6 ms·
Work Shorter Hours in Winter
- droppedpkt8080 7y agoListen to your body and mind. Especially in the winter season.
- hirundo 7y agoAt some threshold of productivity difference it becomes cost effective to move employees to the antipodes for a season each year.
- bitwize 7y agoI could go for a stint in New Zealand.
- A_Parr 7y agoCould just move them to the equator once.
- ecoled_ame 7y agoBut what about the environmental cost of burning jet fuel? Something that’s much more important than business productivity..
- remarkEon 7y agoI've been altering my sleep schedule the past couple years to be more in sync with the seasons (more in the winter less in the summer, essentially). This was the first year in a while that work got in the way of that in the winter and it has been miserable. My lifting/workout schedule is out of wack again, and my diet isn't as good (more cravings for bad stuff). Usually I can dial it down during November/December because of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday but I work in a more "global" role now and can't really do that anymore. Definitely considering moving on to something else soon. Can't emphasize the sleep timing thing enough. It's been a game changer, especially in the summer. Productivity through the roof and I am generally in great shape July - September.
- ck425 7y agoDoes this mean you sleep less in Summer? And what latitude do you stay in? I imagine this would be more difficult in Scotland where in winter there's only 7 hours of sunlight but in summer there's over 16 hours of sun.
- firethief 7y agoIs it good for us to need more sleep in winter, or just lost time? Because we can fight this with bright lights and other means of advancing the circadian clock (anything that works for SAD).
- luckydata 7y ago"hacking" your body is recipe for doing damage. Just relax and do what evolution has built you to do, sleep a little more and get ready for spring.
- Robotbeat 7y agoHunt prey on the savannah? Be food-insecure? Live to 60 if you're lucky? We need to understand these things, not just assume whatever is (prehistorically) natural is healthy. Humans didn't particularly evolve to live places where winter days are as short as they are in much of North America and Europe. We hacked our body by inventing clothing, shelter, and fire (fire/cooking is a huge digestive system hack). Sure, I guess there was a little adaption in skin tone to try to compensate for less Vitamin D, but then we invented supplement vitamins (so people of all skin tones can live healthy lives at high latitudes in winter). Hacking the body is probably what most makes us human, and it should be celebrated.
- perl4ever 7y agoCooking is very old and our digestive system has changed as a result. I don't think it's limited to the high latitudes.
- firethief 7y agoThat settles it, I'm throwing away my eyeglasses and not doing anything a bear wouldn't do.
- benibela 7y agoFar more people need eyeglasses now than a few decades ago. It is like a myopia epidemic. That implies that most people who need glasses now could see perfectly well without glasses, if they had grown up in a more natural lifestyle with more outdoor time and less screentime
- zitterbewegung 7y agoFor three weeks this month I either have 3 day weekends or a significant part of the week as time off. It has made me much happier
- nbrempel 7y agoNice! Do you mind me asking what that looks like? Are you an employee or do you set it up as a contractor? I'm curious since I'm building https://30hourjobs.com https://30hourjobs.com and I'm always looking for new resources and companies that support this.
- zitterbewegung 7y agoUh, sorry didn't mention I did this with my own vacation days so it isn't permanent.
- techbio 7y agoToo much of a good thing? Couldn’t find a search bar to narrow down jobs to my preferred locations.
- Vinnl 7y agoI've got a 32 hour contract, so all my weekends are three days. It's great, would highly recommend it if you can afford it, or if you can make small lifestyle changes that would allow you to afford it. (And for nbrempel: I'm an employee at a small startup. Everyone else works 40h, but I asked for a 32h contract with reduced salary and that was fine.)
- blendo 7y agoI also work 32 hours a week, for a major US municipality. I could reduce to 20 hours a week (for half pay) and still receive full health insurance. If you are planning to retire in just a few years (or if you’re a new mother!), do consider 80% work for 80% pay.
- SensateCreature 7y ago
- DanielleMolloy 7y agoI’m more effective and more detail-oriented in dark, cold winter months. If there is bright sunlight outside I get distracted because I want to go for a bike ride, and above 25C I’m just less effective. Daylight lamps sometimes triggered headaches for me. Probably I should move north.
- unglaublich 7y agoJust take a few hours off during lunch. Go for that bike-ride. Tire your body, free your brain. That (with few exceptions) is what keeps me going and happy for years now. Job's that don't allow me this little bit of flexibility, are just not my kind jobs. What's a big happy purse with a sad person to wear it?
- rhn_mk1 7y agoSummer cycles can easily stretch into a few hours. That's a significant amount of time out of the workday already, and they leave the mind thinking about personal stuff as often as about work. Much as this is a nice freedom, it doesn't come for free, even in taking into account the difficult problems worked out while working out.
- jschwartzi 7y agoIf the personal stuff is hampering work stuff, then perhaps it should be a priority for a while, no?
- rhn_mk1 7y agoYou're surely on to something, but then scope creep (of personal stuff) would put some people out of work :) Otherwise, crap jobs exist for a reason, and not everyone can afford what's optimal for them.
- hinkley 7y agoWhen I was more obsessive about team productivity, I saw a biennial pattern on several teams. Late summer was awful for some but not all of us, but most had trouble with the period starting a couple weeks around thanksgiving to the beginning of January (coworkers disappearing at random intervals hampers collaboration). Basic research seemed to do better during this time.
- danielovichdk 7y agoThe peasant's free time extended beyond officially sanctioned holidays. There is considerable evidence of what economists call the backward-bending supply curve of labor -- the idea that when wages rise, workers supply less labor. During one period of unusually high wages (the late fourteenth century), many laborers refused to work "by the year or the half year or by any of the usual terms but only by the day." And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). A thirteenth-century estime finds that whole peasant families did not put in more than 150 days per year on their land. Manorial records from fourteenth-century England indicate an extremely short working year -- 175 days -- for servile laborers. Later evidence for farmer-miners, a group with control over their worktime, indicates they worked only 180 days a year.
- WarDores 7y agoI'd love to see the source for this. I'm interested in early labor arrangements.
- starpilot 7y agohttp://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... is the source of GP. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16656903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16656903 If you search for "medieval peasant" on HN, we've had various articles along these lines over the years.
- milesvp 7y agoKeep in mind this is only true of peasant classes that grow wheat as their primary grain. Rice in stark contrast requires much more labor, and I’ve seen sources suggest 365 days of labor was necessary for peasant the peasant class in south east asia as a result. I’ve also heard theorized that a significant contributor to the perceived cultural differences of northern china and southern china is that north china grew wheat and south china grew rice.
- pts_ 7y agoOverall work culture needs a massive thrust to change from a face to face politicking culture to an efficient, asynchronous, remote culture, especially in these times of extreme weather, considering more than a few workplaces had to switch to remote due to weather exigencies (but they promptly switched back when employee pushback relaxed).