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Spaniards are less productive, constantly tired: Spain is in the wrong time zone
- juusto 13y agoHogwash. What about the higher productivity of Scandinavians? They shift back and forth on "time-zones" due to the constant change of amount of light because of the very hash winter. Sometimes with as few as 3 hours of light, not sun, but still maintain the same level of productivity. Currently, Spanish primetime stretches until after midnight <- Well what about making less time for primetime? Or less siestas?
- TsiCClawOfLight 13y agosome of it is due to the really harsh climate. But I guess most of it might be lifestyle.. but then again, wouldn't that be due to climate in the first place?
- wavefunction 13y agoHarsh climate? The summers where I live are regularly 100+ days of 39C. I don't think it's down to the climate.
- Dewie 13y agoI don't think the climate in general is harsh. Maybe for very inland locations, and some places in the northernly parts.
- leugim 13y agoThe productivity problem is not about the timezone is about the here all the people work normally 9-13 break until 15 and 15-19 more or less so we spend all the day in office because not all the peole can take the lunch in home. Pd: yes, we take siesta because we have longs timebreaks.
- asabjorn 13y agoTo back up this argument china should be in five different time zones because the country is so wast, but it is in one time zone and does not seem to suffer from productivity problems.
- opminion 13y agoThe so called (in English) "siesta", which in Spanish would be just "the lunch break", is a compulsory long break in many professions. Many would rather close shop at 5 or 6 than at 9pm, but everyone has to do it at once or it won't work. The solution most would expect to succeed is a legal one: I know of a dev shop that could easily switch to a 9-5 schedule, as many banks and civil servants have already, but it has to keep a split timetable just because management wants it so.
- wslh 13y agoI know successful people who took advantage and opened his own shop earlier and closed later.
- acchow 13y ago> Many would rather close shop at 5 or 6 than at 9pm Wait, how does extending lunch by an extra hour push closing time by 3-4 hours?
- yebyen 13y agoI guess everyone is slow after a two hour lunch having three or six cervezas for an extra hour or two of the afternoon? I don't know, that's a good question.
- Oletros 13y ago> I guess everyone is slow after a two hour lunch having three or six cervezas for an extra hour or two of the afternoon? What are you talking about?
- yebyen 13y agoI'm not accusing anyone of being an alcoholic, I just know what I would be doing if I had a mandatory 2-hour lunch every day! And it's not eating (probably not as much as I do now) EDIT: On the chance that my ambiguous grammar has got you tied... in the right order, I would be a bit slow for an hour or two in the afternoon, after having three or six cervezas.
- workhere-io 13y agoWhat about the higher productivity of Scandinavians? They shift back and forth on "time-zones" What? We have summer time (DST) and regular time - just like most other European countries. If you're talking about Scandinavia's location relative to its time zone, most of Scandinavia is within its "natural" time zone [1]. And your "very hard winter" and "as few as 3 hours of light" comments mostly apply to the very Northern (and sparsely populated) parts of Norway and Sweden. The Danish climate is more like the UK's. The distance from the northernmost part of Scandinavia to the southernmost part is like the distance from Minnesota to Texas, so obviously the climate varies a lot. 1) http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/images/world_time2.gif http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/images/world_t...
- Dewie 13y agoI live 60 degrees north (which is not north enough to be Northern Norway) and the winters do get quite dark. It also gets compounded if you live in a valley, which many/most in my part of the country do. And living near the coast, the climate is so mild that the winter sees little in the way of snow, which makes it even more dark since there is no snow to reflect the sunlight.
- workhere-io 13y agoSure, but Denmark's part of Scandinavia, too, and the weather here isn't quite as bad as the commenter suggested.
- Dewie 13y agoDid I try to contradict that? My comment was a response to the claim that winters aren't really that dark except for the northern parts of Norway and Sweden, which is not my experience.
- bbwharris 13y agoI lived in Spain for about a year. Blame it on the time zone, but inherently the culture is "work to live" not "live to work". I miss it and sincerely cherish that country and all the great people in it.
- opminion 13y agoYet nobody I know in Spain likes the compulsory 2 hour lunch breaks.
- adnam 13y agoFew places do this anymore, it's more common in the south which is insanely hot at mid day
- Dewie 13y agoIn my experience it is quite normal in Madrid, which does get blazingly hot in the summer but is pretty okay the rest of the year.
- adrinavarro 13y agoDepends on what you're looking at. If it's public-facing, then, yes, but only because demand at those times is very low. Otherwise, for office work, lunch breaks are short. European style.
- mdpye 13y agoIt is a serious burden if you work in an office which is air conditioned anyway. The most serious problem being that the long (and it was generally 3 hours in the south where I was staying) break is intended for sleeping. Problem is, most people now don't live 5 minutes walk from their place of work, so there isn't time to get home and sleep before returning to the office. But there is nothing else to do. Everyone else is on the same break. You can't run your errands for the day because everywhere else is shut as well. As a student living 5 minutes from my classes, I found the dual sleep (usually about 4am til 8am and 1pm til 3pm) with the main meal in the middle of the day to be fantastic, but for modern working conditions and commuters it is a serious problem.
- leugim 13y ago"Everyone in Spain feels jetlagged all the time" Hahahahaah, I live in Spain and that is bullshit.
- w1ntermute 13y agoThis isn't a Spanish problem, it's a Southern European problem. You cannot be lazy and expect to lead a good life - the math just won't add up.
- adnam 13y agoSpain has average productivity compared to the rest of the European Union, so you're plain wrong. Check out the data ok oecd.org yourself, if you're not too lazy.
- jdimov 13y agoBullshit. There is exactly zero statistical correlation between the amount of work you do and the quality of life you lead. Furthermore, it is extremely hypocritical to make comments like yours.
- mjn 13y agoIn Europe the correlation is rather in the other direction. Greeks work the most hours/year on average, and Belgians work the fewest [edit: oops, actually Dutch [1]]. Here in prosperous Denmark, the official workweek is 37 hours, not 40, and the limit is taken seriously. When we do joint projects with Southern Europeans, they seem to regularly be working weekends and evenings, and get paid less than us for it. [1] http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS
- Oletros 13y agoAnd we can start talking about the real worked hours and not the official ones
- mjn 13y agoThat's using real worked hours (well, estimates of them by the OECD). In Greece's case the official hours are actually not particularly high for people with regular jobs, just the usual 40 hours/week. But the actual worked hours are quite high, because of the prevalence of unpaid overtime in the private sector, and the large number of mom-and-pop shops that can't afford to hire employees, so work the shop themselves from open 'til close. This contrasts with Northern European work culture, which tends to work exactly the official workweek and not a minute more. I misremembered Belgium, though; it was the Netherlands that's the lowest in the OECD. Here is the list: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS
- chasing 13y agoIt looks like about half of the countries in that little map are off of their natural time zone by at least as much as Spain. Including basically all of the former Soviet Union, except the Ukraine and Baltics. And Iceland. And, well, France, which mostly overlaps Spain time-zone-wise.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoIn Russia we also don't have daylight worth speaking of - most of the time of year. Nothing to synchronize to.
- Jacqued 13y agoIndeed, it seems like an incomplete explanation at the very least. France largely overlaps Spain in terms of [latitude] longitude, is in the same time zone, shares some of the traditions cited in the article (long lunch break, midddle-of-the-morning and middle-of-the-afternoon coffee breaks, dinner at 8pm), and has one of the highest productivities in the world, in line with the US, Japan or the UK (above if you count it per hour worked). So maybe they should look for an explanation somewhere else Edit : fixed latitude instead of longitude
- mynegation 13y agoYou most definitely meant "longitude", not "latitude", right?
- Jacqued 13y agoI did, you're right. Thanks for pointing that out !
- wslh 13y agoI love to talk about prejudices and cultural biases. I always recommend an excellent paper: Cultural Biases in Economic Exchange http://m.nber.org//papers/w11005 http://m.nber.org//papers/w11005 (free download)
- outside1234 13y agoHa! I thought they were going to say that Spain should be in the Eastern Timezone of the United States. Seriously, the Spaniards I worked with were up until 2am regularly - and the country eats dinner at 10pm at the earliest - yet get up for a 9am workday. Is there any doubt why they are tired?
- Dewie 13y agoNot to mention partying to 6 am. But staying up 'till 2 am is not necessarily a problem if they take a midday nap.
- leugim 13y agoI also have to say in Spain almost 2/3 of PIB is generated by services sector (Turism is a big thing here) and the rest by manufacturing industries and primary sector (Fishing and agriculture) and in services sector the productivity is minor than in the other sector because you can't improve your production with technichal changes, you have to hire more people with the same productivity. Pd: If you see the stats is not really a problem. The differences aren't so big.
- ashray 13y agoThis I found a bit condescending: This extra-long workday has given us some fun Spanish cultural quirks, like the 9 p.m. dinner hour and the two-hour lunch break. I know that folks in the US, Germany and some other countries eat at or around 6pm but I also know that folks in most of Latin America, India, Thailand, etc. eat at 8-9pm or so. So why is this considered a 'cultural quirk' ? A little culturally insensitive I must say.
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- sker 13y ago> I also know that folks in most of Latin America, India, Thailand, etc. eat at 8-9pm or so I can only speak for Mexico, but the reason for this is that dinner is not the most important/bigger meal of the day, lunch is. Mexico: medium breakfast, big lunch, small dinner. USA: small breakfast, medium lunch, big dinner. Over here people will just have a sandwich or two for dinner, that's why it doesn't matter if it happens at 8 or 9 p.m.
- astine 13y agoLunch as the primary meal of the day is a staple of Mediterranean cultures. Italy, Spain, Greece, et. al., all have large lunches and small dinners. Latin America is also in many ways a Mediterranean culture so many Latin and Hispanic countries share in that trait.
- sentenza 13y agoIn every university cantina in Spain you will find a multiple-course lunch. Better yet, (at least in Madrid) every institute has its own cantina, so you can decide between different lunch options: "Wanna go to physics today?", "No, I'll eat at the Ophtamologists".
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- steveplace 13y agoDid the Spanish government commission a study to place their economic woes on a time zone issue?
- ollysb 13y agoThis feels incredibly hand wavy. I moved to Spain from the UK last year and one of the huge benefits for me is that the hours feel far more natural. I tend to go out fairly late in the evenings (usually 1 or 2), get up earlyish (around 9:30) and then crash for a bit in the afternoon. I naturally tend towards this cycle but obviously in the UK it's a bit difficult (no siesta and the pubs tend to shut about 11:30). With regards to time spent at home, the Spanish seem to spend a far greater portion of their normal lives socialising. I really don't see how more time spent at home could be listed as a positive thing. In the UK it makes me think of long cold winters when no one wants to leave the house because it's so miserable outside.
- Lily23 13y agojust as Jeremy implied I am impressed that you can get paid $7702 in 4 weeks on the internet. Read Full Article ............ http://bit.ly/1aL7N9L http://bit.ly/1aL7N9L Open HOMEtab for more details
- codex 13y agoIn this age of software and asynchronous communication, there is little reason to have so few time zones, or to have one 1d timezones rather than 2d. It would be nice if local time continuously skewed a few seconds each day (sometime around three a.m. perhaps) such that sunrise was always at seven a.m. Most (non-cave-dwelling) humans evolved to rise with the sun.
- michas 13y agoTimezones were introduced exactly to prevent the very thing that you propose: need to adjust clocks a few seconds each day. It was just too annoying.
- codex 13y agoSure, but software clocks could adjust themselves automatically based on your GPS location. Almost nobody uses a mechanical clock anymore.
- batbomb 13y agoThe problem isn't where you are at, it's where you are going.
- codex 13y agoEasy enough to calculate your destination time via software as well. I wonder if 2D time zones would reduce cancer incidence by encouraging consistent melatonin production via a daylight synchronized sleep cycle.
- jaimebuelta 13y agoI love when they talk about the magical properties of time zones. No, moving the clock an hour up or down is not going to have a huge effect into a country in the long term. That's magical thinking.
- picrow 13y agoI'm living amongst a few Spaniards at the moment. And they are literally the laziest people I have ever met. They DO, in fact, sleep whenever they get the chance. 12+ hours a day at least once a week. They have a poisonous victimised mentality second only to the Greeks. The economy they have is the economy they deserve; and this goes for all Mediterraneans.
- olmo 13y agoI'm Spanish and I've software company. Here is my schedule: 9-14 morning work 14-15 lunch 15-18 evening work 18-20 (aprox) partners-only work Dunno in construction or other sectors, in consultancy we work more hours and I've never seen anybody taking siesta on labor days. Some people make siesta when 2 of the following 3 things are true: Summer + Old people + Sunday.
- olmo 13y agoI don't think that changing the time zone is going to make any productivity or 'family time' change. We work a lot of hours because there are more employees than companies. Market laws. I think, however, that changing the time zone will improve our reputation. Currently we're at sync with sun time, but from the point of view of a tourist it means that we have lunch, get out of work, have dinner and go to bed at least 1 hour later than on 'normal countries', and this contributes to the fame of 'lazy country'. Once we change the hour, after a period of adaptation, we will do everything pretty much the same but S&P will come an say... hey! look at Spain, now they deserve credit because they go to bed earlier, we should lend them money!. Finally, we currently go into work at 9 as everyone else, but for us the sun is at 8. Nobody realizes because we have more sun hours (in winter).
- crazygringo 13y agoWhat? This doesn't even begin to make sense, just like the article says in the beginning -- Americans are an hour off for the majority of the year, and it doesn't seem to be harming anything. If there's any kind of special Spanish fatigue, I can't believe it has anything to do with their timezone -- it's the entire cultural thing of sleeping/relaxing at siesta, and staying up late. Spaniards don't work late because of anything to do with the natural setting of the sun, it's the fact that they take a three-hour "lunch"! Yet somehow the article neglects to mention this at all...
- sentenza 13y agoHm. This does not quite agree with my experience. A few years back, when I lived in Madrid, I noticed that this city has an insane grind. To me it looked as if the culture there started off with a "begin work early, have siesta, end work late" setup, but at some point along the way they lost the siesta part. Many Spaniards work really hard all day, all week, then (at least the young ones) party just as hard all weekend. Repeat ad infinitum. Don't know about the time zone though. That seems dubious.
- gordaco 13y agoRight. Siesta on working days? I don't think I've ever meet anyone whose job allows it, except teachers.
- abalone 13y agoThe siesta does not reduce the number of hours worked in the day. It just shifts them. If you actually read the article you'd know that the complaint is that they work too much and that it's because their timezone is out of sync with daylight. Which is what distinguishes their situation from ours here with DST -- we're actually better sync'd with daylight because of it.
- Oletros 13y ago> it's the entire cultural thing of sleeping/relaxing at siesta, I'm Spanish, from Barcelona and I don't know anybody that sleeps or relaxes at "siesta" time. Well, I don't know about siesta time. > it's the fact that they take a three-hour "lunch"! Also, I don't know anybody that takes a three hour lunch
- donall 13y agoThis article ignores the fact that one region in Spain (the Canary Islands) operates on the "correct" time zone. I have lived both in the Canaries and in mainland Spain and I can tell you that there is no appreciable difference in the attitudes described by the article. Spain's problems (if indeed they are problems) are cultural and cannot be attributed to hours of sunlight. This is clearly just an example of the Spanish parliament looking for a scapegoat for the woeful state of the Spanish economy.
- olmo 13y agoActually Canary Islands is also in the wrong time zone. Spain should be in 0 (and France, Moroco, Argelia, etc...) just as UK. Portucal could chose, since it just in the middle, currently is 0. Canary Islands should go to -1. http://www.travel.com.hk/region/time_95.jpg http://www.travel.com.hk/region/time_95.jpg Anyway, I think it will be a good marketing movement for Spain, as I've explained, so we get rid of a little bit of the lazy country fame.
- peterjmag 13y agoFunny, I was just thinking about this earlier today. Specifically, I was comparing the sunrise/sunset times for A Coruña, Spain and Niš, Serbia, two cities that share a time zone despite over 1500 miles between them. (I chose these cities because they're at approximately the same latitude near one of the widest points of the CET zone.) Their respective sunrises are a whole two hours apart: http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/a-coruna.html http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/a-coruna.html http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/nis.html http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/nis.html The Central European time zone could probably use a bit of fragmentation. A more extreme example is China, which has been "unified" under one single time zone since 1949, despite the fact that the country's over 3000 miles wide. That makes for a four hour difference in sunrises between east and west. Of course, this is a bit problematic for the west: http://www.wisegeek.org/why-does-china-have-only-one-time-zone.htm http://www.wisegeek.org/why-does-china-have-only-one-time-zo...
- peteratt 13y agoAs a Spaniard living in Chicago, I can't stress enough how AWESOME it is to have the time zone we have in Spain and how much I HATE when Sun sets at 4:30 PM in Winter in Chicago, despite being at comparable latitudes. All my Spanish friends here agree with me, if it was up to us we'd change Chicago's timezone to EST! And also for the other side, sun setting at 10 PM in Summer is Happiness with a capital H. Go ask German or British summer tourists, go ask them :) If that was true that Spaniards are less productive and constantly tired (which is not, as many of HNers have pointed out) it is not because of the time zone. It's simply because of the toxic work culture that exists in most places, more oriented towards "appearance" of working hard, and that means long hours more than plain simple productivity. Again, don't get the wrong picture. Most companies in Spain do not have siesta, do not stop three hours for lunch, though 45 min-1 hour is usually the norm and I find it better than having lunch at the desk US-style. The problem is that working from 9 AM to 7 PM is the . If you don't do that, even if you're a top performer, you'd be suggested to "improve yourself", simply because people are envious of your sane working hours. So they say, envy is Spain's national sin.
- Willyfrog 13y agoThis is the real problem. The only way to cope with that is having a job you like. My week is by contract 40 hours long, but I do at least 45 and 50 is not uncommon either.
- gordaco 13y agoSpaniard here. I'd rather have the extra sun hour in my free time than having daylight at my first hour in the office. I don't want it to be dark at 17:00 in winter.