5 ms·

That's a strong claim: that human capacity for working hours at the outliers never exceeds by more than 25% what the average has converged upon.

cm2012 7y ago
The average that real knowledge workers work per today is probably closer to 6, including meetings. I did a simple poll of HN a while back. Here is the result: https://imgur.com/qdSltlM https://imgur.com/qdSltlM It's a normal distribution around 4-8 hours. There's no correlation with hours worked to seniority. Poll language here: https://strawpoll.com/47x15cf1 https://strawpoll.com/47x15cf1 I specifically included meetings, etc, in the time counted. If you took anecdotes from office workers IRL you'd think everyone was in the top quintile. You can argue that its an unrepresentative sample (people browsing HN) but I'd postulate that people not on HN are using downtime elsewhere. And I'm not convinced the 8+ people are being more productive with their time (as per my busy work note in the other comment). Anecdotally, the people who most complain about being busy seem to be the least impactful.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Wrong imgur link? Shows a random image dump here.
  - cm2012 7y ago
    Fixed!
- haihaibye 7y ago
  OK, so that's a strong claim, that outliers can't work 1.5 times as much as normal. I've worked in GameDev and now science... I've seen them, they exist! Some people work not just harder but longer as well, they are extremely productive compared to average. https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html Richard Hamming says: You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office! What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this. On this matter of drive Edison says, ``Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.'' He may have been exaggerating, but the idea is that solid work, steadily applied, gets you surprisingly far. The steady application of effort with a little bit more work, intelligently applied is what does it.
  - EugeneOZ 7y ago
    > Some people work not just harder but longer as well, they are extremely productive compared to average. Not for long. Overworking always rewards you with burnout.
    - haihaibye 7y ago
      I've only ever felt burnout when I didn't enjoy the job. I once worked at a job I didn't really enjoy, and I worked 8 hours during the day and often 4 hours coding on my side projects. What's the difference between that and coding 12 hours doing something you love?
      - EugeneOZ 7y ago
        I have some experience in it: I was working day-and-night on my own projects at the beginning of my career - gave me a lot of money and experience, but now I know for sure that I could do it with just 20% of efforts - all my best things were written/built after some long rest periods (more than week of rest). All that experience I could learn just in a few weeks but I was too stupid to spend some of my time to read what other people do - I was reinventing all the wheels. After that I was working in a company, 14-16 hours per day, 6 days per week. After 2 years of such work, at the end of the day I had to spend 5-15 seconds to remember names of my wife and son, my address. So I decided to never work more than 8 hours per day, preferably less. And you know what? My earnings increased, my relationships with employers are much better now, my health is MUCH better. So I can say for sure - overworking is a waste of lifetime and gives nothing.
        haihaibye 7y ago
        Good for you. Hamming worked long hours, neglected his wife and now there's a function named after him in every scientific library running billions of times a day. Nobody should be forced to work long hours but if they want to, and it works for them - go for it I say.
        7y ago

cm2012 7y ago

The average that real knowledge workers work per today is probably closer to 6, including meetings. I did a simple poll of HN a while back. Here is the result: https://imgur.com/qdSltlM https://imgur.com/qdSltlM It's a normal distribution around 4-8 hours. There's no correlation with hours worked to seniority. Poll language here: https://strawpoll.com/47x15cf1 https://strawpoll.com/47x15cf1 I specifically included meetings, etc, in the time counted. If you took anecdotes from office workers IRL you'd think everyone was in the top quintile. You can argue that its an unrepresentative sample (people browsing HN) but I'd postulate that people not on HN are using downtime elsewhere. And I'm not convinced the 8+ people are being more productive with their time (as per my busy work note in the other comment). Anecdotally, the people who most complain about being busy seem to be the least impactful.

icebraining 7y ago
Wrong imgur link? Shows a random image dump here.
- cm2012 7y ago
  Fixed!
haihaibye 7y ago
OK, so that's a strong claim, that outliers can't work 1.5 times as much as normal. I've worked in GameDev and now science... I've seen them, they exist! Some people work not just harder but longer as well, they are extremely productive compared to average. https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html Richard Hamming says: You observe that most great scientists have tremendous drive. I worked for ten years with John Tukey at Bell Labs. He had tremendous drive. One day about three or four years after I joined, I discovered that John Tukey was slightly younger than I was. John was a genius and I clearly was not. Well I went storming into Bode's office and said, ``How can anybody my age know as much as John Tukey does?'' He leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, grinned slightly, and said, ``You would be surprised Hamming, how much you would know if you worked as hard as he did that many years.'' I simply slunk out of the office! What Bode was saying was this: ``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. I took Bode's remark to heart; I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don't like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There's no question about this. On this matter of drive Edison says, ``Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.'' He may have been exaggerating, but the idea is that solid work, steadily applied, gets you surprisingly far. The steady application of effort with a little bit more work, intelligently applied is what does it.
- EugeneOZ 7y ago
  > Some people work not just harder but longer as well, they are extremely productive compared to average. Not for long. Overworking always rewards you with burnout.
  - haihaibye 7y ago
    I've only ever felt burnout when I didn't enjoy the job. I once worked at a job I didn't really enjoy, and I worked 8 hours during the day and often 4 hours coding on my side projects. What's the difference between that and coding 12 hours doing something you love?
    - EugeneOZ 7y ago
      I have some experience in it: I was working day-and-night on my own projects at the beginning of my career - gave me a lot of money and experience, but now I know for sure that I could do it with just 20% of efforts - all my best things were written/built after some long rest periods (more than week of rest). All that experience I could learn just in a few weeks but I was too stupid to spend some of my time to read what other people do - I was reinventing all the wheels. After that I was working in a company, 14-16 hours per day, 6 days per week. After 2 years of such work, at the end of the day I had to spend 5-15 seconds to remember names of my wife and son, my address. So I decided to never work more than 8 hours per day, preferably less. And you know what? My earnings increased, my relationships with employers are much better now, my health is MUCH better. So I can say for sure - overworking is a waste of lifetime and gives nothing.
      - haihaibye 7y ago
        Good for you. Hamming worked long hours, neglected his wife and now there's a function named after him in every scientific library running billions of times a day. Nobody should be forced to work long hours but if they want to, and it works for them - go for it I say.
        7y ago