8 ms·

Every human being deserves an average of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of family/leisure, 8 hours of sleep and 2 days a week free. Even a doctor on whom many lives a

Every human being deserves an average of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of family/leisure, 8 hours of sleep and 2 days a week free. Even a doctor on whom many lives are depending. Lives of critical employees are just as valuable as the lives of those who are affected if they don't work harder. The whole "if I don't do this, the project will sink / things will be destroyed" is a self-imposed ransom situation that managers count on.

qq66 13y ago
Where do these numbers come from that you proclaim them to be universal human standards? Why not 7 hours of work? Why not 9?
- dalek_cannes 13y ago
  Don't take the numbers literally, and read it as "I believe every man deserves...". Merely an unscientific three-way split of a 24-hour day, with a liberal sleep quota and a traditional weekend. It's also the most defensible scheme against the old guard. Commuting is a different problem.
  - mnsc 13y ago
    I think that "logical" three way split with weekend was big reason why that battle was won. It seems "right" and a fair divide. But at the same time it is a great obstacle moving forward the logical path to less work hours and more free time. I don't know how the 35 hour work week in France is working out but I feel that they are the anomaly and could just as easily swing back to 39/40 hrs.
    - stuaxo 13y ago
      Of course 8 hours at work is not really 8 hours... it's 8 hours + time for travel. In the 8 hours for 'free time', a lot is taken up by chores etc. I totally agree that working less makes more sense - although we are much more productive, this has not gone into working less, or even paying people more (except those at the top).
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    But why split it in 3? Why not allocate more time for sleep or activities? Why not work more (not all people hate working). Seems like we could come up with a bunch of other arbitrary decisions that would make just as much sense if they were already a part of our culture for the last 100 years.
- henrik_w 13y ago
  There's a good article called "Bring back the 40-hour work week"[1] that seems to indicate that working more than 40 hours per week is less productive. [1] http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...
- curyous 13y ago
  Henry Ford tested his workforce, he discovered that reducing hours to a 5-day 40-hour workweek increased total output.
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    Source? If true - that's really interesting. I wonder what the other outcomes / configurations were.
    - 001sky 13y ago
      On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day and cut shifts from nine hours to eight, moves that were not popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford's productivity, and a significant increase in profit margin (from $30 million to $60 million in two years), most soon followed suit.[10][11][12][13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States
      - joelrunyon 13y ago
        That's really interesting - thanks.
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      Kellogg experimented with a 30-hour work week starting in 1930. The experiment lasted until 1985, though the company started phasing it out in 1946. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg_Company Thye found (in the 1930s) that the reduced work week paid for itself in reduced workplace accidents. However, after WW2 companies moved to employer-paid accident insurance instead of paying out-of-pocket workman's comp, and as a result, the cost savings would be socialized anyway. This tilted the equation back toward an 8-hour day, at least from management's perspective, though employees remained staunchly opposed to the longer day for a generation. What ultimately killed it was a status thing: by the 70s and 80s, employees on the 30-hour work week felt like they were "slackers", and didn't have the same social status as those who worked harder.
- ptr 13y ago
  It seems people in Norway deserve just 7 hours of work/day.
christianmann 13y ago
Not to discount this, but where does commute fall into this breakdown?
- ojbyrne 13y ago
  Good point, because in the US at least, people will willingly sacrifice their leisure time for more money (longer commutes allowing for cheaper housing being just one example).
  - jonny_eh 13y ago
    And yet studies show that next to being below the poverty line, nothing correlates higher with unhappiness than commute times. http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/03/30/commuting/ http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/03/30/commuting/
    - sdoering 13y ago
      Funny thing. I commute not that much (1hr) per workday. I use this time, to listen to relaxing music and reading fiction (and sometimes popular science). After the commute I have to walk 10 minutes, to arrive at my front door. I have to walk through a little park. Really. For me commuting and then walking is my way of coming down. Of letting go of the work, so that I arrive at home free of all the stuff, that happens in front of my two screens. But that is just anecdotal evidence - and it might just work for me. But on the topic, I would add one point: Regularly working more than the paid 8 hours might show another thing: You just are not fit for the work you do. You are not good enough, as you cannot get it done in 8 hours. By the way is that a signal that you send to your boss, if you work longer regularly.
      - rjurney 13y ago
        A driving commute makes you unhappy because it is exhausting, and you lose that time. It sounds like your commute is on transit, which isn't so bad... you can read, so that time is still yours. I'd love an hour transit commute. I like to read!
caycep 13y ago
That being said, I think a lot of physician work takes a lot of personal connections - it's not easily "handed off". There's probably a way to make this more efficient/manageable, but it's probably not trivial.
joelrunyon 13y ago
> "deserves" This word always makes me coil. Everytime I hear it - I assume someone is trying to sell me something.
- davorak 13y ago
  Does this case warrant the recoil?
  - talkingquickly 13y ago
    I'd argue it does. Deserve as mentioned in the parent implies some sort of generally accepted human 'right'. The length of the work day/ work week is fairly arbitrary and definitely up for debate, there are great arguments that actually a three day working week would make far more sense [1]. Imo describing a simple convention in terms of deserve discourages debate and so should be avoided. Something broader such as `a human being deserves not to have to work every waking hour to live` would have been more acceptable as it separates the underlying principle from arbitrary conventions. [1] http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours
- dasil003 13y ago
  In this case someone is trying to sell you the idea of work-life balance. I guess you can take it or leave it, but it doesn't seem that slimy or nefarious to me.
  - joelrunyon 13y ago
    I'm fine with it defined on the individual level - but somehow making a blanket statement about all people regardless of culture of culture on something as subjective as "work-life balance" seems a bit broad.
    - dasil003 13y ago
      That's fine for privileged artisan-class freelancers like talented software engineers are today. What about the powerless working class though?
Ygg2 13y ago
I'd say 3 days a week free would also be fine.
- talkingquickly 13y ago
  Or maybe four; http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours
com2kid 13y ago
By what natural law is this true? By what will of nature or physics are you deriving your statements? Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that way. People around the world deserve not to live in fear of their government killing them. Women deserve not to live in fear of being raped. Children should not live in fear of abuse. Yet untold millions starve, are beaten, tortured, abused, have lives of unimaginable torment and despair, and you have the gall to talk about how the privileged few should not work so hard? How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached.
- felipehummel 13y ago
  Not really a natural law, but medicine from time to time finds out that working too much or sleeping less or not having time for pleasure/fun/family hurts your health.
- Brakenshire 13y ago
  > Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that way. Deserves in the same sense that they deserve the other natural rights and protections which are afforded them within our societies. I wouldn't be quite so prescriptive about the number of hours, but being able to work in a decent and humane manner, without damaging your health, and with space for an outside life, is significantly more important than many other natural rights. > How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached. Work, for the vast majority of people, has no such aim, and no such outcome. If anything, people in the developed world are often in direct competition with their counterparts elsewhere.
- shubb 13y ago
  I think you just argued that first world tech workers should not act like they are entitled to downtime because of warcrimes. I'm not saying they should feel entitled, but that isn't very rational.
- BillyMaize 13y ago
  As I have said in other threads, just because someone else in another part of the world has a worse life than you does not mean yours is OK. If person A gets beaten 3 times a day and person B only gets beaten 1 times a day, does person B not have the right to say they deserve better? Person A might be in a worse position, but perhaps both people deserve a better life. >Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that way. Living as we would in nature would be a HORRIBLE way to live human life. The way things "naturally" would occur is irrelevant, we build societies and develop science to improve our lives to where we all want them to be.
JonnieCache 13y ago
Who decided on the 5:2 ratio, where does he live and who wants to join me on an expedition to find him and physically punish him? We deserve at least 5:4. Personally I think 4:5 would be nice. I'd get a lot done.
- LaGrange 13y ago
  Labor unions, to replace the alternative, which was no weekend at all. Just like the 8h day. The numbers didn’t come from nothing, but certainly didn’t come from any great calculation. It came from how much we (the workers) could wrestle away from industrialists. Google scholar searches (not very extensive, feel free to repeat) weakly suggests that cutting work hours may have a net positive effect on economy, so as long as I’m operating from the worker perspective, it actually makes sense to not settle on the current ratio. It’s like settling on your wage because you once got a raise 105 years ago.
stuaxo 13y ago
http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours New Economics Foundation report on a 21 hour work week
rwallace 13y ago
Especially a doctor on whom many lives are depending, because so many of those lives are being lost to fatigue-induced mistakes. I know someone who almost died that way; she had a healthy distrust of hospitals, watched carefully what was going on, and noticed just in time when an exhausted doctor was about to give her the wrong injection which would probably have killed her. The doctor just mumbled "oh, sorry," and shambled on her way, perhaps to kill some other patient at a later date.
collyw 13y ago
My girlfriend is a doctor, and tells me stories about when she had recently qualified, and working silly hours. It seems crazy that a high responsibility job like that, where peoples lives depend on it, and it is expected to be done by sleep deprived junior doctors. She is Mexican, but as far as I can tell it is not restricted to that country.
- hkarthik 13y ago
  My friends who have become doctors here in the US say the same thing. 1st and 2nd year residents (the low paid gigs they get right after med school) often work 24 hour shifts pretty regularly with only 6-8 hours between shifts. I think the main reason is there are two few doctors for too many patients. The reasons for that situation are a separate topic all together.

qq66 13y ago

Where do these numbers come from that you proclaim them to be universal human standards? Why not 7 hours of work? Why not 9?

dalek_cannes 13y ago
Don't take the numbers literally, and read it as "I believe every man deserves...". Merely an unscientific three-way split of a 24-hour day, with a liberal sleep quota and a traditional weekend. It's also the most defensible scheme against the old guard. Commuting is a different problem.
- mnsc 13y ago
  I think that "logical" three way split with weekend was big reason why that battle was won. It seems "right" and a fair divide. But at the same time it is a great obstacle moving forward the logical path to less work hours and more free time. I don't know how the 35 hour work week in France is working out but I feel that they are the anomaly and could just as easily swing back to 39/40 hrs.
  - stuaxo 13y ago
    Of course 8 hours at work is not really 8 hours... it's 8 hours + time for travel. In the 8 hours for 'free time', a lot is taken up by chores etc. I totally agree that working less makes more sense - although we are much more productive, this has not gone into working less, or even paying people more (except those at the top).
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  But why split it in 3? Why not allocate more time for sleep or activities? Why not work more (not all people hate working). Seems like we could come up with a bunch of other arbitrary decisions that would make just as much sense if they were already a part of our culture for the last 100 years.
henrik_w 13y ago
There's a good article called "Bring back the 40-hour work week"[1] that seems to indicate that working more than 40 hours per week is less productive. [1] http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...
curyous 13y ago
Henry Ford tested his workforce, he discovered that reducing hours to a 5-day 40-hour workweek increased total output.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  Source? If true - that's really interesting. I wonder what the other outcomes / configurations were.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    On January 5, 1914, the Ford Motor Company took the radical step of doubling pay to $5 a day and cut shifts from nine hours to eight, moves that were not popular with rival companies, although seeing the increase in Ford's productivity, and a significant increase in profit margin (from $30 million to $60 million in two years), most soon followed suit.[10][11][12][13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day#United_States
    - joelrunyon 13y ago
      That's really interesting - thanks.
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    Kellogg experimented with a 30-hour work week starting in 1930. The experiment lasted until 1985, though the company started phasing it out in 1946. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg_Company Thye found (in the 1930s) that the reduced work week paid for itself in reduced workplace accidents. However, after WW2 companies moved to employer-paid accident insurance instead of paying out-of-pocket workman's comp, and as a result, the cost savings would be socialized anyway. This tilted the equation back toward an 8-hour day, at least from management's perspective, though employees remained staunchly opposed to the longer day for a generation. What ultimately killed it was a status thing: by the 70s and 80s, employees on the 30-hour work week felt like they were "slackers", and didn't have the same social status as those who worked harder.
ptr 13y ago
It seems people in Norway deserve just 7 hours of work/day.

christianmann 13y ago

Not to discount this, but where does commute fall into this breakdown?

ojbyrne 13y ago
Good point, because in the US at least, people will willingly sacrifice their leisure time for more money (longer commutes allowing for cheaper housing being just one example).
- jonny_eh 13y ago
  And yet studies show that next to being below the poverty line, nothing correlates higher with unhappiness than commute times. http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/03/30/commuting/ http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/03/30/commuting/
  - sdoering 13y ago
    Funny thing. I commute not that much (1hr) per workday. I use this time, to listen to relaxing music and reading fiction (and sometimes popular science). After the commute I have to walk 10 minutes, to arrive at my front door. I have to walk through a little park. Really. For me commuting and then walking is my way of coming down. Of letting go of the work, so that I arrive at home free of all the stuff, that happens in front of my two screens. But that is just anecdotal evidence - and it might just work for me. But on the topic, I would add one point: Regularly working more than the paid 8 hours might show another thing: You just are not fit for the work you do. You are not good enough, as you cannot get it done in 8 hours. By the way is that a signal that you send to your boss, if you work longer regularly.
    - rjurney 13y ago
      A driving commute makes you unhappy because it is exhausting, and you lose that time. It sounds like your commute is on transit, which isn't so bad... you can read, so that time is still yours. I'd love an hour transit commute. I like to read!

caycep 13y ago

That being said, I think a lot of physician work takes a lot of personal connections - it's not easily "handed off". There's probably a way to make this more efficient/manageable, but it's probably not trivial.

joelrunyon 13y ago

> "deserves" This word always makes me coil. Everytime I hear it - I assume someone is trying to sell me something.

davorak 13y ago
Does this case warrant the recoil?
- talkingquickly 13y ago
  I'd argue it does. Deserve as mentioned in the parent implies some sort of generally accepted human 'right'. The length of the work day/ work week is fairly arbitrary and definitely up for debate, there are great arguments that actually a three day working week would make far more sense [1]. Imo describing a simple convention in terms of deserve discourages debate and so should be avoided. Something broader such as `a human being deserves not to have to work every waking hour to live` would have been more acceptable as it separates the underlying principle from arbitrary conventions. [1] http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours
dasil003 13y ago
In this case someone is trying to sell you the idea of work-life balance. I guess you can take it or leave it, but it doesn't seem that slimy or nefarious to me.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
  I'm fine with it defined on the individual level - but somehow making a blanket statement about all people regardless of culture of culture on something as subjective as "work-life balance" seems a bit broad.
  - dasil003 13y ago
    That's fine for privileged artisan-class freelancers like talented software engineers are today. What about the powerless working class though?

Ygg2 13y ago

I'd say 3 days a week free would also be fine.

talkingquickly 13y ago
Or maybe four; http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours

com2kid 13y ago

By what natural law is this true? By what will of nature or physics are you deriving your statements? Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that way. People around the world deserve not to live in fear of their government killing them. Women deserve not to live in fear of being raped. Children should not live in fear of abuse. Yet untold millions starve, are beaten, tortured, abused, have lives of unimaginable torment and despair, and you have the gall to talk about how the privileged few should not work so hard? How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached.

felipehummel 13y ago
Not really a natural law, but medicine from time to time finds out that working too much or sleeping less or not having time for pleasure/fun/family hurts your health.
Brakenshire 13y ago
> Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that way. Deserves in the same sense that they deserve the other natural rights and protections which are afforded them within our societies. I wouldn't be quite so prescriptive about the number of hours, but being able to work in a decent and humane manner, without damaging your health, and with space for an outside life, is significantly more important than many other natural rights. > How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached. Work, for the vast majority of people, has no such aim, and no such outcome. If anything, people in the developed world are often in direct competition with their counterparts elsewhere.
shubb 13y ago
I think you just argued that first world tech workers should not act like they are entitled to downtime because of warcrimes. I'm not saying they should feel entitled, but that isn't very rational.
BillyMaize 13y ago
As I have said in other threads, just because someone else in another part of the world has a worse life than you does not mean yours is OK. If person A gets beaten 3 times a day and person B only gets beaten 1 times a day, does person B not have the right to say they deserve better? Person A might be in a worse position, but perhaps both people deserve a better life. >Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that way. Living as we would in nature would be a HORRIBLE way to live human life. The way things "naturally" would occur is irrelevant, we build societies and develop science to improve our lives to where we all want them to be.

JonnieCache 13y ago

Who decided on the 5:2 ratio, where does he live and who wants to join me on an expedition to find him and physically punish him? We deserve at least 5:4. Personally I think 4:5 would be nice. I'd get a lot done.

LaGrange 13y ago
Labor unions, to replace the alternative, which was no weekend at all. Just like the 8h day. The numbers didn’t come from nothing, but certainly didn’t come from any great calculation. It came from how much we (the workers) could wrestle away from industrialists. Google scholar searches (not very extensive, feel free to repeat) weakly suggests that cutting work hours may have a net positive effect on economy, so as long as I’m operating from the worker perspective, it actually makes sense to not settle on the current ratio. It’s like settling on your wage because you once got a raise 105 years ago.

stuaxo 13y ago

http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours New Economics Foundation report on a 21 hour work week

rwallace 13y ago

Especially a doctor on whom many lives are depending, because so many of those lives are being lost to fatigue-induced mistakes. I know someone who almost died that way; she had a healthy distrust of hospitals, watched carefully what was going on, and noticed just in time when an exhausted doctor was about to give her the wrong injection which would probably have killed her. The doctor just mumbled "oh, sorry," and shambled on her way, perhaps to kill some other patient at a later date.

collyw 13y ago

My girlfriend is a doctor, and tells me stories about when she had recently qualified, and working silly hours. It seems crazy that a high responsibility job like that, where peoples lives depend on it, and it is expected to be done by sleep deprived junior doctors. She is Mexican, but as far as I can tell it is not restricted to that country.

hkarthik 13y ago
My friends who have become doctors here in the US say the same thing. 1st and 2nd year residents (the low paid gigs they get right after med school) often work 24 hour shifts pretty regularly with only 6-8 hours between shifts. I think the main reason is there are two few doctors for too many patients. The reasons for that situation are a separate topic all together.