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Wharton professor says America should shorten the work day by 2 hours
- yters 8y agoNo one ever argues we should work more... If both are valid possibilities, this suggests a selection bias regarding the arguments.
- sp332 8y agoNot sure what you mean by "valid". If longer hours lead to less productivity, why would anyone argue for it?
- deckar01 8y agoThere are professions that have 12 hour shift. There are also companies that allow their employees to work 9 hour days and take Friday off every other week. Employees may even prefer these schedules for personal reasons despite potentially increased health risk.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sp332 8y agoYeah I think this is for office workers. It's also useful as a baseline for overtime pay though. Even professions that work 12 hour days still pay overtime over 40/week. We could move that back to 35/week and let workers and employers decide if it's worth cutting back hours or hiring more people to reduce overwork and overtime pay.
- Retric 8y agoMedicine is famous for 12+ hour shifts. However, it's demonstrable that this costs peoples lives as people make more mistakes in hours 8-12+. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4629843/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4629843/
- cdcfa78156ae5 8y agoHospital shifts in the United States should be used as a warning for what not to do: "Halsted promoted several very important concepts and practices in residency training: graded responsibility, a variable and lengthy training period, a pyramidal system of promotion, a resident's ward service, and, most pertinent to this article, a restrictive lifestyle. This last concept of a restrictive lifestyle meant that residents truly resided in the hospital. They received little or no pay, were discouraged from marriage, and worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. At first, the Halstedian model was more the exception than the rule but gradually became more common, especially after World War II when more surgeons wanted to be trained and certified for both the prestige and financial rewards." https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/392566 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/392... The Halsted is William Halsted, a workaholic lifetime cocaine addict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- emodendroket 8y agoIt seems hard to look at the US and argue we aren't working enough.
- yters 8y agoWe are certainly at work for long periods, but are we working enough?
- emodendroket 8y agoProductivity is historically high. Yes.
- majormajor 8y agoI haven't worked at many places that don't argue for more work - doing extra stuff on the side, on-call shifts, there's always something.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago"Remember 40 hours is the minimum we expect of you. Overnight installations are just part of the job."
- learc83 8y agoNo one ever argues we should all try to gain 50 lbs either. Both are valid possibilities.
- yters 8y agoOverweight people apparently live longer.
- coding123 8y agoIs there some kind of skew here? Like 1 million malnourished people in Africa dying fast vs 1 million somewhat overweight software engineers with healthcare benefits? So what happens when you factor in fit people (which the US is probably short of anyway)?
- jchanimal 8y ago“People will need to be paid more for working less time, so they can afford more leisure time.” - Richard Branson giving a glimpse into the actuarial world of the super-rich, where leisure is doled out to peasants for productivity reasons.
- SheinhardtWigCo 8y agoWhere did he say that it’s for productivity reasons?
- MrEfficiency 8y agoHas anyone seen a lazy 'Super Rich' person? I only have 2 super rich(1M+/yr) in my life, and they are always working. I only see them during holidays and the occasional grad party. Their son told me that his dad worked so many hours that he totaled 2 cars in a week due to sleep deprivation. Maybe second generation is lazy, but I'm not sure where this idea that 'super rich' dont work come from.
- ryandrake 8y agoWhen I think of “idle rich” it’s always the 2nd+ generation. Arguably it takes work and lots of luck to get rich, but hardly any work to be born rich and stay rich. When your passive income exceeds your expenses, you have to actively screw something up in order to not get richer and richer automatically.
- lalos 8y agoIf you have 1M+ and still working you are rich. If you have 1M+ plus a constant income stream without working you are wealthy. The idea comes from wealthy people, not people that work hard and get rewarded accordingly.
- taurath 8y agoThat's because you only see the super rich with responsibilities, and those who are likely to be active in workplaces and be responsible for the people and companies under them. There's plenty of idle or retired super rich to fill up the highest end yacht clubs all summer.
- mrfusion 8y agoIn all the workplaces I’ve seen it seems like everyone is on Facebook or reddit half the day. Why not give some of that time back to them?
- TaylorGood 8y agoPartially due to an archaic corporate structure equating desk time to productivity.
- presscast 8y agoThis is called Fordism (in various forms)
- CalRobert 8y agoNot trying to justify slacking off, but I know that some times I just can't get in the zone in the morning. I could have the best of intentions, block FB/reddit in hosts, but I never really did get a whole lot done. It's why meetings are generally best in the morning (in my view), since meetings are mostly a waste anyway. Come 3 or 4:00 though I'm really getting in to the groove, but then the workday's nearly over (and since I wasn't able to arrive late to compensate, I wasn't about to stay until 8 or 9). That was my last job, though. Now I work my own schedule and it's nice. WFH though so focus is even tougher. I find that if I start to tire in the afternooon a workout does wonders..
- derefr 8y ago> It's why meetings are generally best in the morning (in my view), since meetings are mostly a waste anyway. I wonder how much of meetings being "a waste" is from the people involved not being "in the zone."
- wlll 8y agoMy personal experience, 100% of the reasons for meetings being a waste of time was because the meeting was being held for the wrong reasons.
- curuinor 8y agoThis is Adam Grant, who wrote a book about relationships ("Give and Take") and admitted in it that his own relationship with his wife was sometimes rocky because he worked too much?
- Apocryphon 8y agoSounds like empirical verification of his thesis.
- tw1010 8y agoHow much lower must immigration-overhead get before employers feel like half productive US workers are not worth the tradeoff against desperately dedicated internationals, geez louise.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago> desperately dedicated internationals "Cheaper labor willing to work more" is how I read that, and the antithesis of efforts to reduce the work week. I'd prefer US law be tailored to incentivize US companies to employ US sourced labor, where our labor law can further ratchet the work week down (we're already incredibly productive compared to 40 years ago, but wages have been stagnant [1]; we've already earned a reduction in the work week we haven't gotten). I wouldn't want our country to export environmental pollution or labor externalities like child sweatshops, and in the same way, I would want to prevent our multinationals subjugating employees outside of our country's internal labor regulatory framework. [1] https://i.stack.imgur.com/iCTuo.jpg https://i.stack.imgur.com/iCTuo.jpg
- tw1010 8y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 8y agoAnyone can be properly motivated when compensated appropriately, regardless of nationality or location. Somewhat relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8afqoDL3Qsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8afqoDL3Qsk
- mehrdadn 8y agoI think the argument was that at any given level of compensation, being an international worker motivates you more. So the fact that compensation can also motivate people misses the point.
- 8y ago
- sbradford26 8y agoThere is a great Hidden Brain episode that talks about similar topics. Why there is this requirement that people to need to work more when there might not be enough work for them. https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/hidden-brain/e/56087005 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/hidde...
- fpoling 8y agoIn Norway there are also suggestions to shorten the working time to 6 hours. But why not to give an extra day-of instend? Petsonally i strongly prefer the latter as with 6 working hours one still spends substantial time to get to/from work. In Moscow where some people spends over 4 hours just to get to work companies started to offer 10 hours of work time in return to extra day off.
- derefr 8y agoBecause the point isn't to give people more free time; it's to let people go home when they run out of mental energy and wouldn't be doing anything useful for the rest of their workday anyway. Even if you were only working one day a week, you wouldn't be able to do 8 hours of contiguous useful information-work.
- fpoling 8y agoWith 30 hours per week I would really prefer to work for 10 hours 3 days. This way after each work day I will have a day off. This way I can recharge myself sufficiently to have productive 10 hours. As for productivity then I noticed when debugging hard bugs times really fly.
- wlll 8y ago> companies started to offer 10 hours of work time in return to extra day off. That would equate to 18 hour days. Give yourself 2 hours of time spread across the morning and evening to wash, dress, eat etc. you'd be looking at 4 hours sleep a night for 4 nights and no relaxation time. That seems unsustainable.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago14hr days.
- wlll 8y ago"4 hours just to get to work" means it takes 4 hours to get to work, not it takes 2 hours to get to work and 2 hours back. If the parent commenter meant it takes 2 hours to get to work and 2 hours to get back that would have been better said like that, or "4 hours total commute time per day", or similar.
- pentae 8y agoComing from someone like Richard Branson this seems obnoxious. If it's so revolutionary why have you not implemented it in your workplace? As for the New Zealand study thats frequently cited as a 'success' it was only an 8 week trial. It reminds me of universal basic income - populist ideology that appeals to people who want more free shit.
- drzaiusapelord 8y agoThat seems awfully cynical to me. What about weekends? Why not work those? Seems like you're quite the freeloader yourself! The reality is that the work day is based on an arbitrary factory schedule. There's no reason to maintain it. Moving to 6 hours or 4 days absolutely works. Its just going to be less people padding their time on reddit and facebook.
- phil248 8y agoI always thought the primary appeal of a universal income was to eradicate poverty and remove the inefficiencies of the welfare state
- PeterStuer 8y agoAs counter intuitive as it may seem, the universal basic income is not there to 'eradicate poverty', but a final Neo-liberal hail-Mary to save their socioeconomic market ideology snake that has been eating its own tail.
- phil248 8y agoThe universal basic income isn't "there" at all. If our liberal masters are in fact pushing for a universal basic income, they are doing so in such a subtle fashion you'd almost think they opposed it with every fiber of their being.
- 0xfeba 8y ago> It reminds me of universal basic income - populist ideology that appeals to people who want more free shit. Who are these 'I want free stuff' people? I keep hearing them mentioned as some sort of strawman, but no one can really find me any large groups of these people demanding free stuff. Most people realize taxes pay for welfare benefits. It also appeals to people who want to eliminate 20 government and various state agencies for a single entity. We already have many convoluted forms of welfare, why not simplify it? The whole point of a government is to benefit the welfare of its civilians.
- SubiculumCode 8y agoI'd rather have a three-day weekend and work 10 hours in a day.
- stevesearer 8y agoShortening the work day by 25% is an interesting idea in theory though unfortunately it is a pretty big leap for most companies to actually implement. A smaller and more manageable idea which I am trying to instill in my company is to create a culture where it is not necessary to check in while on vacation or once you are off the clock.
- phil248 8y ago"...create a culture where it is not necessary to check in while on vacation or once you are off the clock." In other words, what a job is supposed to be for most people.
- stevesearer 8y agoRight, though unfortunately many companies do not respect these boundaries. Because companies can’t even respect such basic ideas and boundaries with regard to employee wellbeing, it feels like a big leap to all of a sudden care enough to reduce employee hours by 25%.
- pwaivers 8y agoUnfortunately this is not always realistic. In smaller businesses, one person may know a system or process far better than anyone else. So if that person is on vacation, he should be available. You may disagree, but I think this is a good thing that technology enables.
- ghaff 8y agoMaybe not typical, but I take many trips where I am literally not available for at least days or even a week or two at a time. Before ubiquitous Internet, I took a number of trips where I was totally off-the-grid for a month at a time. Didn't work for small companies where I was the only person who knew something (though that seems poor planning in the event that person falls off a mountain someplace) but it's what I did.
- phil248 8y ago
- geniviOS 8y ago22 years ago I worked for company that gave us Friday afternoons off. We worked 8-5pm and on Friday 8-1pm. That gave employees time to schedule doctors or dental appointments, leave early for the weekend, or run errands. Best job schedule I ever had. This kept employees at work and not taking time off mid week. Working with his schedule insured a very productive group of employees.
- sbradford26 8y agoI current work a 9/80 schedule, so every other Friday off. It definitely is convenient. I always schedule appointments on the off Fridays, otherwise I might use them to clean my apartment or hit up a diner that is only open weekday mornings.
- TheAdamist 8y agomy dentist also takes fridays off.... foiled my plan of using off fridays to schedule things.
- sbradford26 8y agoI think that might be a big take away from this. To gain a lot of these benefits more schedule staggering might be needed. If you are done with work 2 hours earlier but every bank or doctors office now closes two hours earlier you won't get any more people.
- standerman 8y agoI believe that most dentists are only open 32 hours a week so that they don't have to provide benefits for their employees. It's an efficient, if uncompassionate, way of running a small business.
- r00fus 8y agoIt's ironic/diabolical that SOP for a benefits provider is to deny benefits to their employees due to the horrendous healthcare/health insurance system.
- vinceguidry 8y agoForget a college professor. Jesus himself could come down from Heaven, bring the Ark of the Covenant out of hiding, join forces with Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, get the endorsement of the Clintons and the Bushes, and we still wouldn't do squat with the workday or workweek. It'll still be 8 hours 5 days a week 100 years from now. Probably even 500. 8 hours is a convenient fiction we tell ourselves. People with no leverage work more or less depending on if they are salaried or hourly. People with leverage and the willingness to deploy it work what they want to work. No employer is going to willingly increase their own costs. The employer-employee relationship grew out of the old serf-lord relationship. Most firms still think of their employees as 'resources'. We've been prophesizing the coming of a brave new world of material plenty and leisure since the Industrial Revolution. It didn't happen then and it's not going to happen now.
- mdpopescu 8y agoYou do realize the 5-day workweek is a relatively new invention even in the US, right? Let alone in my country, Romania, where six days was the rule until 1990 or so.
- vinceguidry 8y agoSure. The point is that the whole thing is a mirage, an illusion, a lie we tell ourselves. Only the very lucky get a 5 day workweek. Everyone else barely scrapes by with however long they're working. It just wasn't a fiction before the "5 day workweek."
- jimmy1 8y agoAlso, once again this is the HN bubble rearing it's ugly head again. Suffice to say here most people have never worked in a customer facing job or manual labor job (food service, delivery, retail, sales, construction, landscaping). Most of my "off" days I spent worrying about whether or not my boss would call me to come in anyways because some lazy ass decided not to come in so they were short staffed -- and I needed the money so couldn't say no. My father before me worked 10-13 hours a day, every day, for years without having a day off. I'll take 8/9-5 with regular weekends, thank you, no complaints for me. What people need here is perspective, to realize just how good you have it. If you feel like it, I bet most people here could leave work right now with relatively no issue, and just make up the work later at some other location, say a coffee shop or something -- even that is a privilege.
- vondur 8y agoI’m fairly certain we could shoten the work week to 4 days and productivity wouldn’t be affected. I’d also surmise the economy would get a large jolt from people having an extra day off and spending more money on entertainment.
- gnulinux 8y agoI'd personally prefer shorter days to 4 day work week. If my employer offered me to work MTThF 9:30 to 5:30, I'd prefer working M--F 9:30 to 3:30. In fact, I'd much prefer working every day but something like 9 to 1. I understand that this wouldn't be optimal for productivity and most people wouldn't like it; but that's sort of what I wanna do. I also have absolutely no problem working in office, office makes me much more productive.
- gaius 8y agoI’d also surmise the economy would get a large jolt from people having an extra day off and spending more money on entertainment That only works if you get 5 days pay for 4 days work and everyone else gets 4 days pay for 4 days work. Because where are you going to spend the money if everyone else is chillaxxing too?
- shoobie1 8y agoThat doesn't make any sense. With that logic you never go anywhere on Saturday or Sunday because since you have Saturday and Sunday off that means everyone in the country does.
- bitxbit 8y agoI think these research based on hours is misguided and useless. What matters is production. Not everyone is in consulting milking billable hours.
- aglavine 8y agoHow these kind of changes were implemented before?
- nhebb 8y agoWhat about truckers? Should they transport 25% less miles per day? Should elementary schooldays be shortened by 25%? Should companies cut their customer service hours by 25%? Should manufacturing companies drop their daily output by 25%? It might work well for some fields (e.g., programming), but for the general labor force this idea doesn't seem like a very well thought.
- aqme28 8y ago6 hour shifts fit into 24 hours just as well as 8 hour shifts do. You just need one more. And how long is elementary school? 8AM-3PM? If teachers weren't often required to do work outside of class, those hours sound pretty reasonable.
- knodi123 8y ago> Should elementary schooldays be shortened by 25%? Mine already did. Early dismissal at around 12:30 every friday. Thank goodness I have a stay-at-home mom for a wife, because I don't know how you're supposed to deal with that and also have a job. Actually I do know- they offer paid daycare on fridays. It's still a little silly.
- dsnuh 8y agoSame here. My kids have early dismissal every Wednesday. The winter and spring breaks are 4 weeks(!!!). They schedule "open house" type events which you are expected to attend monthly at 2:30pm on a Friday. I'm very lucky that I have support from family and an employer that is very accommodating to my schedule, as I am a divorced dad with a full time job.
- augbog 8y agoIt looks like the link to the claim of shortening the work day is based on how schools for children aren't as long as the adult workday so I think your second question is already being applied right now. "In the LinkedIn post, Grant was weighing in on an Atlantic article about the time gap between when school and work days end, a bane for many parents. But it's not the first time Grant has given his stamp of approval to less work with more productivity."
- phendrenad2 8y agoSo if you work at a startup, does that mean 10 hours a day? ;)
- prolikewh0a 8y agoEven just 1 to bring most hourly employees back to 8 hours (7hr + 1hr lunch) instead of 9 hours (8hr + 1hr lunch) would be great. Employers should be forced to pay for 1hr lunches as it's time you're still away from home.
- ergothus 8y agoI was crushed when I discovered the typical 9-5 wasn't typical at all.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago8-5 or 9-6 now!
- fraudsyndrome 8y agoEven worse when you don't factor in travel time so it becomes a 10 hour day not including time to get ready in the morning.
- danieldeklotz 8y agoHere's the problem I have with this argument. If you are bored and disengaged at your job for 8 hours, you are likely to be just as bored and disengaged for 6 hours if all you change is the amount of time you spend there. The better approach would be to get your organization to sit down and diligently work out why so many of their jobs are so boring and disengaging and go after that. If, in the process, we determine that those jobs can be done in fewer hours, then great. Sure, maybe there are some jobs that are inherently boring, but maybe through diligent analysis, we could find ways to minimize the need for that type of work, and maybe create more compelling jobs in the process. But just shortening the work week doesn't seem to address the problems most people have with their jobs. Even at 6 hours a day, we spend enough time at our jobs that job satisfaction is a significant portion of your overall life satisfaction. I'm all for 6 hour work days, but the more important point by far is making the content of our jobs engaging and enjoyable.
- gdubs 8y agoHow about a four day workweek?
- la6470 8y agoNowadays most families have both parents working. This would be so helpful for everyone.
- Dowwie 8y agoHow many hours a day do you think Adam Grant has worked to get to where he is today? How many do you think he'll work to accomplish his next goal? Do you think he's taking his own advice?
- iyw 8y ago6 hour work days 3 or 4 days.
- iyw 8y ago6 hour work days 3 or 4 days a week
- tootahe45 8y agoEmployees/employers are free to negotiate this (and frequently do in tech), I don't see why it would apply for other jobs though.
- fraudsyndrome 8y agoDefinitely free to negotiate at mine but with reduced pay then I start to think whether it's worth it..
- PeOe 8y agoThere are studies which say that people can only focus on work six hours a day. Others say you need time to relax to become better concentrated at work. So why should people be forced to work 8 hours when 6 hours get the same result but the employees are more motivated. I wish it would be common in Germany too...
- wallace_f 8y agoI like to watch some professional gamer's Twitch streams (particularly before bed, it's relaxing) and I've noticed some have expressed that they can only play 3-4 hours of ranked games a day, while others can play 8-10 with success. Point is, it seems like I keep hearing about studies which tell me x,y,z etc; but if humans dropped into a zoo on another planet and a study was done to see how long humans could run, I'd bet you'd get some wild answers until you just let the people who like to run go out and run marathons, ultra marathons, etc. Modern work has some aspect of captivity to it that we certainly subject ourselves to, when in reality we are all individuals with each our own strengths and struggles.
- PeOe 8y agoCould be, but if you are working, you need time to relax and build up new "power". I think for professional gamers, playing is work and free time at once. Maybe that's the point why they are able to focus for a longer period of time.
- caffeineviking 8y agoI work in Munich, our company will try out 6 hour work days to see if it works for us. There is defined a bit of desire (in the startup world) with adopting it. I doubt this will happen with the more classic companies in Munich though.
- JDiculous 8y agoThe whole idea of a standard work week for salaried knowledge workers is stupid. Anybody who's worked a typical 9-5 office job knows that getting your work done faster doesn't give you permission to leave earlier, you're just rewarded with more work and maaybe a promotion with a slight pay bump 1-3 years down the line. There's no incentive to be as productive as possible because you're not adequately rewarded for it (eg. via more time off or increased compensation), and it raises manager expectations such that they now expect this higher output of work going forward even though it might not be sustainable over the long term without burnout. So we enter this comfortable medium where we're productive enough to look busy until 5pm, even if we could've worked at 100% capacity and finished everything by 1pm. Productivity and optimum working hours vary drastically across individuals - Some are most productive in the morning, others are night owls, others work best with a gym break in the middle of the day, others work best from home or coffee shops, others work faster/slower than others. Adults should be allowed to work in whatever manner is most effective for them, not babysat like grade school kids. At the end of the day one should be paid by results. Time may equate to results in a factory or retail store, not in mentally intensive knowledge work. But of course none of this will change because employers have all the leverage, and any sort of organized labor movement has been completely decimated. We're supposed to be happy with the status quo because our ancestors had it worse. Asking for the drastically increased productivity due to technological advancements to translate to increased freedom equates to "entitlement". It's archaic thinking and it needs to die.
- Fjolsvith 8y agoI had a nice work schedule at a company that had the first shift start at 6am and end at 2:30pm. I got a lot of stuff done in my afternoons.