
Be More Productive. Take Time Off. - sathishmanohar
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/be-more-productive-shorten-the-workweek.html
======
6ren
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect>

They tried increasing light. Result: increased productivity. They tried
decreasing light. Result: increased productivity. Eventually they worked out
that any change increased productivity. (reminds me of teleported Arthur Dent
cautiously checking his body for injury, and encountering pain wherever he
felt. Eventually he realized it was his finger that hurt)

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_delirium
I'm not sure if it's a real trend, but I do seem to be hearing more stories of
companies worried about employees not taking enough vacation, whereas the
traditional concern is the opposite. I'm not 100% sure of the motivation,
either. Some could be what this suggests, that employees who take some time
off are happier and more productive. Some could be trying to minimize actual
burn-out (which is different from just lower productivity). Perhaps other
reasons, though. One possibility is that if nobody in a group is taking time
off, that may be a proxy for something else, possibly management problems
(e.g. a particular group creating a culture of fear), so worth looking into as
a kind of institutional debugging. And some could be recruiting, trying to
project an image that not only do we give you N weeks of vacation on paper,
but we _really_ mean it and expect you to take it.

~~~
porlw
Where I live you generally get 30 paid days off per year (10 national
holidays, 20 discretionary).

Most large companies I've worked for require that you take one contiguous
break of at least 2 weeks at some point during the year. Long enough that
someone else will have to take over your day-to-day duties.

This is good for the employee (to have a proper holiday, and avoid the
pressure of being the only one who can do something), and good for the company
(it gives time for fraud and cover-ups to surface, and forces the spreading of
information within the teams).

~~~
itmag
_it gives time for fraud and cover-ups to surface_

This is very interesting (and clever). Mind telling us more? :)

~~~
yourapostasy
This is a common accounting control practice. Generally speaking, most
accounting fraud is still manually performed and has to be done in person, and
relies upon frequent tampering of normal accounting controls and procedures,
often monthly, sometimes weekly and even in some cases daily. See the stories
on PFGBest for an example.

The idea of enforced contiguous vacation time is that this kind of fraud is
revealed when at least someone else has to step in and fill in for the time
the fraudster is away. Even if someone doesn't backfill the position during
the vacation time, surrounding processes and controls are supposed to pick up
evidence of the fraud now that the tampering cannot be engaged.

Basically, no one with control over finance and accounting functions is
supposed to be so indispensible that they can only take a few days here and
there off. In fact, someone in those roles that makes a big deal out of being
able to be away for long is usually a red flag for auditors.

~~~
gadders
All the investment banks I have worked in have enforced this to greater or
lesser degrees. i.e. always for the front office, and varies whether it
applies to Technology or not.

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noobface
The concept is really easy to implement with smaller teams. But look at
Google.

Their "20% time" policy has become 120% time.

Scaling these highly creative, productivity inducing policies simply doesn't
scale when you reach a certain size. The teams are too large, the goals are
too vague, and there's a vacuum of consistency/systematization necessary to
keep predictable metrics flowing.

I love the idea for smaller, highly profitable per-employee companies, but the
big guys, whether through their own ignorance or inability, can't effectively
institute something like "take a month off to do whatever project you think is
cool."

~~~
Jabbles
Where have you heard that about Google? I've heard good things about their
(current) culture, especially in regards to 20% time. Have I been misinformed?

~~~
noobface
1st hand from engineers.

I don't think you've been misinformed, I personally think the marketing of the
20% time idea is better than its actual implementation.

Pitching the 20% time ideas to management is kinda killing the concept.
Managers aren't particularly inclined to incorporate hours into your schedule,
especially if that time could be used boosting their metrics.

~~~
nostrademons
The implementation of 20% time is incredibly variable across teams, and even
across individuals. I've never had to pitch a 20% project to my manager, or
even notify them that I'm working on it. For many past ideas I ran it by them
just because they might be aware of people that can help me or related
projects I might want to look at, but for my current 20% project (an
eventually open-sourced library), I didn't even mention it to him until I went
up for promotion, when a peer wrote "Oh, by the way, his 20% project will have
a big impact both on our team and on the world at large", at which point my
manager was like "Maybe we should make this an official OKR and part of your
regular job duties." That actually happens a lot - I've had a bunch of 20%
projects that I mention to management and they're like "Oh, you should feel
free to take some 80% time to finish that."

I also find that the definition of 20% time varies a lot between individuals.
For me, it's "All that time when I have nothing better to do, when I get to
work on whatever I want" - in some weeks, that can be 80%, in other weeks it's
0%. I have a friend who spends one morning a week working at Google Research,
and that's his 20% project. I have another friend that taught Lego Mindstorms
to 5th graders one day a week, and that was her 20% project. I have another
coworker that started working on a new project (sponsored by a different VP),
and that was his 20% time. I have a few coworkers that basically do whatever
they want - actually, my job description is pretty much like this now - and so
it's _all_ 20% time.

Actually, for a lot of my coworkers, the reality is probably much like it is
in many other large organizations with decent management: "As long as you get
your work done and are aware of the organization's priorities, you can do
whatever you want." I know someone who moved to Uganda without telling his
manager and regularly works from Paris, Thailand, Budapest, Vienna, Prague,
etc. - his manager doesn't care, because he's responsive to e-mail and gets
his work done quickly.

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petercooper
The funny thing is I think this is a great idea for employees and I'd
encourage things like this even amongst my own (though it's just contractors
for now!) But for _me_? I'd always choose to work longer and I love it. Maybe
there are key differences between growth stage, finding-their-feet businesses
and those comfortably bringing in 6/7 figures a month though ;-)

~~~
orangethirty
You have the choice to work longer. An employee must do as told. Such is the
importance of giving the person a reasonable period of rest. If not, then the
person will feel like a slave and just do the absolute minimum to get by. Ive
tried both approaches and the one that treats people like (surprise!) people
works better than the one that treats them like robotic slaves.

OT: Love the shows. Regular listener here.

~~~
petercooper
_OT: Love the shows. Regular listener here._

Thanks. Sorry we have fallen behind lately. A whole myriad of reasons. I hope
we get back on track soon!

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mfringel
Insert obligatory "No one will tell me what to do! They're not the boss of me!
I love working 15 hour days and why would they want to stop me!" comment,
here.

~~~
henrikschroder
Insert snarky euro-centric reply about how some people in the "more
enlightened" parts of the world already do this and enjoy seven week vacations
every summer.

~~~
heretohelp
Thanks for getting those out of the way guys, both were getting tiresome.

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amirmansour
It is good idea but it won't fit all companies. Specially larger companies
with more work than the people of 37 Signals. I however think it is important
for all companies to celebrate their successes. At SpaceX, Elon gave us a a
week off after a successful lunch. This was two years ago. The employees came
back refreshed. Celebrating successes is something all companies can do.

~~~
hammy
That must have been one hell of a lunch for everyone to deserve a week off!

~~~
lostlogin
It's been busy of late and I don't even bother taking in lunch anymore. A
complete absence of successful lunches is a bad thing.

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bthomas
Taking time off kind of by definition increases your productivity per hour. I
want to hear a case of time off actually increasing total output.

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notlisted
Europe has known this for many many years. A 35 hour work-week and several
weeks of vacation time (e.g. in France and The Netherlands) not only creates
more jobs, but also results in happier people and additional productivity.

~~~
jeffdavis
I'm having trouble finding support for your assertion.

Some quick googling seems to indicate that France has a higher unemployment
rate than the US and lower GDP per capita. Same for Spain. Same for the EU
overall.

The Netherlands seems to be in better shape but it's a much smaller economy,
so it's not really comparable.

~~~
roel_v
The Netherlands doesn't have significantly more vacation days than other EU
countries. Looking at this table:
<http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922052.html> it seems that we're even on the
low side, since the legal minimum is 21 but most people get a few more, so I
estimate the average at around 25. Which would put us at the same amount as
Japan, of all places.

(The link's methodology isn't explained though, and maybe it includes public
holidays, which would boost .nl with something like 10 days into the same
magnitude as Germany and France)

~~~
TylerE
Would be interesting to see numbers of time actually taken. It is my
understanding that in Japan it isn't unusual for an employee to not take so
much as a sick day for years - and don't even mention vacation. The corporate
culture is so "dedicated" that's it's really unhealthy.

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timedoctor
This is essentially the luxury of a successful company. I think they take time
off because they are successful. They are not successful because they take
time off.

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henrik_w
A follow-up post on why the article was in the NY Times: "Connecting the dots:
How my opinion made it into the New York Times today"
[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3234-connecting-the-dots-
how-...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3234-connecting-the-dots-how-my-
opinion-made-it-into-the-new-york-times-today)

------
aangjie
Here's a reference to a Mumbai(India)-based startup trying the same approach.
<http://erpnext.com/open-source-work-culture.html>

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gwern
I will just note the irony of the NYT posting some 37 Signals propaganda on
the same day as they posted "Skilled Work, Without the Worker"
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/new-wave-of-
adept...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/new-wave-of-adept-robots-
is-changing-global-industry.html?pagewanted=all)

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tatianajosephy
Radical concepts that sound really good. Unfortunately, productivity is very
difficult to measure. Isn't it possible that productivity would have been
higher if the 37signals team were working 5 days a week instead of 4? How does
one measure this?

~~~
lucisferre
That's precisely why it only makes sense to measure results not individual
productivity.

