arrive at when I was poor and saw people around willing to do the most mundane back breaking work than to seek other forms of employment. The lever that is used in society today is desperation as opposed to higher pay per hr in the "Looking Backward" case. The sanitation worker doesn't enjoy their work and no amount of lower hours may compel them to be scarred by the experience. On the other hand desperation and hunger forces them to take what ever job they could salvage. Most of them would would get used to it while some would work their way out.
dawnbreez 11y ago
Fewer hours makes me less burnt-out, yes, but it also means I can't pay bills, which comes with its own set of issues.
J_Darnley 11y ago
Yes. Working less than 0 hours would make me more productive.
xiaoma 11y ago
I just finished reading The Masters of Doom and really got the impression that working more hours made Carmack more productive than nearly everyone else in the field.
- kentt 11y ago
  Same impression from reading Elon Musk. Though perhaps working that is necessary for outstanding success, but that should necessarily model how we work on normal projects and lead normal lives.
- JohnCarmack 11y ago
  I find these “shorter work weeks are just as effective” articles to be nonsense, at least for knowledge workers with some tactical discretion. I can imagine productivity at an assembly line job having a peak such that overworking grinds someone down to the point that they become a liability, but people that claim working nine hours in a day instead of eight gives no (or negative) additional benefit are either being disingenuous or just have terrible work habits. Even in menial jobs, it is sort of insulting – “Hey you, working three jobs to feed your family! Half of the time you are working is actually of negative value so you don’t deserve to be paid for it!” If you only have seven good hours a day in you, does that mean the rest of the day that you spend with your family, reading, exercising at the gym, or whatever other virtuous activity you would be spending your time on, are all done poorly? No, it just means that focusing on a single thing for an extended period of time is challenging. Whatever the grand strategy for success is, it gets broken down into lots of smaller tasks. When you hit a wall on one task, you could say “that’s it, I’m done for the day” and head home, or you could switch over to something else that has a different rhythm and get more accomplished. Even when you are clearly not at your peak, there is always plenty to do that doesn’t require your best, and it would actually be a waste to spend your best time on it. You can also “go to the gym” for your work by studying, exploring, and experimenting, spending more hours in service to the goal. I think most people excited by these articles are confusing not being aligned with their job’s goals with questions of effectiveness. If you don’t want to work, and don’t really care about your work, less hours for the same pay sounds great! If you personally care about what you are doing, you don’t stop at 40 hours a week because you think it is optimal for the work, but rather because you are balancing it against something else that you find equally important. Which is fine. Given two equally talented people, the one that pursues a goal obsessively, for well over 40 hours a week, is going to achieve more. They might be less happy and healthy, but I’m not even sure about that. Obsession can be rather fulfilling, although probably not across an entire lifetime. This particular article does touch on a goal that isn’t usually explicitly stated: it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from working longer hours. Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world for that goal.
Thomas_Lord 11y ago
During the Great Depression most people were smart enough to know that reducing hours, without reducing pay, was a good strategy for lowering unemployment. Of course, capitalists tend to dislike the idea of lowering hours this way. For them, it amounts to a reduction in profit. If hours are lowered, capitalists will presumably then invest to improve productivity so that the same output can be produced in fewer hours. When they succeed, their rate of profit improves. Increased productivity without vast new markets opening up means that, in turn, unemployment will again rise. So there is a virtuous cycle: Cut the work week without cutting wages. Wait for productivity to catch up. Cut the work week again. If we had an aggressive policy of cutting hours whenever unemployment is too high, and we do this across the board for all sectors, perhaps before long farms will be more fully worked by robots, and so on. The author of the article wrote: "John Maynard Keynes predicted in the 1930s that by about now, we would all be working a mere 15 hours a week." Keynes did but it was Marx and Engels who predicted in the 19th century that we'd have to fight for hours reduction every step of the way.
rconti 11y ago
"reduced greenhouse gas emissions go hand-in-hand with shorter working hours" ... until you start bringing in all of those additional workers you're promising jobs to...
aceboogy94 11y ago
Not even going to read the article. Doesn't this seem like a "no shit" type of thing. Lest time in the day to get things done so you work faster/harder. Of course you're more productive. I did get a good laugh though since I started this job 4 months ago and literally do 30 min a work a day and fuck off for the rest of the day. I'm now spending my day getting paid to think of others ways to make money online. Haven't came up with anything good yet.
fizixer 11y ago
I would love to work in an environment where I can work at my top productivity 12 hours a day for a couple weeks (including weekends). Then I need to not do anything for a few weeks.
otakucode 11y ago
As would getting rid of open floor plan workspaces, or, even better, working from home. How long until people figure out that business folks really sincerely do not care about productivity? If it would require them to alter their traditional ideas of what the workplace should be like (derived from labor-intensive manufacturing in the first part of the 20th century), the psychological cost is one they are not willing or able to incur.
herbst 11y ago
Worked 100% and 80% so far, any can confirm that i mostly was more productive with 80%.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
Suggestion for people wanting to work a shorter week: Ask you HR department for an employee handbook and read it carefully. I did this in the 1970s (worked for a large defense contractor) and discovered that I only had to work 30 hours a week to get full benefits. Much to the unhappiness of my bosses and coworkers, I "gave myself a 20%" cut in pay and stopped working on Mondays. I tried to be a perfect employee the four days a week that I worked to make up for inconvenience to my bosses and coworkers. I was able to work four days a week in most companies I have worked for, spanning about 50 years. One advantage of part time work is that it gave me extra time to write computer science books and spend extra time with friends and family. But, I left a lot of money on the table taking a 20% pay cut.
andrewchambers 11y ago
I feel like fewer hours works when you don't really care about your job. You basically get burnt out quickly because you aren't motivated.

312 points by cpeterso 11y ago

Interesting somewhat related talk from Tony Schwarz in the Leading @ Google series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tke6X2eME3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tke6X2eME3c "Demand is relentlessly rising. Our capacity is not keeping pace. The traditional solution to higher demand has been to invest more time. Unfortunately, time is finite, and most of us have no hours left to invest. Energy, however, can be systematically expanded --- and it can also be regularly renewed. To operate at our best, we need four energy sources: physical (quantity), emotional (quality), mental (focus), and the energy of the human spirit (purpose). This talk will focus on the role of energy in fueling sustainable high performance, and in motivating others." ...which relates to the work he does at the Energy Project - http://theenergyproject.com/ http://theenergyproject.com/

Rainymood 11y ago

>and the Dutch people are better known for their love of cycling We don't 'love' cycling it's just highly ingrained in our culture and it's way cheaper than owning a car, especially with our awesome public transport. >But what about tackling the issue at its roots? What if everyone had a shorter working week? We would be healthier and happier, and society would be less unequal and more sustainable. Is it? How is this article different from pure speculation?

moomin 11y ago
Well, it's not speculation to compare Britain to Denmark, which have comparable living standards, levels of technology, &c but different attitudes to the working week. No-one in Denmark/Germany is a slacker, btw. They're just really productive when they're actually at work.
- troels 11y ago
  Minor quibble, but the Dutch live in The Netherlands. The inhabitants of Denmark are called Danes.
  - moomin 11y ago
    Pretty sure it's also true of Denmark. :)

sjclemmy 11y ago

It seems to me that the spirit of long working hours stems from the idea that a worker is an interchangeable 'machine' with a capacity to provide effort and the idea that more time spent (literally) at the coal face will yield a better return on capital. This holds true in an industrial context where there is a large pool of workers, the work is low skilled and unions are weak. A workers ability to provide time is the only concern that the employer has. Where I live, in the North of England, this factory mentality still casts a long shadow over working conditions and practice. I think a 40 hour week is way too long to actually have a balanced life and I've consistently burnt-out where the pressure to work 50/60 hours a week is strong. I'm not surprised that DavCam is wanting to keep the 48-hour opt-out - if you are an investor / owner of capital, do you care about the long term well being of the people making effort to give a return on your capital over a short term (5 years) when people are interchangeable? You simply want to increase the return on your investment.

moomin 11y ago

The article makes the fundamental error of assuming that if you worked ten hours less, someone else would get to work ten hours more. But other than that, it's a pretty good article grounded in actual fact.

briandear 11y ago
Right. That 35 hour workweek in France has resulted in higher unemployment not lower.
- DrScump 11y ago
  Correlation isn't causation. Somebody needs to check the parallel-universe France that has a longer workweek and check its unemployment rate.
hatmatrix 11y ago
Yes, it would only work in sectors where the labor is more or less fungible, but these types of articles always seem to overgeneralize the effectiveness of reduced work hours.
- moomin 11y ago
  With that said, even with a single person it's amazing how much productivity you gain by actually going home and doing other things (including sleep).

golergka 11y ago

I agree that shorter hours are likely to be beneficial, but why are people trying to achieve this by passing a law? I think that this can be achieved with a softer approach. Imagine that when you sign up for a job, you select how many days per week do you want to work, from 3 to 6, with proportionate wage scale. That you can select what hours do you want to work. That it's easy to change this arrangement while you're already working. Now, why is this fantasy not a reality? Not because of laws; laws allow this. But: 1) These creative arrangements require non-standard agreements, and a lot of additional bureaucracy, because in a lot of countries, all the bureaucracy machinery allows it, but is really not optimized for use-cases like that. This can be solved through careful policy work, removing necessary paperwork, streamlining processes, etc. 2) Economies of scale. Having a full-time 40h/week employee that gets X money as salary is cheaper than having 2 half-time 20h/week employees that get X/2 money because of management overhead, cost of their office spaces and other stuff like that. This would be solved if 20h/week employees would understand this and get X/2-Y money. Also, a lot of these scale issues are being solved by modern world anyway, because we're learning to telecommute, work together in more effective ways, automate management tasks, etc. 3) Culture. And I think this is the most important one. It's not in the laws, it's in the people's heads. We need to convince people that one person wants to dedicate work 60 hours per week, spend free time that's left on professional education and succeed in his career, and another is quite OK to work for 20 hours per week, get less promotions, learn less new stuff and earn less money, and spend all his free time with his kids. We need to stop labeling the first of these persons as "successful" and second one as a "failure": it's OK to be both of them. And they need to be able to work in the same office, on the same project, fully understanding difference in each other's views and being mutually acceptful. I don't know how to do that, but it seems that this cultural change is already slowly happening. Still, advancing it would bring the real change much faster and more effectively than writing new laws.

lmm 11y ago
The only way to change culture is through law. Look at seatbelt use: decades of public awareness campaigns did nothing, but once it became a legal requirement people switched. Also laws are the way to prevent a race to the bottom. If it's legal to work longer hours people will, and everyone else will do so to compete with them. Compare OHSA, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ .

kbart 11y ago

Totally agree. I don't see how people can be productive working >60h/week and doing mental job. I find 30h/week to be perfect as I can't keep concentrated more than 3-5 hours straight, so that makes two streaks (2-3h) and a coffee break working day Monday till Friday. If I'm forced to work longer hours, I find my mind wandering around, rewritting the same code over and over or reading HN. Of course, there might be some short-term mission critical periods when I can honestly put ~10h/day, but it's an exception that must be justified, not a rule.

umeryounis 11y ago

Can't disagree with anything here really. I think one of the problems is that some people in powerful positions in companies want to do long hours themselves, so expect those under them to do the same. They see someone putting in long hours as hard-working and diligent, even though in reality they are probably being very inefficient and producing shoddy work.

glasz 11y ago

let's start by just cutting aka not doing ALL THE BULLSHIT that is being done. all the needless crap. ding 50% time saved. "what" you ask? take a serious look at your inbox.

lmm 11y ago
If you have to have your bum in the seat for 40+ hours/week to get paid, why would you bother? The "bullshit" gives you something to do when you're too tired to be actually productive.
Scarblac 11y ago
That bullshit is what we call the economy, much more than 50% of it doesn't need doing. Without a basic income, we need that bullshit though.
jerf 11y ago
If your inbox is full of bullshit, try taking proactive steps to clear it out. If it's a waste of corporate time, you have a basic professional responsibility to do so. If you fail, it is likely because it wasn't as bullshit as you thought. The cogs may be sexy and obviously doing work, but the grease turns out to be vital too. But my "if" isn't for mere rhetoric... you may well succeed, because bullshit does build up too. The only way to find out is to try. I've had it go both ways.

robinwarren 11y ago

I'd like to believe this article, and in fact strive myself to reduce my working hours one day and have more time for all that other good stuff the article mentions. Shorter weeks could bring a lot of benefits with them to those who can enjoy them. Some problems I have with the article however: 1. Working less may well not result in getting more (or the same amount) done. The article mentions a correlation between shorter working hours and higher productivity. As always, correlation does not equal causation. Most likely those countries with shorter work weeks are developed countries which have higher output per capita than less developed ones not because working 40 hours a weeks is more productive than working 80, but that utilising a higher level of technology gives superior output. 2. The idea that because the Dutch apparently spend all their free time riding around on bikes means the brits would if given more free time is a joke. We'd spend it doing the things we enjoy (damaging our livers?), not suddenly become some imagined healthier happier version of ourselves. All in all a pretty poor article I think as a result of the above isssues.

DanBC 11y ago
> The article mentions a correlation between shorter working hours and higher productivity. As always, correlation does not equal causation. Most likely those countries with shorter work weeks are developed countries which have higher output per capita than less developed ones not because working 40 hours a weeks is more productive than working 80, but that utilising a higher level of technology gives superior output. The article is comparing the UK (long working hours, terrible productivity) with Germany (short working hours, very much better productivity). It's unlikely that there's much difference in the technology available. And they both surely know about all the modern methods of organising a workplace. I mostly agree with point 2, but > We'd spend it doing the things we enjoy (damaging our livers?) Maybe the reason so many british people drink too much is because they're working too much, and they're (mis)using alcohol to wind down.
- Alan01252 11y ago
  Purely anecdotal I know, but since giving up my job in the city and going freelance I have indeed spent far less time drinking and far more time exercising. A quick one after work was far too common. I buckled far too easily to peer pressure and conformity. After all it's the done thing to do right? A crap day at work is solved by a pint (or three) after? And a good day at work... well that could be considerably more ;)

branchless 11y ago

Until we have control over land prices via land value tax we will always work a full week. Land prices are set by credit which will expand to fill all labour less food / heating costs. Only when land is cheaper can we opt out of working 40 hours and this will see a general reduction in the average working week. Until then we are all banker bitches.

c1sc0 11y ago
Who is this "we"? Just curious & trying to understand your thinking. Can you elaborate?
cubano 11y ago
There are plenty of places, all over the world, where land is quite cheap, so I don't quite follow your thinking here.
m52go 11y ago
I believe the argument is directed toward salaried workers, so reducing hours would not reduce pay, so land/rent costs are irrelevant.

throwaway7767 11y ago

I changed my working arrangement to 80% recently, so now I work four 8-hour day weeks. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you can make it work. I have wednesday off, so the week is divided into two-day stretches. Not sure if I'm any more productive (maybe), but I'm a lot happier. I suspect some coworkers are going to follow my lead, now that the precedent has been set.

wslh 11y ago
I don't think your plan is for everyone since if you need to be synced with a team not working on Wednesdays is negative in the long run.
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  I never said it was for everyone, but I suspect people magnify the expected issues a lot. Everyone knows I won't be here on wednesdays, so we try to arrange things so I'm not a bottleneck during that time. If some really important deadline shows up, I'll just work the one wednesday and take thursday off instead, it's not a big deal. I haven't needed to yet though. Besides, assuming you're not on a really tiny team, if many parts of your project hinge on one person with no available backup, you have bigger problems related to project management.
  - daveguy 11y ago
    Or you're an early startup. Sometimes hinged-on-one-person is all you have because there are only a few people with some non-overlapping talents.
    - ktistec 11y ago
      The definition of a really tiny team.
    - s73v3r 11y ago
      And? If you know that the person isn't there on Wednesday, you adapt.

briandear 11y ago

The climate change argument is a terrible one. Lower consumption? In the same article it argues that the work would be spread over more people. So, using the article's logic, same amount of productivity, more people providing it. For 50 hours of work, you deploy 2 people, thus causing 2 units of fixed costs to be incurred for the same productivity. Same variable costs, twice the fixed cost. This is just wacky.

henrik_w 11y ago

In the same vein: "Bring back the 40-hour work week" "150 years of research proves that long hours at work kill profits, productivity and employees" http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...

dustingetz 11y ago

Mythical man month actually says the opposite, because even if longer hours have diminishing returns, the organizational overhead from adding people to the team is worse. Maybe the descrepency here is short view (a couple years to build a startup) vs long view (mature organization over an entire business cycle) edit ----- Secondary source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3547965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3547965 Quoting the secondary source: "From a business point of view, long hours by programmers are a key to profitability. Suppose that a programmer needs to spend 25 hours per week keeping current with new technology, getting coordinated with other programmers, contributing to documentation and thought leadership pieces, and comprehending the structures of the systems being extended. Under this assumption, a programmer who works 55 hours per week will produce twice as much code as one who works 40 hours per week. In The Mythical Man-Month, the only great book ever written on software engineering, Fred Brooks concludes that no software product should be designed by more than two people. He argues that a program designed by more than two people might be more complete but it will never be easy to understand because it will not be as consistent as something designed by fewer people. This means that if you want to follow the best practices of the industry in terms of design and architecture, the only way to improve speed to market is to have the same people working longer hours. Finally there is the common sense notion that the smaller the team the less management overhead. A product is going to get out the door much faster if it is built by 4 people working 70-hour weeks (180 productive programmer-hours per week, after subtracting for 25 hours of coordination and structure comprehension time) than if by 12 people working 40-hour weeks (the same net of 180 hours per week). The 12-person team will inevitably require additional managers and all-day meetings to stay coordinated.

Spooky23 11y ago
Not really. It's the unit size that matters. Mythical man month said the ideal basic organization for delivering work output is modeled after a surgical team. If you model after traditional military units, the infantry squad is the equivalent to that team. Under the mythical man month org structure, the atomic unit of work capacity is that surgical team. You can't do more surgery by putting two more surgeons in the OR. But you can add new teams and get more output. I think the analogy works in the military context as well -- a general doesn't ask for <X> more individual soldiers, he asks for more battalions/regiments/divisions.

zekevermillion 11y ago

That working fewer hours ==> increased productivity is also a mathematical tautology. Productivity being a function of output and hours, with output generally being somewhat sticky as hours change.

trebor 11y ago
I think your definition of productivity is off a bit. You need to account for "effective" productivity. My hours might be 40+ but how many of those are truly focused and productive? Hence, working less time with (theoretically) better focus and reduced stress/strain would be more productive.
- zekevermillion 11y ago
  It's not my definition, but an econo-bs definition that involves aggregating $ value output, hours worked. So any study that discusses productivity will always find, at least over any short period, that hours are inverse to productivity as they cannot move in perfect lockstep. However, as an individual, your experience may (and probably should) vary quite a bit from what you might predict in the aggregate!
appleflaxen 11y ago
how do you define tautology?

lordnacho 11y ago

My circle of friends are what you call professionals. They spend an awful lot of time at work, most of it on looking like they're working. There's a fair number of jobs where the work itself is not hard or time consuming, but where a culture has grown where everyone needs to justify their position. This skew incentives; if you're a junior, you end up doing a bunch of little things that can pass as a laundry list of things someone had to do. If you're senior, you can gun for getting credit for grandiose sounding things like "strategy". Junior people end up in meetings all day, which if you're senior, you end up calling everyone into. Everyone sits around until late to demonstrate worth. A lot of these jobs could be done remotely, on any schedule with a sensible number of hours, by just about anyone who can read and write. But because of the culture, they end up being done by the only people who have 100 hours a week, namely singles in their 20s who are just out of university, in some very expensive location. These people then have families to feed and get stuck propagating the same sick culture. I don't see the law as providing a solution. Nobody enforces the 48 hour contract in Britain. When did you last hear about a City sweatshop being liberated by the police? The way to change the culture is actually, believe it or not, startups. Yes working hours can be horrible in startups. But in an environment where a lot of firms are startups, there will be more variation in the working culture. Certain firms are already showing the way forward with flexible hours, remote work, and other family friendly practices, without compromising on quality.

amyjess 11y ago
Or, for that matter, defense contractors. I'm enjoying having a job where not only do I only have to work 8 hours a day, I'm not even allowed to work more if I wanted to.
jaynos 11y ago
>They spend an awful lot of time at work, most of it on looking like they're working. Guilty. If I could switch to a 4 day work week, I'd get the same amount done, but spend a bit less time on Hacker News and other distractions. Hell, let me work a 2 day week and I'd cut out all distractions to finish what was needed.
- 11y ago

rodionos 11y ago

I signed up for a gym that apparently went on an initiative to improve its employee culture. The gym is really nice, not as good as Equinox in Palo Alto, but close enough. So one of the initiatives was to close the gym during holiday seasons so that staff could enjoy vacations schedules just like everyone else. Lo and behold, they closed the gym between December 20 and January 5th. Just when I was planning to catch up on things. They can count on my cancellation. What I'm saying - do you want to live in a world that is functioning 80% of time?

Raphmedia 11y ago
Is this sarcasm? My gym AND my favorite bar were closed all holiday. Why would you be at either of those places? You should be enjoying yourself like everyone else during this time.
- amyjess 11y ago
  Maybe GP's idea of enjoying themselves is going to the gym. And my idea of enjoying myself is going to the bar.
jontayesp 11y ago
We should respect other people's time off if we want others to respect our time off. Is it really so hard to find some other way to exercise for a month?
- rodionos 11y ago
  Why not close supermarkets out of respect for labor unions as well, for 2 weeks. I think the solution lies somewhere else - such as automating humans out of retail and services to the extent possible. For instance, speaking of gym, I would keep the facility open staffed just with with security and reception. Shut down non-core functions: new member office, group sessions, cafe etc.
  - ljw1001 11y ago

vinceguidry 11y ago

I cut my hours down to around 35 a year ago. The reduced stress made me more productive than when I was working 40 hours. If I thought I could get away with chopping it down to 15 hours I would. I don't have a high enough workload to get into flow state most days. Chopping the week down would both make me more productive and allow me to enjoy work even more. But actual tasks don't come in very frequently.

eneifert 11y ago

I've worked the standard 40-? hr/week programming jobs for years and about a year ago I took on a project where I was the only developer and before I took the job I made the decision to work about 20 hours a week. Turns out that 20 wasn't quite enough so I ended up doing 25-30. Looking back I think 25-30 hours is about as efficient as I could have been as I gave the best hours of my day. But when it came to the last month before the release I found I did have to give some more time to get it done on time. Short bursts of working long hours seem to be effective for me, but I also noticed that I needed to take some time off after the project. It's been a great year and I've really enjoyed the other things I was able to do with my time. If you are able it's worth considering even if you take a little less pay.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

moosov 11y ago

I'm interested how much time people generally spend for work, let's have a small poll - https://guaana.com/quiz/hn-how-many-hours-you-work-in-a-week https://guaana.com/quiz/hn-how-many-hours-you-work-in-a-week

eneifert 11y ago
Another great poll would be, how many hours do you feel you are productive in a day.
- moosov 11y ago
  True and this question gives us much more information - https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-productive-in-a-day https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-p...

yason 11y ago

I worked at 50% capacity for some years. It was just great until I chose to want more money for the time being and returned to 70% capacity. That was just great, too, until I realized that I was as productive as a full-time guy without the full-time pay so I eventually went back full-time but trying to keep my output roughly on the same level as I had been getting good reviews all the time. However, last year I got tired of the full hours and a bit depressed because of lots of factors that prevented me from getting things done, and after one realisation I took a month off. Coming back to work I figured I shall be going with working full hours for three months and then taking a month off again. So that comes to three months of spare time and nine months of work annually. The realisation was about working patterns. For a programmer like me, the best productivity comes in bursts so I'd happily do three ~12-hour days and keep two days off as opposed to working the official 7.5 hours (in my country) every day. This has always been so, even as a kid. I could work on something really intensively for a few days and then I needed to do something completely different. The newest realization was that it works on longer timescale too. I can work three months and do my absolute best, and then relax and have time for my own things. This sort of a contract――relax pattern is quite reminiscent to life and nature itself. I feel much at home between the pushes and pulls. I'll see how the first year will turn out to be. Over the years I've also realised that staying productive is mostly just about conserving these important productivity patterns. A lot of what happens at work eats away from these patterns but if you can keep them mostly intact then you'll get productivity by default. That is, assuming that you love programming. Hint: if you're known to occasionally spend hours on hacking something at work at an intensity where nobody can pull you away from it, it's a good sign that you love programming.

givinguflac 11y ago
This sounds amazing and I'm happy you've found a solution that works for you. Unfortunately in my experience this scenario is basically impossible for 98% of people in the US - I assume when you say 'my country' that you are not from the US?
- yason 11y ago
  I work in Europe but I'm actually employed by a very much US company. Practically my whole team is in the USA and other than receiving salary locally I have surprisingly little to do with the European subsidiary. I also work from home a lot because working at the office would be effectively telecommuting, too. Decisions such as my unpaid time off come from the US. My employer is not a particularly conservative company and it helps that my boss is great and if he has to cross-check something with his boss, his boss is great too. And it probably helps to have a somewhat senior position (next milestone: ten years) and having made my mark years ago. But most importantly: getting your shit done. If you can get your shit done you're in a much better position in getting everyone to agree on more flexibility into your job because companies need to get shit done. Wise employers recognize that it's of everyone's benefit, including theirs, to keep productive employees in a loose leash with more freedom of choice rather than impose binary requirements on how and when to do the work. If my employer wasn't wise like this some other company would be enjoying the fruits of my productivity as I would've left them years ago. Even if you work at the very best companies and love your work, work is still always work and it will at some point become too much, meaningless, source of frustration, or any combination of those.

hatmatrix 11y ago

> Productivity – output per working hour – improves with shorter hours. Yes, but total output = number of hours x productivity. So even while productivity diminishes, your total output can increase if you increase number of hours.

cryoshon 11y ago

Most conversations about working fewer hours are really conversations about how much the personal resources of workers can be drawn upon without providing extra pay before there are negative productivity consequences. This article ties in directly with some ideas I've been exploring recently [0] involving personal resources of workers and time/productivity management of workers [1][2]. The concepts of worker personal resource management and worker time management are largely foreign to the places I've worked, much to their detriment. Instead, the strategy could be described as "colloquial management", a mishmash of half-remembered concepts from business school or worse, the playground. If a worker can quantify roughly how much time and energy each task at work will take up, a clearer picture of how to be the most productive in the least amount of time will reveal itself. Employers perpetually hide in the ambiguity of the employees' time and effort, hoping to make a profit out of asking for too much and motivate their workforce by periodically throwing a tiny bone to the most masochistic over-achiever. A tabulated rubric describing to the employer exactly how much time is spent on each task and how much mental and physical energy the task takes relative to the worker's actual capacity for these energies would show exactly how wasteful it is to over-work people. Longer hours deplete worker mental energy and physical energy resources whether or not there is more work being done. Once these resources are depleted, worker efficiency drops precipitously. Additionally, periodically depleting these resources leads to worker burnout. I also suspect that workers resent longer hours whether or not they are necessary, leading to weakened ability to refill their mental energy reservoir due to poorer mental health in general. [0]:http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/04/how-to-survive-late-capitalism-as-a-worker/ http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/04/how-to-survive-late-capitalism... [1]:http://cryoshon.co/2015/12/23/time-management-tips-hot-from-the-hiv-research-lab/ http://cryoshon.co/2015/12/23/time-management-tips-hot-from-... [2]:http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/01/how-to-decide-what-to-prioritize-at-work/ http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/01/how-to-decide-what-to-prioriti...

moosov 11y ago

So, let's be honest - how many hours do you feel you are productive in a day ? https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-productive-in-a-day https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-p...

LesZedCB 11y ago
I'm annoyed that it said the "Most Voted" before I even had the chance to look at the options. That immediately tainted my ability for an unbiased response.

justncase80 11y ago

I recently read an interesting book called Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy. It was written in 1887 but could have been written yesterday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward It was basically about a guy who accidentally travels forward in time (sort of like idiocracy) except he finds himself in an American Socialist Utopia. It was a really good book in general but there was one idea in particular that the author had, which seems pertinent here. Essentially in this utopia everyone gets the same pay check and the opportunity to work. Instead of getting paid more money for a demanding job you get "paid" in less hours. Meaning, all jobs start out at, say 40 hours per week. A job that doesn't get any applicants would decrease the number of hours it demands and correspondingly, the number of open positions would increase. Eventually an unappealing job would decline to a number of hours where someone would be willing to do it. For example, that coal mining job that nobody wants to do? Well it pays the same as every other job but you only need to do it for 4 hours a week. You can work more of course if you want but you get the same paycheck. The rest of that time you can do whatever you want, spend time with your family or do art or whatever. Also, in For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs by Robert A. Heinlein there are some very interesting ideas about American social economics, including a social credit system. Which I believe is a pretty old fashioned idea that we have almost completely forgot about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us,_The_Living:_A_Comedy_of_Customs#Economic_independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us,_The_Living:_A_Comedy_o... This constant back and forth about work hours and minimum wage and the inexorable pull towards wage slavery makes me think its time to explore some completely lateral options.

myth_buster 11y ago
Humans have incredible propensity to acclimatize to the environment. That's the only reasoning I could arrive at when I was poor and saw people around willing to do the most mundane back breaking work than to seek other forms of employment. The lever that is used in society today is desperation as opposed to higher pay per hr in the "Looking Backward" case. The sanitation worker doesn't enjoy their work and no amount of lower hours may compel them to be scarred by the experience. On the other hand desperation and hunger forces them to take what ever job they could salvage. Most of them would would get used to it while some would work their way out.

dawnbreez 11y ago

Fewer hours makes me less burnt-out, yes, but it also means I can't pay bills, which comes with its own set of issues.

J_Darnley 11y ago

Yes. Working less than 0 hours would make me more productive.

xiaoma 11y ago

I just finished reading The Masters of Doom and really got the impression that working more hours made Carmack more productive than nearly everyone else in the field.

kentt 11y ago
Same impression from reading Elon Musk. Though perhaps working that is necessary for outstanding success, but that should necessarily model how we work on normal projects and lead normal lives.
JohnCarmack 11y ago
I find these “shorter work weeks are just as effective” articles to be nonsense, at least for knowledge workers with some tactical discretion. I can imagine productivity at an assembly line job having a peak such that overworking grinds someone down to the point that they become a liability, but people that claim working nine hours in a day instead of eight gives no (or negative) additional benefit are either being disingenuous or just have terrible work habits. Even in menial jobs, it is sort of insulting – “Hey you, working three jobs to feed your family! Half of the time you are working is actually of negative value so you don’t deserve to be paid for it!” If you only have seven good hours a day in you, does that mean the rest of the day that you spend with your family, reading, exercising at the gym, or whatever other virtuous activity you would be spending your time on, are all done poorly? No, it just means that focusing on a single thing for an extended period of time is challenging. Whatever the grand strategy for success is, it gets broken down into lots of smaller tasks. When you hit a wall on one task, you could say “that’s it, I’m done for the day” and head home, or you could switch over to something else that has a different rhythm and get more accomplished. Even when you are clearly not at your peak, there is always plenty to do that doesn’t require your best, and it would actually be a waste to spend your best time on it. You can also “go to the gym” for your work by studying, exploring, and experimenting, spending more hours in service to the goal. I think most people excited by these articles are confusing not being aligned with their job’s goals with questions of effectiveness. If you don’t want to work, and don’t really care about your work, less hours for the same pay sounds great! If you personally care about what you are doing, you don’t stop at 40 hours a week because you think it is optimal for the work, but rather because you are balancing it against something else that you find equally important. Which is fine. Given two equally talented people, the one that pursues a goal obsessively, for well over 40 hours a week, is going to achieve more. They might be less happy and healthy, but I’m not even sure about that. Obsession can be rather fulfilling, although probably not across an entire lifetime. This particular article does touch on a goal that isn’t usually explicitly stated: it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from working longer hours. Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world for that goal.

Thomas_Lord 11y ago

During the Great Depression most people were smart enough to know that reducing hours, without reducing pay, was a good strategy for lowering unemployment. Of course, capitalists tend to dislike the idea of lowering hours this way. For them, it amounts to a reduction in profit. If hours are lowered, capitalists will presumably then invest to improve productivity so that the same output can be produced in fewer hours. When they succeed, their rate of profit improves. Increased productivity without vast new markets opening up means that, in turn, unemployment will again rise. So there is a virtuous cycle: Cut the work week without cutting wages. Wait for productivity to catch up. Cut the work week again. If we had an aggressive policy of cutting hours whenever unemployment is too high, and we do this across the board for all sectors, perhaps before long farms will be more fully worked by robots, and so on. The author of the article wrote: "John Maynard Keynes predicted in the 1930s that by about now, we would all be working a mere 15 hours a week." Keynes did but it was Marx and Engels who predicted in the 19th century that we'd have to fight for hours reduction every step of the way.

rconti 11y ago

"reduced greenhouse gas emissions go hand-in-hand with shorter working hours" ... until you start bringing in all of those additional workers you're promising jobs to...

aceboogy94 11y ago

Not even going to read the article. Doesn't this seem like a "no shit" type of thing. Lest time in the day to get things done so you work faster/harder. Of course you're more productive. I did get a good laugh though since I started this job 4 months ago and literally do 30 min a work a day and fuck off for the rest of the day. I'm now spending my day getting paid to think of others ways to make money online. Haven't came up with anything good yet.

fizixer 11y ago

I would love to work in an environment where I can work at my top productivity 12 hours a day for a couple weeks (including weekends). Then I need to not do anything for a few weeks.

otakucode 11y ago

As would getting rid of open floor plan workspaces, or, even better, working from home. How long until people figure out that business folks really sincerely do not care about productivity? If it would require them to alter their traditional ideas of what the workplace should be like (derived from labor-intensive manufacturing in the first part of the 20th century), the psychological cost is one they are not willing or able to incur.

herbst 11y ago

Worked 100% and 80% so far, any can confirm that i mostly was more productive with 80%.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

Suggestion for people wanting to work a shorter week: Ask you HR department for an employee handbook and read it carefully. I did this in the 1970s (worked for a large defense contractor) and discovered that I only had to work 30 hours a week to get full benefits. Much to the unhappiness of my bosses and coworkers, I "gave myself a 20%" cut in pay and stopped working on Mondays. I tried to be a perfect employee the four days a week that I worked to make up for inconvenience to my bosses and coworkers. I was able to work four days a week in most companies I have worked for, spanning about 50 years. One advantage of part time work is that it gave me extra time to write computer science books and spend extra time with friends and family. But, I left a lot of money on the table taking a 20% pay cut.

andrewchambers 11y ago

I feel like fewer hours works when you don't really care about your job. You basically get burnt out quickly because you aren't motivated.