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This is so patently absurd that it goes against around a century's worth of knowledge and scientific research. "Spending more time on a task without rest does n

by fao_ 5y ago

This is so patently absurd that it goes against around a century's worth of knowledge and scientific research. "Spending more time on a task without rest does not get a job done properly" is not only commonly accepted, but it has been put to the test repeatedly in controlled environments and shown to fail, every single time. The first link is filled with early-mid 20th century resources on this subject. The rest are all from the 80s - 00s because people... stopped studying this. Most of the studies covered the same thing, and it very quickly became an uninteresting problem in the field of Clinical Psychology because the answer was almost unanimously, unequivocally, "yes, this makes people output lower quality work product". It's one of the most settled problems in Psychology that exists in the modern day. The only people still researching it are non-profits, and their research serves simply as advocacy, because otherwise businesses won't listen that this extremely, absurdly well-known and well-supported fact is true. https://igda.org/resources-archive/why-crunch-mode-doesnt-work-six-lessons-2005/ https://igda.org/resources-archive/why-crunch-mode-doesnt-wo... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02678378908256939 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0267837890825693... https://synapse.koreamed.org/articles/1125602 https://synapse.koreamed.org/articles/1125602 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40967587 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40967587 Nevertheless, here is something specific to Game Development from 2016: https://www.takethis.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CrunchHurts-TakeThis.pdf https://www.takethis.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CrunchHu... Select quotations from papers quoted in that article: "In a national Australian survey, employee cognition increased for hours worked up to 25 per week. Beyond that, cognitive abilities decreased. By 60-hours of work per week, cognition was lower than people who weren’t working at all (Kajitani, McKenzie, & Sakata, 2016)" "In a large study of 4 US-based companies, productivity losses related to fatigue were estimated to cost the employers $1,967/employee each year (Rosekind, Gregory, Mallis, Brandt, Seal, & Lerner, 2010)." "Lost productivity due to presenteeism (being at work while ill) is almost 7.5 times greater than that lost to absenteeism (Employers Health Coalition, 2000, p. 3)." "In a study of a large, multi-employer, multi-site employee population, health care expenditures for employees with high levels of stress were 46% higher than those for employees who did not have high levels of stress (Goetzel et al., 1998)." "People identified as workaholics were found to have higher rates of ADHD, OCD, anxiety and depression compared with those who weren’t ranked as being addicted to work (Andreassen, Griffiths, Sinha, Hetland, Pallesen, 2016)."

wly_cdgr 5y ago
What I'm curious about is, if you can only be max productive at X for maybe 25-35 hours a week, can you also be max productive at Y and Z for 25 hours each in the same week, and how different do Y and Z have to be from X and from each other for cognitive fatigue not to carry over from one to the others? Cos if you can be max productive at 3 challenging but sufficiently different cognitive/creative tasks for 15-25 hours per week each, that sounds like a super fun, productive, efficient, sustainable, healthy, and balanced life
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Someone please answer this ASAP, ideally with multiple links to high-quality studies on the topic
Kranar 5y ago
I went over your articles and they don't make a particularly strong case against crunch time. The first one tries to use construction work and other physically demanding jobs as a proxy for productivity. I think it's fair that working construction or manufacturing jobs for 60 hours a week for an extended period of time will result in lower productivity. It would be nice if the article had something more specific to software development or some other form of creative or technical endeavor. That said, it also says that crunch time for short periods of time on the order of two to three months does result in increased productivity. The article relating loss of sleep to loss of productivity is fair and robust, it's worth taking seriously. The article relating suicidal ideation with work hours is devastating, but it's hard to see how it relates to your point since the highest percentage of suicidal ideation is among those working less than 40 hours (17.2% suicidal ideation). The study itself is in Korean so I am not able to dig too deep into it but there is a table on p342 which I think is pretty revealing. Basically what it shows is that suicidal ideation is highly correlated to one's level of education; people who have little to no education showing the greatest level of suicidal ideation whereas those with a college education have very little suicidal ideation. My suspicion is that those with little education either work very long hours, or work very few hours which is why suicidal ideation is bimodal. Those with a college education are most likely to work within the 40-60 hours a week which had the lowest suicidal ideation. The research linked to jstor.org is behind a pay wall, but I managed to find another source for it at [1] and it contradicts your point. It specifically states that no difference was found among those working an 84 hour work schedule compared to those working a 40 hour work schedule, and I quote right from the study which I link to below: "In conclusion, working of one's own free will on an 84-hour workweek schedule with physically and mentally demanding job assignments does not necessarily induce greater physiological strain than working with similar tasks on an ordinary 40-hour workweek schedule." It appears the problem with working long hours is not the duration of time, but rather the manner in which those hours are scheduled. The article points out that when people are able to schedule their own extended hours, they perform as well as those who work a given 40 hour schedule, at least as far as their physiology is concerned. All told, the arguments you presented should not be quickly dismissed and need to be respected, but they are not as strong you made them seem and certainly do not establish my point as being patently absurd. On the contrary one of your sources says that crunch time over short periods of time from 2-3 months can produce an increase in productivity, and another one of your sources says that working long hours is fine so long as one is in control of their schedule. It is somewhat strange that you'd present said sources while also claiming that I'm being absurd. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17091202/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17091202/

by fao_ 5y ago

wly_cdgr 5y ago

What I'm curious about is, if you can only be max productive at X for maybe 25-35 hours a week, can you also be max productive at Y and Z for 25 hours each in the same week, and how different do Y and Z have to be from X and from each other for cognitive fatigue not to carry over from one to the others? Cos if you can be max productive at 3 challenging but sufficiently different cognitive/creative tasks for 15-25 hours per week each, that sounds like a super fun, productive, efficient, sustainable, healthy, and balanced life

wly_cdgr 5y ago
Someone please answer this ASAP, ideally with multiple links to high-quality studies on the topic

Kranar 5y ago

I went over your articles and they don't make a particularly strong case against crunch time. The first one tries to use construction work and other physically demanding jobs as a proxy for productivity. I think it's fair that working construction or manufacturing jobs for 60 hours a week for an extended period of time will result in lower productivity. It would be nice if the article had something more specific to software development or some other form of creative or technical endeavor. That said, it also says that crunch time for short periods of time on the order of two to three months does result in increased productivity. The article relating loss of sleep to loss of productivity is fair and robust, it's worth taking seriously. The article relating suicidal ideation with work hours is devastating, but it's hard to see how it relates to your point since the highest percentage of suicidal ideation is among those working less than 40 hours (17.2% suicidal ideation). The study itself is in Korean so I am not able to dig too deep into it but there is a table on p342 which I think is pretty revealing. Basically what it shows is that suicidal ideation is highly correlated to one's level of education; people who have little to no education showing the greatest level of suicidal ideation whereas those with a college education have very little suicidal ideation. My suspicion is that those with little education either work very long hours, or work very few hours which is why suicidal ideation is bimodal. Those with a college education are most likely to work within the 40-60 hours a week which had the lowest suicidal ideation. The research linked to jstor.org is behind a pay wall, but I managed to find another source for it at [1] and it contradicts your point. It specifically states that no difference was found among those working an 84 hour work schedule compared to those working a 40 hour work schedule, and I quote right from the study which I link to below: "In conclusion, working of one's own free will on an 84-hour workweek schedule with physically and mentally demanding job assignments does not necessarily induce greater physiological strain than working with similar tasks on an ordinary 40-hour workweek schedule." It appears the problem with working long hours is not the duration of time, but rather the manner in which those hours are scheduled. The article points out that when people are able to schedule their own extended hours, they perform as well as those who work a given 40 hour schedule, at least as far as their physiology is concerned. All told, the arguments you presented should not be quickly dismissed and need to be respected, but they are not as strong you made them seem and certainly do not establish my point as being patently absurd. On the contrary one of your sources says that crunch time over short periods of time from 2-3 months can produce an increase in productivity, and another one of your sources says that working long hours is fine so long as one is in control of their schedule. It is somewhat strange that you'd present said sources while also claiming that I'm being absurd. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17091202/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17091202/