
Working fewer hours would make us more productive - cpeterso
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/09/fewer-working-hours-doctors-eu-negotiations
======
yason
I worked at 50% capacity for some years. It was just great until I chose to
want more money for the time being and returned to 70% capacity. That was just
great, too, until I realized that I was as productive as a full-time guy
without the full-time pay so I eventually went back full-time but trying to
keep my output roughly on the same level as I had been getting good reviews
all the time.

However, last year I got tired of the full hours and a bit depressed because
of lots of factors that prevented me from getting things done, and after one
realisation I took a month off. Coming back to work I figured I shall be going
with working full hours for three months and then taking a month off again. So
that comes to three months of spare time and nine months of work annually.

The realisation was about working patterns. For a programmer like me, the best
productivity comes in bursts so I'd happily do three ~12-hour days and keep
two days off as opposed to working the official 7.5 hours (in my country)
every day. This has always been so, even as a kid. I could work on something
really intensively for a few days and then I needed to do something completely
different. The newest realization was that it works on longer timescale too. I
can work three months and do my absolute best, and then relax and have time
for my own things.

This sort of a contract――relax pattern is quite reminiscent to life and nature
itself. I feel much at home between the pushes and pulls. I'll see how the
first year will turn out to be.

Over the years I've also realised that staying productive is mostly just about
conserving these important productivity patterns.

A lot of what happens at work eats away from these patterns but if you can
keep them mostly intact then you'll get productivity by default. That is,
assuming that you love programming. Hint: if you're known to occasionally
spend hours on hacking something at work at an intensity where nobody can pull
you away from it, it's a good sign that you love programming.

~~~
graeme
How do you manage these? I'm most productive that way too. But the trouble is
I'll keep going longer than I should, and then I just get tired and
unproductive and not sensible enough to rest.

Are there signs you look for to leave it on a high note, or do you use hard
time limits?

~~~
kolinko
Kindof related - one famus writer had a habit of always ending his work day
mid-paragraph and mid-semtence.

That way he had an easy start next day.

Perhaps it's also a good method to work as a programmer? Don't fight to close
that ticket before the end of the day?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
My old colleage Mike Rowe wisely said "Always leave it compiling". That way
you could go home thinking, that was probably the right fix. Then the next day
you could go in and see that it wasn't, and pick up where you left off.

------
justncase80
I recently read an interesting book called Looking Backward, by Edward
Bellamy. It was written in 1887 but could have been written yesterday.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looking_Backward)

It was basically about a guy who accidentally travels forward in time (sort of
like idiocracy) except he finds himself in an American Socialist Utopia. It
was a really good book in general but there was one idea in particular that
the author had, which seems pertinent here.

Essentially in this utopia everyone gets the same pay check and the
opportunity to work. Instead of getting paid more money for a demanding job
you get "paid" in less hours. Meaning, all jobs start out at, say 40 hours per
week. A job that doesn't get any applicants would decrease the number of hours
it demands and correspondingly, the number of open positions would increase.
Eventually an unappealing job would decline to a number of hours where someone
would be willing to do it.

For example, that coal mining job that nobody wants to do? Well it pays the
same as every other job but you only need to do it for 4 hours a week. You can
work more of course if you want but you get the same paycheck. The rest of
that time you can do whatever you want, spend time with your family or do art
or whatever.

Also, in For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs by Robert A. Heinlein there
are some very interesting ideas about American social economics, including a
social credit system. Which I believe is a pretty old fashioned idea that we
have almost completely forgot about.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us,_The_Living:_A_Comedy_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Us,_The_Living:_A_Comedy_of_Customs#Economic_independence)

This constant back and forth about work hours and minimum wage and the
inexorable pull towards wage slavery makes me think its time to explore some
completely lateral options.

~~~
myth_buster
Humans have incredible propensity to acclimatize to the environment. That's
the only reasoning I could arrive at when I was poor and saw people around
willing to do the most mundane back breaking work than to seek other forms of
employment.

The lever that is used in society today is desperation as opposed to higher
pay per hr in the "Looking Backward" case. The sanitation worker doesn't enjoy
their work and no amount of lower hours may compel them to be scarred by the
experience. On the other hand desperation and hunger forces them to take what
ever job they could salvage. Most of them would would get used to it while
some would work their way out.

~~~
justncase80
I believe convincing people to do "bad jobs" by means of desperation is named
Wage Slavery. Besides being immoral and degrading, its pretty inefficient. On
the other hand, some jobs that need to be done plain out unpleasant. How do
you convince someone to do it?

In the Looking Backwards scenario the incentive to do one of the "bad jobs"
isn't being paid more per hour, everyone is paid the same, its working less
hours which I think is subtly different.

~~~
anon4
Less hours at the same pay is more money per hour. But there is a subtle
difference - cleaning toilets for 2 hours is much different mentally than
cleaning toilets for 8 hours. And you can then go look after dogs at the
shelter for 4 more hours and get two paychecks.

~~~
justncase80
Yes, its more money per hour of work but its not more money per week in this
system.

------
throwaway7767
I changed my working arrangement to 80% recently, so now I work four 8-hour
day weeks. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you can make it work.

I have wednesday off, so the week is divided into two-day stretches.

Not sure if I'm any more productive (maybe), but I'm a lot happier. I suspect
some coworkers are going to follow my lead, now that the precedent has been
set.

~~~
wslh
I don't think your plan is for everyone since if you need to be synced with a
team not working on Wednesdays is negative in the long run.

~~~
throwaway7767
I never said it was for everyone, but I suspect people magnify the expected
issues a lot.

Everyone knows I won't be here on wednesdays, so we try to arrange things so
I'm not a bottleneck during that time. If some really important deadline shows
up, I'll just work the one wednesday and take thursday off instead, it's not a
big deal. I haven't needed to yet though.

Besides, assuming you're not on a really tiny team, if many parts of your
project hinge on one person with no available backup, you have bigger problems
related to project management.

~~~
daveguy
Or you're an early startup. Sometimes hinged-on-one-person is all you have
because there are only a few people with some non-overlapping talents.

~~~
ktistec
The definition of a really tiny team.

------
golergka
I agree that shorter hours are likely to be beneficial, but why are people
trying to achieve this by passing a law?

I think that this can be achieved with a softer approach. Imagine that when
you sign up for a job, you select how many days per week do you want to work,
from 3 to 6, with proportionate wage scale. That you can select what hours do
you want to work. That it's easy to change this arrangement while you're
already working.

Now, why is this fantasy not a reality? Not because of laws; laws allow this.
But:

1) These creative arrangements require non-standard agreements, and a lot of
additional bureaucracy, because in a lot of countries, all the bureaucracy
machinery allows it, but is really not optimized for use-cases like that.

This can be solved through careful policy work, removing necessary paperwork,
streamlining processes, etc.

2) Economies of scale. Having a full-time 40h/week employee that gets X money
as salary is cheaper than having 2 half-time 20h/week employees that get X/2
money because of management overhead, cost of their office spaces and other
stuff like that.

This would be solved if 20h/week employees would understand this and get X/2-Y
money. Also, a lot of these scale issues are being solved by modern world
anyway, because we're learning to telecommute, work together in more effective
ways, automate management tasks, etc.

3) Culture.

And I think this is the most important one. It's not in the laws, it's in the
people's heads. We need to convince people that one person wants to dedicate
work 60 hours per week, spend free time that's left on professional education
and succeed in his career, and another is quite OK to work for 20 hours per
week, get less promotions, learn less new stuff and earn less money, and spend
all his free time with his kids. We need to stop labeling the first of these
persons as "successful" and second one as a "failure": it's OK to be both of
them. And they need to be able to work in the same office, on the same
project, fully understanding difference in each other's views and being
mutually acceptful.

I don't know how to do that, but it seems that this cultural change is already
slowly happening. Still, advancing it would bring the real change much faster
and more effectively than writing new laws.

~~~
lmm
The only way to change culture is through law. Look at seatbelt use: decades
of public awareness campaigns did nothing, but once it became a legal
requirement people switched.

Also laws are the way to prevent a race to the bottom. If it's legal to work
longer hours people will, and everyone else will do so to compete with them.
Compare OHSA, see [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/) .

~~~
icebraining
_Also laws are the way to prevent a race to the bottom. If it 's legal to work
longer hours people will, and everyone else will do so to compete with them._

Oh, is that why almost everyone earns minimum wage?

~~~
jhall1468
Every full-time job is 40 hours, which is the maximum allowed without having
to pay overtime.

I think it's fair to assume companies will do _anything_ for increased
productivity. That has nothing to do with wages.

~~~
golergka
Full-time means nothing more than 40-hour week. Your logic is self-
referential.

~~~
lmm
Very few jobs offer 35- or 30-hour weeks (which would still be called full-
time). There are part-time jobs that have much shorter hours, or often no
contractual hours, but they're a different thing.

------
eneifert
I've worked the standard 40-? hr/week programming jobs for years and about a
year ago I took on a project where I was the only developer and before I took
the job I made the decision to work about 20 hours a week. Turns out that 20
wasn't quite enough so I ended up doing 25-30.

Looking back I think 25-30 hours is about as efficient as I could have been as
I gave the best hours of my day. But when it came to the last month before the
release I found I did have to give some more time to get it done on time.
Short bursts of working long hours seem to be effective for me, but I also
noticed that I needed to take some time off after the project.

It's been a great year and I've really enjoyed the other things I was able to
do with my time. If you are able it's worth considering even if you take a
little less pay.

------
lordnacho
My circle of friends are what you call professionals. They spend an awful lot
of time at work, most of it on looking like they're working.

There's a fair number of jobs where the work itself is not hard or time
consuming, but where a culture has grown where everyone needs to justify their
position. This skew incentives; if you're a junior, you end up doing a bunch
of little things that can pass as a laundry list of things someone had to do.
If you're senior, you can gun for getting credit for grandiose sounding things
like "strategy". Junior people end up in meetings all day, which if you're
senior, you end up calling everyone into. Everyone sits around until late to
demonstrate worth.

A lot of these jobs could be done remotely, on any schedule with a sensible
number of hours, by just about anyone who can read and write. But because of
the culture, they end up being done by the only people who have 100 hours a
week, namely singles in their 20s who are just out of university, in some very
expensive location. These people then have families to feed and get stuck
propagating the same sick culture.

I don't see the law as providing a solution. Nobody enforces the 48 hour
contract in Britain. When did you last hear about a City sweatshop being
liberated by the police?

The way to change the culture is actually, believe it or not, startups. Yes
working hours can be horrible in startups. But in an environment where a lot
of firms are startups, there will be more variation in the working culture.
Certain firms are already showing the way forward with flexible hours, remote
work, and other family friendly practices, without compromising on quality.

~~~
jaynos
>They spend an awful lot of time at work, most of it on looking like they're
working.

Guilty. If I could switch to a 4 day work week, I'd get the same amount done,
but spend a bit less time on Hacker News and other distractions. Hell, let me
work a 2 day week and I'd cut out all distractions to finish what was needed.

~~~
pc86
Are you going to work for 80% or 40% of your current salary?

~~~
nucleardog
I will get the same amount of work done for the same amount of salary, given
that my employer has obviously already agreed that it is a fair amount to be
compensated for the level and quality of my output.

------
robinwarren
I'd like to believe this article, and in fact strive myself to reduce my
working hours one day and have more time for all that other good stuff the
article mentions. Shorter weeks could bring a lot of benefits with them to
those who can enjoy them. Some problems I have with the article however:

1\. Working less may well not result in getting more (or the same amount)
done. The article mentions a correlation between shorter working hours and
higher productivity. As always, correlation does not equal causation. Most
likely those countries with shorter work weeks are developed countries which
have higher output per capita than less developed ones not because working 40
hours a weeks is more productive than working 80, but that utilising a higher
level of technology gives superior output.

2\. The idea that because the Dutch apparently spend all their free time
riding around on bikes means the brits would if given more free time is a
joke. We'd spend it doing the things we enjoy (damaging our livers?), not
suddenly become some imagined healthier happier version of ourselves.

All in all a pretty poor article I think as a result of the above isssues.

~~~
DanBC
> The article mentions a correlation between shorter working hours and higher
> productivity. As always, correlation does not equal causation. Most likely
> those countries with shorter work weeks are developed countries which have
> higher output per capita than less developed ones not because working 40
> hours a weeks is more productive than working 80, but that utilising a
> higher level of technology gives superior output.

The article is comparing the UK (long working hours, terrible productivity)
with Germany (short working hours, very much better productivity).

It's unlikely that there's much difference in the technology available. And
they both surely know about all the modern methods of organising a workplace.

I mostly agree with point 2, but

> We'd spend it doing the things we enjoy (damaging our livers?)

Maybe the reason so many british people drink too much is because they're
working too much, and they're (mis)using alcohol to wind down.

~~~
Alan01252
Purely anecdotal I know, but since giving up my job in the city and going
freelance I have indeed spent far less time drinking and far more time
exercising.

A quick one after work was far too common. I buckled far too easily to peer
pressure and conformity. After all it's the done thing to do right? A crap day
at work is solved by a pint (or three) after? And a good day at work... well
that could be considerably more ;)

~~~
robinwarren
What is the cause of the reduced drinking? Reduced hours worked meaning you're
happier? Or no work colleagues to lead you astray?

~~~
Alan01252
The reduction in hours has allowed me to do activities which overall make me
happier and less inclined to drink.

I now do a lot of running and bodyweight fitness. Drinking decreases my
performance in those two activities and so I tend not to drink as I get far
greater happiness from dropping a second in my minutes per mile than I do from
having three pints during the week.

------
dustingetz
Mythical man month actually says the opposite, because even if longer hours
have diminishing returns, the organizational overhead from adding people to
the team is worse. Maybe the descrepency here is short view (a couple years to
build a startup) vs long view (mature organization over an entire business
cycle)

edit -----

Secondary source:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3547965](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3547965)

Quoting the secondary source:

 _" From a business point of view, long hours by programmers are a key to
profitability. Suppose that a programmer needs to spend 25 hours per week
keeping current with new technology, getting coordinated with other
programmers, contributing to documentation and thought leadership pieces, and
comprehending the structures of the systems being extended. Under this
assumption, a programmer who works 55 hours per week will produce twice as
much code as one who works 40 hours per week. In The Mythical Man-Month, the
only great book ever written on software engineering, Fred Brooks concludes
that no software product should be designed by more than two people. He argues
that a program designed by more than two people might be more complete but it
will never be easy to understand because it will not be as consistent as
something designed by fewer people. This means that if you want to follow the
best practices of the industry in terms of design and architecture, the only
way to improve speed to market is to have the same people working longer
hours. Finally there is the common sense notion that the smaller the team the
less management overhead. A product is going to get out the door much faster
if it is built by 4 people working 70-hour weeks (180 productive programmer-
hours per week, after subtracting for 25 hours of coordination and structure
comprehension time) than if by 12 people working 40-hour weeks (the same net
of 180 hours per week). The 12-person team will inevitably require additional
managers and all-day meetings to stay coordinated._

~~~
Spooky23
Not really.

It's the unit size that matters. Mythical man month said the ideal basic
organization for delivering work output is modeled after a surgical team. If
you model after traditional military units, the infantry squad is the
equivalent to that team.

Under the mythical man month org structure, the atomic unit of work capacity
is that surgical team. You can't do more surgery by putting two more surgeons
in the OR. But you can add new teams and get more output. I think the analogy
works in the military context as well -- a general doesn't ask for <X> more
individual soldiers, he asks for more battalions/regiments/divisions.

------
harryf
Interesting somewhat related talk from Tony Schwarz in the Leading @ Google
series -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tke6X2eME3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tke6X2eME3c)

"Demand is relentlessly rising. Our capacity is not keeping pace. The
traditional solution to higher demand has been to invest more time.
Unfortunately, time is finite, and most of us have no hours left to invest.
Energy, however, can be systematically expanded --- and it can also be
regularly renewed. To operate at our best, we need four energy sources:
physical (quantity), emotional (quality), mental (focus), and the energy of
the human spirit (purpose). This talk will focus on the role of energy in
fueling sustainable high performance, and in motivating others."

...which relates to the work he does at the Energy Project -
[http://theenergyproject.com/](http://theenergyproject.com/)

------
kbart
Totally agree. I don't see how people can be productive working >60h/week and
doing mental job. I find 30h/week to be perfect as I can't keep concentrated
more than 3-5 hours straight, so that makes two streaks (2-3h) and a coffee
break working day Monday till Friday. If I'm forced to work longer hours, I
find my mind wandering around, rewritting the same code over and over or
reading HN. Of course, there might be some short-term mission critical periods
when I can honestly put ~10h/day, but it's an exception that must be
justified, not a rule.

------
Rainymood
>and the Dutch people are better known for their love of cycling

We don't 'love' cycling it's just highly ingrained in our culture and it's way
cheaper than owning a car, especially with our awesome public transport.

>But what about tackling the issue at its roots? What if everyone had a
shorter working week? We would be healthier and happier, and society would be
less unequal and more sustainable.

Is it? How is this article different from pure speculation?

~~~
moomin
Well, it's not speculation to compare Britain to Denmark, which have
comparable living standards, levels of technology, &c but different attitudes
to the working week.

No-one in Denmark/Germany is a slacker, btw. They're just really productive
when they're actually at work.

~~~
troels
Minor quibble, but the Dutch live in The Netherlands. The inhabitants of
Denmark are called Danes.

~~~
moomin
Pretty sure it's also true of Denmark. :)

------
Thomas_Lord
During the Great Depression most people were smart enough to know that
reducing hours, without reducing pay, was a good strategy for lowering
unemployment.

Of course, capitalists tend to dislike the idea of lowering hours this way.
For them, it amounts to a reduction in profit.

If hours are lowered, capitalists will presumably then invest to improve
productivity so that the same output can be produced in fewer hours. When they
succeed, their rate of profit improves.

Increased productivity without vast new markets opening up means that, in
turn, unemployment will again rise.

So there is a virtuous cycle: Cut the work week without cutting wages. Wait
for productivity to catch up. Cut the work week again.

If we had an aggressive policy of cutting hours whenever unemployment is too
high, and we do this across the board for all sectors, perhaps before long
farms will be more fully worked by robots, and so on.

The author of the article wrote: "John Maynard Keynes predicted in the 1930s
that by about now, we would all be working a mere 15 hours a week."

Keynes did but it was Marx and Engels who predicted in the 19th century that
we'd have to fight for hours reduction every step of the way.

------
henrik_w
In the same vein: "Bring back the 40-hour work week"

"150 years of research proves that long hours at work kill profits,
productivity and employees"

[http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...](http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/)

------
xiaoma
I just finished reading _The Masters of Doom_ and really got the impression
that working _more_ hours made Carmack more productive than nearly everyone
else in the field.

~~~
JohnCarmack
I find these “shorter work weeks are just as effective” articles to be
nonsense, at least for knowledge workers with some tactical discretion. I can
imagine productivity at an assembly line job having a peak such that
overworking grinds someone down to the point that they become a liability, but
people that claim working nine hours in a day instead of eight gives no (or
negative) additional benefit are either being disingenuous or just have
terrible work habits. Even in menial jobs, it is sort of insulting – “Hey you,
working three jobs to feed your family! Half of the time you are working is
actually of negative value so you don’t deserve to be paid for it!”

If you only have seven good hours a day in you, does that mean the rest of the
day that you spend with your family, reading, exercising at the gym, or
whatever other virtuous activity you would be spending your time on, are all
done poorly? No, it just means that focusing on a single thing for an extended
period of time is challenging.

Whatever the grand strategy for success is, it gets broken down into lots of
smaller tasks. When you hit a wall on one task, you could say “that’s it, I’m
done for the day” and head home, or you could switch over to something else
that has a different rhythm and get more accomplished. Even when you are
clearly not at your peak, there is always plenty to do that doesn’t require
your best, and it would actually be a waste to spend your best time on it. You
can also “go to the gym” for your work by studying, exploring, and
experimenting, spending more hours in service to the goal.

I think most people excited by these articles are confusing not being aligned
with their job’s goals with questions of effectiveness. If you don’t want to
work, and don’t really care about your work, less hours for the same pay
sounds great! If you personally care about what you are doing, you don’t stop
at 40 hours a week because you think it is optimal for the work, but rather
because you are balancing it against something else that you find equally
important. Which is fine.

Given two equally talented people, the one that pursues a goal obsessively,
for well over 40 hours a week, is going to achieve more. They might be less
happy and healthy, but I’m not even sure about that. Obsession can be rather
fulfilling, although probably not across an entire lifetime.

This particular article does touch on a goal that isn’t usually explicitly
stated: it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from
working longer hours. Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought
of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world
for that goal.

~~~
shasheene
Are you really John Carmack?

(As of writing, account created 325 days ago, 1 comment and 2 karma)

It shouldn't really matter because it's 'appeal to authority', but thoughts on
worklife/productivity by the Elon Musk's or John Carmack's of the world really
do have more impact

~~~
Moocar
Yes, he tweeted a link to it:
[https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/684475417726595072](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/684475417726595072)

------
rodionos
I signed up for a gym that apparently went on an initiative to improve its
employee culture. The gym is really nice, not as good as Equinox in Palo Alto,
but close enough. So one of the initiatives was to close the gym during
holiday seasons so that staff could enjoy vacations schedules just like
everyone else. Lo and behold, they closed the gym between December 20 and
January 5th. Just when I was planning to catch up on things. They can count on
my cancellation. What I'm saying - do you want to live in a world that is
functioning 80% of time?

~~~
jontayesp
We should respect other people's time off if we want others to respect our
time off. Is it really so hard to find some other way to exercise for a month?

~~~
rodionos
Why not close supermarkets out of respect for labor unions as well, for 2
weeks. I think the solution lies somewhere else - such as automating humans
out of retail and services to the extent possible. For instance, speaking of
gym, I would keep the facility open staffed just with with security and
reception. Shut down non-core functions: new member office, group sessions,
cafe etc.

~~~
ljw1001
automating people out of work is definitely 'a' solution.

------
vinceguidry
I cut my hours down to around 35 a year ago. The reduced stress made me more
productive than when I was working 40 hours. If I thought I could get away
with chopping it down to 15 hours I would. I don't have a high enough workload
to get into flow state most days. Chopping the week down would both make me
more productive and allow me to enjoy work even more. But actual tasks don't
come in very frequently.

------
mark_l_watson
Suggestion for people wanting to work a shorter week:

Ask you HR department for an employee handbook and read it carefully. I did
this in the 1970s (worked for a large defense contractor) and discovered that
I only had to work 30 hours a week to get full benefits. Much to the
unhappiness of my bosses and coworkers, I "gave myself a 20%" cut in pay and
stopped working on Mondays.

I tried to be a perfect employee the four days a week that I worked to make up
for inconvenience to my bosses and coworkers.

I was able to work four days a week in most companies I have worked for,
spanning about 50 years.

One advantage of part time work is that it gave me extra time to write
computer science books and spend extra time with friends and family. But, I
left a lot of money on the table taking a 20% pay cut.

------
sjclemmy
It seems to me that the spirit of long working hours stems from the idea that
a worker is an interchangeable 'machine' with a capacity to provide effort and
the idea that more time spent (literally) at the coal face will yield a better
return on capital.

This holds true in an industrial context where there is a large pool of
workers, the work is low skilled and unions are weak. A workers ability to
provide time is the only concern that the employer has. Where I live, in the
North of England, this factory mentality still casts a long shadow over
working conditions and practice.

I think a 40 hour week is way too long to actually have a balanced life and
I've consistently burnt-out where the pressure to work 50/60 hours a week is
strong.

I'm not surprised that DavCam is wanting to keep the 48-hour opt-out - if you
are an investor / owner of capital, do you care about the long term well being
of the people making effort to give a return on your capital over a short term
(5 years) when people are interchangeable? You simply want to increase the
return on your investment.

------
moosov
So, let's be honest - how many hours do you feel you are productive in a day ?
[https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-
are-p...](https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-
productive-in-a-day)

~~~
LesZedCB
I'm annoyed that it said the "Most Voted" before I even had the chance to look
at the options. That immediately tainted my ability for an unbiased response.

------
moomin
The article makes the fundamental error of assuming that if you worked ten
hours less, someone else would get to work ten hours more. But other than
that, it's a pretty good article grounded in actual fact.

~~~
hatmatrix
Yes, it would only work in sectors where the labor is more or less fungible,
but these types of articles always seem to overgeneralize the effectiveness of
reduced work hours.

~~~
moomin
With that said, even with a single person it's amazing how much productivity
you gain by actually going home and doing other things (including sleep).

------
dawnbreez
Fewer hours makes me less burnt-out, yes, but it also means I can't pay bills,
which comes with its own set of issues.

------
moosov
I'm interested how much time people generally spend for work, let's have a
small poll - [https://guaana.com/quiz/hn-how-many-hours-you-work-in-a-
week](https://guaana.com/quiz/hn-how-many-hours-you-work-in-a-week)

~~~
eneifert
Another great poll would be, how many hours do you feel you are productive in
a day.

~~~
moosov
True and this question gives us much more information -
[https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-
are-p...](https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-
productive-in-a-day)

------
zekevermillion
That working fewer hours ==> increased productivity is also a mathematical
tautology. Productivity being a function of output and hours, with output
generally being somewhat sticky as hours change.

~~~
trebor
I think your definition of productivity is off a bit. You need to account for
"effective" productivity. My hours might be 40+ but how many of those are
truly focused and productive?

Hence, working less time with (theoretically) better focus and reduced
stress/strain would be more productive.

~~~
zekevermillion
It's not my definition, but an econo-bs definition that involves aggregating $
value output, hours worked. So any study that discusses productivity will
always find, at least over any short period, that hours are inverse to
productivity as they cannot move in perfect lockstep. However, as an
individual, your experience may (and probably should) vary quite a bit from
what you might predict in the aggregate!

------
aceboogy94
Not even going to read the article. Doesn't this seem like a "no shit" type of
thing. Lest time in the day to get things done so you work faster/harder. Of
course you're more productive. I did get a good laugh though since I started
this job 4 months ago and literally do 30 min a work a day and fuck off for
the rest of the day. I'm now spending my day getting paid to think of others
ways to make money online. Haven't came up with anything good yet.

------
otakucode
As would getting rid of open floor plan workspaces, or, even better, working
from home.

How long until people figure out that business folks really sincerely do not
care about productivity? If it would require them to alter their traditional
ideas of what the workplace should be like (derived from labor-intensive
manufacturing in the first part of the 20th century), the psychological cost
is one they are not willing or able to incur.

------
cryoshon
Most conversations about working fewer hours are really conversations about
how much the personal resources of workers can be drawn upon without providing
extra pay before there are negative productivity consequences. This article
ties in directly with some ideas I've been exploring recently [0] involving
personal resources of workers and time/productivity management of workers
[1][2]. The concepts of worker personal resource management and worker time
management are largely foreign to the places I've worked, much to their
detriment. Instead, the strategy could be described as "colloquial
management", a mishmash of half-remembered concepts from business school or
worse, the playground.

If a worker can quantify roughly how much time and energy each task at work
will take up, a clearer picture of how to be the most productive in the least
amount of time will reveal itself. Employers perpetually hide in the ambiguity
of the employees' time and effort, hoping to make a profit out of asking for
too much and motivate their workforce by periodically throwing a tiny bone to
the most masochistic over-achiever. A tabulated rubric describing to the
employer exactly how much time is spent on each task and how much mental and
physical energy the task takes relative to the worker's actual capacity for
these energies would show exactly how wasteful it is to over-work people.

Longer hours deplete worker mental energy and physical energy resources
whether or not there is more work being done. Once these resources are
depleted, worker efficiency drops precipitously. Additionally, periodically
depleting these resources leads to worker burnout. I also suspect that workers
resent longer hours whether or not they are necessary, leading to weakened
ability to refill their mental energy reservoir due to poorer mental health in
general.

[0]:[http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/04/how-to-survive-late-
capitalism...](http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/04/how-to-survive-late-capitalism-
as-a-worker/)

[1]:[http://cryoshon.co/2015/12/23/time-management-tips-hot-
from-...](http://cryoshon.co/2015/12/23/time-management-tips-hot-from-the-hiv-
research-lab/)

[2]:[http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/01/how-to-decide-what-to-
prioriti...](http://cryoshon.co/2016/01/01/how-to-decide-what-to-prioritize-
at-work/)

------
hatmatrix
> Productivity – output per working hour – improves with shorter hours.

Yes, but total output = number of hours x productivity. So even while
productivity diminishes, your total output can increase if you increase number
of hours.

------
fizixer
I would love to work in an environment where I can work at my top productivity
12 hours a day for a couple weeks (including weekends). Then I need to not do
anything for a few weeks.

------
glasz
let's start by just cutting aka not doing ALL THE BULLSHIT that is being done.
all the needless crap. _ding_ 50% time saved.

"what" you ask? take a serious look at your inbox.

~~~
Scarblac
That bullshit is what we call the economy, much more than 50% of it doesn't
need doing. Without a basic income, we need that bullshit though.

------
rconti
"reduced greenhouse gas emissions go hand-in-hand with shorter working hours"

... until you start bringing in all of those additional workers you're
promising jobs to...

------
andrewchambers
I feel like fewer hours works when you don't really care about your job. You
basically get burnt out quickly because you aren't motivated.

------
briandear
The climate change argument is a terrible one. Lower consumption? In the same
article it argues that the work would be spread over more people. So, using
the article's logic, same amount of productivity, more people providing it.
For 50 hours of work, you deploy 2 people, thus causing 2 units of fixed costs
to be incurred for the same productivity. Same variable costs, twice the fixed
cost.

This is just wacky.

------
herbst
Worked 100% and 80% so far, any can confirm that i mostly was more productive
with 80%.

------
umeryounis
Can't disagree with anything here really.

I think one of the problems is that some people in powerful positions in
companies want to do long hours themselves, so expect those under them to do
the same. They see someone putting in long hours as hard-working and diligent,
even though in reality they are probably being very inefficient and producing
shoddy work.

------
J_Darnley
Yes. Working less than 0 hours would make me more productive.

------
branchless
Until we have control over land prices via land value tax we will always work
a full week.

Land prices are set by credit which will expand to fill all labour less food /
heating costs.

Only when land is cheaper can we opt out of working 40 hours and this will see
a general reduction in the average working week. Until then we are all banker
bitches.

~~~
cubano
There are plenty of places, all over the world, where land is quite cheap, so
I don't quite follow your thinking here.

