4 ms·

"no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact" tell that to a medical resident...or just about any in-hospital physician, for that matter. ma

"no one is able to work productively for 8 hours, that's a fact" tell that to a medical resident...or just about any in-hospital physician, for that matter. many, many people work long shifts and are entirely productive.

jeremyis 12y ago
I've read that Henry Ford came up with the 8 hour work week after doing extensive testing[1]. I think the difference here is that assembly line work is not "creative". So you can do "non-creative work" for longer (8 hours I guess is optimal)... But it seems like this thread is talking about pure creative - e.g. difficult coding - time. I'm not sure where you draw the line though. Is HTML and CSS mindless enough that it's "not creative"? What about basic unit testing? I also don't understand how to reconcile this with the countless startup stories of how you spend all your time working... Even PG said he "used to work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week." and "During this time you'll do little but work, because when you're not working, your competitors will be. My only leisure activities were running, which I needed to do to keep working anyway, and about fifteen minutes of reading a night."[2]. Perhaps he actually did four hours of "intense creative" and the rest was mundane (he does in that same essay claim only 10% of the work was "technically interesting"). [1] http://blog.bufferapp.com/optimal-work-time-how-long-should-we-work-every-day-the-science-of-mental-strength http://blog.bufferapp.com/optimal-work-time-how-long-should-... [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
e12e 12y ago
I've not worked at a hospital, but I've seen people in somewhat similar circumstances: military exercises, working as leaders at a youth camp -- and while they all get the job done, it's always been clear that they'd do a better job if they had more free time/more sleep -- in short they can work productively (under high strain/stress) for more than 8 hours -- but they'd do better work if they could work fewer hours. I'd be surprised if the rate of errors didn't go down with work hours (to a certain point) at hospitals as well. And/or patient satisfaction went up. To put this into (made up) numbers, if we assume that a software architect works either 12, 8 or 4 hours a day, and that at 12 hours a day produces on average 200 "valuedollars" per hour, that's 2400 vd/day. Is it really a stretch to claim that you could, on average, do 3 times better if you only had 4 hours, rather than 12? Paying 3 people 600/hour to work 4 hours a day, you'd get 3 times the value/day (note: note value/pay -- but we all know deadlines are important in projects).
- robaato 12y ago
  There's plenty of research on this, e.g. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a487169.pdf http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a487169.pdf For an alternative take: http://theenergyproject.com/blog/sleep-as-a-competitive-advantage http://theenergyproject.com/blog/sleep-as-a-competitive-adva...
syvlo 12y ago
Humm, I have to disagree with that. My girlfriend is a medical student from France and did some internship in the US. She is always annoyed by the fact that in the US, the medical employees (especially the residents) work way more than in France, but are also a lot less productive than in France. I do not like to generalize from examples, but saying that they are entirely productive is not true. Also medical professions cannot be easily compared to engineering (not the same type of work, and most of the time the issues are more important in their field (human lives at stakes...)).
Confusion 12y ago
No, they are not. They make more mistakes than during shorter shifts, especially towards the end of the shift. An aggravating factor is that they actually believe they can still perform as well after 16 hours of working. This is all well known from research, it's just that it's hard to break ingrained traditions. Look at how long it took for doctors to start washing their hands, after research decisively proved it reduced the number of deaths and complications. In a few decades we will look back on this time and shake our heads at the ridiculousness of doctors, of all people, working 16 hours straight.
mapt 12y ago
"Entirely productive" - but would you look at the mistake rate for the first two hours on-shift versus the last two hours on-shift? If you do, don't tell anybody. They'd probably quit. The collective ego and conscience of the medical profession, the way we treat them, tells them they should be unfallable, and mistakes are not only unforgiveable, but actionable. Medical residents should need no sleep whatsoever, should have no downtime et cetera, et cetera. If we gave them a sane number of hours per shift (by the standards of the rest of the economy) and a reasonable margin to communicate patient status from shift to shift (rounds twice or thrice a day), we would increase labor requirements by 25%. If we gave them a sane number of hours per week, we would increase labor requirements by another 100%. Work standards initiatives that have been successful include "Towards an 80 hour workweek" (down from 90+): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours#Toward_an_80_hour_work_week http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours#Tow... Do you want your heart surgeon to have worked 80 hours in the last week, and 24 hours in the last day? Myself, I wouldn't want my doctor using the same public road network as I do, in such conditions. How many people has this policy killed?

jeremyis 12y ago

I've read that Henry Ford came up with the 8 hour work week after doing extensive testing[1]. I think the difference here is that assembly line work is not "creative". So you can do "non-creative work" for longer (8 hours I guess is optimal)... But it seems like this thread is talking about pure creative - e.g. difficult coding - time. I'm not sure where you draw the line though. Is HTML and CSS mindless enough that it's "not creative"? What about basic unit testing? I also don't understand how to reconcile this with the countless startup stories of how you spend all your time working... Even PG said he "used to work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week." and "During this time you'll do little but work, because when you're not working, your competitors will be. My only leisure activities were running, which I needed to do to keep working anyway, and about fifteen minutes of reading a night."[2]. Perhaps he actually did four hours of "intense creative" and the rest was mundane (he does in that same essay claim only 10% of the work was "technically interesting"). [1] http://blog.bufferapp.com/optimal-work-time-how-long-should-we-work-every-day-the-science-of-mental-strength http://blog.bufferapp.com/optimal-work-time-how-long-should-... [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

e12e 12y ago

I've not worked at a hospital, but I've seen people in somewhat similar circumstances: military exercises, working as leaders at a youth camp -- and while they all get the job done, it's always been clear that they'd do a better job if they had more free time/more sleep -- in short they can work productively (under high strain/stress) for more than 8 hours -- but they'd do better work if they could work fewer hours. I'd be surprised if the rate of errors didn't go down with work hours (to a certain point) at hospitals as well. And/or patient satisfaction went up. To put this into (made up) numbers, if we assume that a software architect works either 12, 8 or 4 hours a day, and that at 12 hours a day produces on average 200 "valuedollars" per hour, that's 2400 vd/day. Is it really a stretch to claim that you could, on average, do 3 times better if you only had 4 hours, rather than 12? Paying 3 people 600/hour to work 4 hours a day, you'd get 3 times the value/day (note: note value/pay -- but we all know deadlines are important in projects).

robaato 12y ago
There's plenty of research on this, e.g. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a487169.pdf http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a487169.pdf For an alternative take: http://theenergyproject.com/blog/sleep-as-a-competitive-advantage http://theenergyproject.com/blog/sleep-as-a-competitive-adva...

syvlo 12y ago

Humm, I have to disagree with that. My girlfriend is a medical student from France and did some internship in the US. She is always annoyed by the fact that in the US, the medical employees (especially the residents) work way more than in France, but are also a lot less productive than in France. I do not like to generalize from examples, but saying that they are entirely productive is not true. Also medical professions cannot be easily compared to engineering (not the same type of work, and most of the time the issues are more important in their field (human lives at stakes...)).

Confusion 12y ago

No, they are not. They make more mistakes than during shorter shifts, especially towards the end of the shift. An aggravating factor is that they actually believe they can still perform as well after 16 hours of working. This is all well known from research, it's just that it's hard to break ingrained traditions. Look at how long it took for doctors to start washing their hands, after research decisively proved it reduced the number of deaths and complications. In a few decades we will look back on this time and shake our heads at the ridiculousness of doctors, of all people, working 16 hours straight.

mapt 12y ago

"Entirely productive" - but would you look at the mistake rate for the first two hours on-shift versus the last two hours on-shift? If you do, don't tell anybody. They'd probably quit. The collective ego and conscience of the medical profession, the way we treat them, tells them they should be unfallable, and mistakes are not only unforgiveable, but actionable. Medical residents should need no sleep whatsoever, should have no downtime et cetera, et cetera. If we gave them a sane number of hours per shift (by the standards of the rest of the economy) and a reasonable margin to communicate patient status from shift to shift (rounds twice or thrice a day), we would increase labor requirements by 25%. If we gave them a sane number of hours per week, we would increase labor requirements by another 100%. Work standards initiatives that have been successful include "Towards an 80 hour workweek" (down from 90+): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours#Toward_an_80_hour_work_week http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours#Tow... Do you want your heart surgeon to have worked 80 hours in the last week, and 24 hours in the last day? Myself, I wouldn't want my doctor using the same public road network as I do, in such conditions. How many people has this policy killed?