
Is full-time work bad for our brains? - bojo
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160714-is-full-time-work-bad-for-our-brains
======
quantumhobbit
Stretching 2 hours of work into an 8-9 hour day through meetings and sneaky
Reddit/hn usage is certainly bad for our brains. But this is the norm as long
as managers interpret productivity as butts in seats.

~~~
BjoernKW
As much as I agree with that I'm still at a loss as to why butts in seats
management is still so dominant today.

It's almost as if everybody wakes up, reads Dilbert every morning thinking
"Wow, that PHB guy certainly is a role model to aspire to."

It's not as if these patterns can't be changed:

The required technology has been available for more than a decade now.

There are tried and tested approaches for organizing work in a more productive
and healthy manner than 9-5.

Still, it isn't happening at a larger scale. While the reasons might simply be
risk-aversion or - on a more sinister note - a somewhat implicit understanding
that our society is built around a 40 hr work week and we'd face serious
upheaval if that was no longer a given, I find those reasons to be tenuous at
best in the long run.

~~~
madaxe_again
Because those of us who believe otherwise usually get beaten out and decide to
not run businesses any more.

My confounder doesn't like hiring, likes to have a huge pile of cash in the
bank to no particular end, and sends people shitty emails if they're late in
the morning.

He's successfully killed off enthusiasm and passion for getting things done
(mine included), and now people are either making time or leaving.

We got crazy amounts done back when I wasn't cto and was still allowed to lead
the tech team - because we'd work from 1pm until the early hours, myopically
working on stuff because it was fun to create. That got slowly but surely
strangled by timekeeping, requiring people to be in for 0900 (even if they
were up half the night working support), and requiring that people only work
from the office.

It's impossible to push back against without continuous effort, and eventually
one throws the towel in.

Conservatism is easy as it requires you to just maintain the status quo, hence
it is the norm in business - whereas change requires effort. It then turns
into an endurance race, which can only go one way.

Edit: I don't know why I bother commenting here any more.

~~~
dclowd9901
"confounder", ha.

In my experience, what does a manager do if there's no one around to manage?

And how do employees get recognized for their contributions if there are no
managers to track it?

It's a catch-22. My thought is that if companies simply paid people as much as
they could, all of this would go away. You wouldn't even _need_ managers
anymore. One of managers' more important roles, liaising between departments,
could become their full time job, which would be better for everyone too (less
overhead with employee reviews and bullshit like that).

How does this work? Rather than a company asking an employee what their salary
range is, the employee asks the company what is the most they can afford to
pay you, and they pay you that.

~~~
groby_b
Forgetting the other most important role, coaching people on the team. And yet
another one, shelter from outside unrest. Oh, and blame-absorber. And
coordinating efforts, when yet again three engineers in three different places
work on the same issue.

You know, this is starting to resemble the "what have the romans ever done for
us" skit :)

I'm not disagreeing that many managers don't do this. Or that they do it
badly. But managers, when they work properly, do a _lot_ more than liaising.

~~~
toolz
That's the thing, though. Almost no one does their job "properly". They do it
well enough to not get fired - thus management is usually inept and useless.
So is it the managers fault when they are just fulfilling the norm or is it
the job all together? I would suggest management as a position is at fault
rather than the people who occupy that space and do the minimum to get by.

------
DaniFong
This is a paper on the work that the article cited:
[https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_s...](https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2016n07.pdf)

There is a critical mathematical mistake with their use of statistical
analysis which basically, as an artifact, bakes in this "conclusion" into the
"results".

It comes about because they manually add "Working hours-squared/100" into the
factor analysis, and then, low and behold, there is a parabola correlated with
the data. It's a downward facing one, because an upward facing one, or no
correlation will not match as well. But the model is not reality.

There are numerous other conceptual problems with the study, like "what is
work?" and a lack of real data on the nature of work beyond what is correlated
with socioeconomic indicators, like University education, however, it is
remarkable that even at the level of statistic analysis, the work is
critically flawed.

I am also disappointed that nobody else on hacker news seems to have pointed
this out.

Hopefully, this can serve as yet another example, of how to interpret and
understand data the new, be it hacker news or otherwise, presents us with.
Statistical data analysis is both hard, and often times misleading.

~~~
xapata
I skimmed the paper and couldn't find this "critical mistake". The nonlinear
model you describe is common and appropriate to situations like this.

    
    
        y ~ x + x^2
    

A mistake would be

    
    
        y ~ y^2
    

And even then, it would be appropriate if we're modeling an autoregressive
process.

    
    
        y_{t} ~ y_{t-1}

~~~
DaniFong
I'll try to state in this language what I think is the conceptual flaw.

The stated conclusion is "there is an optimum number of work hours, and it is
less than 40."

However, their method of analysis is this:

"We fit a non-linear model that is a quadratic model cognitive ability y ~ ax
+ b x^2 for x work hours / week, and we found a statistical optimum around 25
hours"

The problem with this is that you're trying to find the best fit of a parabola
to the data. And you have tons of samples where the work hours are very few /
none (unemployed). Because there is a fairly strong correlation with
unemployment and cognitive indicators, the parabola is already being "forced
down" near hours worked = 0.

Now in this parabola model of estimated cognitive indicators vs work hours,
either you are going to get a minima -- and it goes to infinity at working
hours -> infinity (of course in real life it cannot really do this, because we
only have so many hours in the week, but the statistical model will suggest
it) -- or, you are going to get a maxima, which is what actually happens.

It could well be in the data that the indicators are that there is roughly
_flat_ , or even _increasing_ response of cognitive indicators to working
hours when the number of working hours is beyond a nominal value, but that the
unemployed population has somewhat lower indicators.

In this case the model will automatically become a downward curving, parabola
with a maxima, suggesting decline with increasing work hours -- even though
this is not what the data directly suggests.

This maxima, the fact that there even is a "work hour optimum" that is a
smooth, quadratic curve, is a mirage -- the model is not the data.

A remaining question is _why_ the optimum is less than 40 hours. It is
relatively easy to construct a statistical case in which it is a curve fitting
artifact, despite that there is no direct data even _at_ at the suggested
optimum.

One could in principle check to see if this is the case. The data may be
available.

For now, there's few graphs on page 20. It really doesn't seem to me that
there is a significant distinction between the part time and full time groups
-- in fact, the biggest difference is that more women who have a high reading
score are not unemployed. Men who have a higher symbols score are more likely
to be full-time employed instead of part-time, slightly -- but the converse is
true for men with higher reading scores. The difference is not very distinct.

[https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_s...](https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2016n07.pdf)

~~~
xapata
> Because there is a fairly strong correlation with unemployment and cognitive
> indicators

You're arguing that there's an endogeneity effect -- that poor cognition
causes less working? That's a common problem. The authors discuss their use of
an instrumental variable technique to avoid this issue.

> parabola is already being "forced down" near hours worked = 0

Not sure what you mean. Typically a model like this includes a constant to
allow for a non-zero dependent variable when all the explanatory variables are
zero. To do otherwise in this case would be absurd. The idea that the average
non-working person has zero cognitive function...

> smooth, quadratic curve, is a mirage

Ever heard of a Taylor polynomial?

~~~
DaniFong
You'll learn a lot more if you ask, instead of "what could be wrong about what
this person is saying", you ask "what could be right about it?"

~~~
xapata
That's exactly what I'm asking for: a clearer explanation.

I don't believe the paper's conclusion, but I don't understand your criticism
of it. If you're saying the estimated curve is inappropriate, a better
argument would be that they should include more terms of the work-hours Taylor
expansion to get a better fit. Or perhaps there are confounding variables left
out of the model.

------
cubano
I'm 50yo and am still learning new shit everyday...just a month ago I bit the
bullet and learned enough javasc...excuse me ECMAScript, to be pretty damn
dangerous :)

Over the past weekend I learned docker and am now running containers all over
the place...these aren't trivial things and the speed of which I'm picking
stuff up is as fast, if not faster, then it has ever been for me.

The point is I am 10 years older then the age this study targeted, and I find
it humorous that they are telling me I am AT LEAST 25 IQ points dumber because
I work 50-60 hour weeks.

Plus, where do I tick the box about my lifetime of pretty hardcore drug use
and its supposed effects on my IQ?

Now I do get tired...physically tired...from the efforts required to keep up
but besides that, my anecdotal experience goes against this research.

~~~
stevenwiles
Yep, I'm just like you. About to turn 60, been a daily hardcore drug user for
most of my life, and I've been picking up new languages and technologies every
day, all while working 60 hours a week.

I find it quite hurmorous indeed that there are those that would suggest that
we are not intellectually capable.

Glad to know there is someone else like me out there. :)

~~~
theAnonMe
Just registered this account to discuss. This is something I worry about, I am
a 31 year old dev, only learned to code 5 years ago. I smoke around 28 grams
of strong cannabis (kush and haze) a week. Between the ages of 17-25 every
weekend consisted either cocaine, ecstasy, mdma, ketamine or whatever really.
I currently feel as although I'm playing with as much tech as ever I can't
hold as much state in my head when developing and resort to the debugger a lot
more. My cannabis intake has gone up in the past year probably. You think its
the bud?

~~~
bluejellybean
Cannabis and programming only seem to mix for me when I'm using lightly ( less
than a few times a week )

When I moved to Colorado my intake skyrocketed. Was up to around 7 grams a
week (16-25%thc) with 90% concentrates mixed in for fun. I was able to work
with 0 problems for a few months but started noticing subtle fogginess over
the course of my days and like you, holding state was difficult ( along with
general debugging slowness )

Naturally I figured it would be wise to slow down consumption and went on a
tolerance break. Within a few days I was back to 100% and now only smoke a few
times a week. Currently I notice no negative day to day issues and all mental
fogginess is gone! I like to sit down after work, toke, and then code.. so
happy to report my anecdotal data as positive!

This goes for other drugs too, even "normal" ones like caffeine. I had a nasty
habit of drinking a ridiculous amount of coffee and noticed very similar
issues as above with cannabis. And like above, cutting the caffeine down was
the fix for me.

Take a break for a few weeks ( or at least cut back significantly ) and see
how you feel. Smoking that much weekly is only necessary with an extreme
tolerance anyway.

Good luck and hope you feel better!

------
jdc0589
My brain usually goes in to "prepare to shut-down" mode every day at about
3:30pm (having started work at ~9am). I tend to have slow mornings, and stay
pretty busy/head-down for the last half of that time.

The funny thing is, it doesn't really matter if I was busy working on hard
technical challenges all day, or just reading articles/browsing the web; my
brain shuts down the same time regardless.

~~~
stronglikedan
This sounds like it could be a diet thing. Have you tried eating different
things for lunch to see if that affects your mid-afternoon mood?

~~~
drawnwren
Do you have any good resources for diet things? I'm interested in this.

~~~
stronglikedan
Unfortunately, I don't. I tried many different diets, but they either didn't
work, or weren't sustainable. I settled on two rules, lost 50+ lbs, and have
been able to sustain it for a few years now. My rules are (1) don't overeat,
and (2) don't eat processed foods.

It took a few months before I figured out what my portions were, since I don't
feel full until about 15-20 minutes after I am. By the time I knew how much I
needed to eat in one sitting, I'd become used to eating that amount, so it was
a breeze.

I do eat whatever I want, with the exception of processed foods. If I can't
make it at home with whole ingredients, I'll likely not eat it. I do cheat
every so often, but not much, and not a large amount (I love a box of
Raisinettes during a movie.)

As for not being able to think straight after lunch, I used to get that way
when I'd eat too much. I used to love feeling full, but it would definitely
affect brain function. Now, I get ill when I overeat. I also try to eat a high
protein, high fiber breakfast, because it seems to get me further through the
day than anything else (I eat a small late lunch).

~~~
lobotryas
How did you figure out your personal portion sizes? Just approximation (ex:
felt too full after 3 eggs, but just right after 2)?

I read plenty of literature on estimating the dietary recommended portion
sizes in food, but nothing on how much food I personally should eat in a
sitting.

~~~
stronglikedan
Funny you should use eggs as an example. I do feel too full after 3 eggs, but
just right after 2. Unless I'm eating just eggs, in which case 3 is just
right. Or unless I'm making an omelette, which is almost impossible with just
two eggs. In that case, my dog gets a good part of one of those eggs.

As I say, it did take a few months. I also needed to eat a little slower - I
was a fast eater of big meals. Mostly just experimentation and willpower - you
have to get used to waiting to feel full. I go by the two fist rule: your
stomach's about as big as your two fists put together.

My family also likes to go out to eat _a lot_. I ask for a box as soon as the
food comes, and put half of the food in it. I used to finish the other half,
but now I'll usually end up adding a bit to the to-go, and making two meals
out of that later. If I'm by myself, I usually just order an appetizer (I do
find myself eating more of just one type of dish per meal). If I go with my
family, I'm ordering a meal, because, hey, free food!

------
up_and_up
This is why companies need to be "results driven" vs "face-time driven".

"What did you deliver this week? This month? This quarter?", should be the
only relevant question in the workplace, managers included.

~~~
whack
> "What did you deliver this week? This month? This quarter?", should be the
> only relevant question in the workplace, managers included.

Unfortunately, there's another camp that (with credible arguments) claims that
task-estimates are almost always meaningless. If you buy into that camp, and
if someone under-delivers, it doesn't tell you anything about whether or not
they are performing poorly. They could simply be the victim of an overly
optimistic task-estimate. As a manager, what are you going to do then?

This is pretty much the double-edged-sword in the NoEstimates movement. Either
you judge people purely on the basis of results, and end up punishing people
who are victims of poor task estimates. Or you don't judge people at all, and
watch as people take advantage of the situation to slack off as much as they
want. Or you judge them on the basis of hours-spent-at-work, which will then
induce the same complaints we see in this thread.

~~~
lj3
What if you judge a team based on the revenue it brought in vs the cost of the
employees in the team? Since profit is the real measure of success, it makes
sense to use that as the metric. Measuring individual contributions is
problematic, no matter the system you use. Measuring based on the entire team
is much easier.

~~~
TorKlingberg
You would notice that the IT and security teams brought in zero revenue and
fire them all.

~~~
ktRolster
Ha! In fact all you would need is a sales team!

~~~
lfowles
Then next quarter you fire them too!

------
harkmylord
Absolutely. How can a society flourish when people are spending all their time
for someone else? Full time work leaves little time for your health, family,
friends, pets, and so on.

~~~
amelius
But "family, friends, pets" are in the category of "someone else", right?

Also by working for someone else, you make money, which you use for your
health, family, etc.

So either way, I don't get the point.

~~~
ramblerman
Not sure if your being pedantic but your relationship with your 'company' and
your friends/family is certainly not the same thing.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Most of us don't work for our pets.

(Unless they're cats.)

Maybe the whole idea of working for someone is a strange one. Would people
still work towards doing cool stuff if they were free to make/break
associations on a project basis?

There might not be the cycle of hyperconsumption driven by superficial novelty
we have now. But would it be replaced by something more or less interesting?

~~~
icebraining
_free to make /break associations on a project basis_

Isn't that called freelancing?

------
Mahn
Could it be that there is some selection bias in this study? I don't mean to
say the conclusions are wrong per se, but I would think that people working
very few hours (unemployed?) or too many hours (factory workers?) are
typically less educated than those in the middle, which could explain the IQ
disparity.

~~~
JamesBarney
I don't think factory workers are more likely to work 40 hours weeks than
white collar workers.

~~~
douche
If you're allowed to, you go after every minute of that sweet, sweet,
overtime. Time and a half (or double time, if you work holidays) is a
beautiful thing.

~~~
JamesBarney
That's over 40 vs white collar. This study was just comparing people who
worked 40 vs 25.

There's a lot more studies showing that working 60 vs 40 is bad for you
cognition, but this one is unique in showing the same effects at a much loader
working load.

------
RankingMember
To counter-act the click-bait title, here's the basic gist of the article,
summed up by Carol Black, one of the people interviewed on the subject:

“The most important thing about work is that it should be ‘good work’. If it
is good, it does not matter whether full-or part-time.”

~~~
throwaway7767
That's not in any way "the gist of the article", it's a comment made by a
random person interviewed, and it's her opinion.

The main subject of the article is the extensive scientific study performed by
scientists at the University of Melbourne, which showed that working more than
25 hours a week decreases IQ scores in people over 40.

------
deagle50
This is why I work from home. I can work in sprints and take breaks to make
food, exercise, run errands and play video games. You will have to drag me
back to an office 9-5 at gunpoint.

~~~
stevenwiles
What is the easiest way to transition to 100% work from home?

~~~
deagle50
I had to transition to consulting which meant my productivity was now measured
by billable hours and project deadlines vs "butt in chair". It took me over a
year to find this type of job. Since then I moved into pre-sales which gives
me even more flexibility.

------
EGreg
Full-time work in most professions is just the appearance of full-time work.
It actually sets up a culture of dependency, much like welfare, except with
people selling their days for money. Many of them don't dare build value for
themselves because they are afraid of losing a steady paycheck, getting sued
etc.

------
acd
Something similar has been measured in the game industry where Gamasutra has
compared working hours crunching vs game review scores.

Here is the link
[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150113/233922/Th...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150113/233922/The_Game_Outcomes_Project_Part_3_Game_Development_Factors.php)

------
OhHeyItsE
:(

As if this industry needed any more excuses for it's blatant ageism.

------
sp527
I worked three years full time and now on a startup. I've come to realize that
most of the performance improvement for me with the latter is attributable to
a difference in sleep duration and quality. I'm someone who needs variability
(+/\- 2-3 hrs) in when I go to sleep and little to none in total duration.
This is especially important when you're exercising consistently (and doubly
so for HIIT).

Work life normally doesn't account for sleep, but I feel like it may very well
be all the reason for the problems we see. It's no secret that most Americans
are experiencing chronic sleep deprivation. And that's linked to a host of
other issues like obesity, learning impairment, low energy/productivity,
increased stress, etc. In other words, it has a cascading effect on everything
else. Most people need around 8 hours per night to function normally and get
only around 6.

~~~
justacat
Kind of off-topic, but what has your experience with HIIT and sleep been? I am
just starting, and being somewhat obsessive about sleep would be interested to
hear your experience.

~~~
sp527
If you're obsessive about sleep, I think you'll be fine :) My mistake was
doing 3 20 min sessions of pretty intense HIIT a week and then not getting
nearly enough sleep (averaged maybe 6 hrs). I felt chronic fatigue at work -
it feels like a heavy wave of exhaustion very different from typical feelings
of tiredness. You'll notice your work performance degrade correspondingly.
Under normal circumstances you might be able to get away with bad sleep for a
handful of days or even a few weeks. Not so with HIIT. You have to have an
athlete's level of attention to your recovery.

All that said, HIIT is the most effective kind of exercise I've encountered
and I recommend it wholeheartedly!

~~~
justacat
Thanks for the reply. I've been easing my way in with just 30sec on, 30 sec
off for 5 minutes a day. I did two sets on day, and had to get up early the
next day and was wiped out.

Good to hear your experience!

------
gerbilly
Nothing is more exhausting than tryimg to look busy when there is nothing to
do.

As a freelancer i got some contracts through headhunters that were like that.

Looking back now, i should have quit and found something else.

------
tomdell
Work is too ambiguous and complex of a concept to directly state that 25 hours
a week is optimum over a certain age.

It seems like this article is partially premised on research done on assembly
line workers, who are, as far as I'm aware, actually working and doing
physical labor for most of the time they're at work. I wonder how well this
applies to mental labor? Beyond that, as some people have already commented,
white-collar jobs tend to involve a lot of downtime.

~~~
ashark
Left to my own devices I'm pretty sure I'd work a variable number of hours a
week, going as high as 80, and probably averaging in the neighborhood of 60.

The tricky part for me is that breaking 25ish actually-productive hours a week
isn't compatible with a steady 40ish hour a week job where I'm doing mostly
the same thing every week.

Ideally I'd spend 40hrs studying math one week, 80hrs developing a game next
week, 30hrs landscaping/gardening + 30hrs building furniture the next, 50
hours writing fiction the next, _et c_. It's doing more-or-less the same work
every week, whether I'm in the mood for it or not, that places such a low
upper bound on my total productivity.

~~~
stevenwiles
Same here, left to my own devices, I would probably work around 120 hours a
week.

------
patatino
I talked to my boss and told him I want work only 90% for the same salary
because I would still have the same productivity. He agreed! Some times you
simply have to ask

------
hclivess
of course it is, if you hate it but if you only watch tv outside of work, i
suggest not quitting

------
bpyne
It would be interesting to see a study controlling for the "sandwich years".
My suspicion is that the sandwich years on top of 40+ hour/week employment
causes a lot of cognitive degradation. But, 40+ hour/week employment without
the sandwich years would see significantly less, if any, degradation.

~~~
cauterized
What are sandwich years?

~~~
bpyne
From the article: "McKenzie’s team is now looking into the driving factors
behind their research such as the “sandwich years” when many adults have at
least one person to look after, a child or an elderly parent, on top of
working full-time."

This terminology stuck out because I'm smack in the middle of it right now.
It's a regular conversation piece when my wife and I get together with other
parents.

------
bumbledraven
This article makes no attempt to distinguish correlation from causation.

------
adamnemecek
Yes. Same with school.

~~~
xufi
Agreed especially the same with university on par in the last years. That
really catches up to you

------
stuff4ben
legalized ageism anyone?

~~~
mac01021
???

What's being made legal here that was previously illegal?

~~~
sp332
It's not new. But it is legal.

~~~
mac01021
The idea that people's brains tend to function differently as they age?

~~~
sp332
The idea that workplaces demand employees to work in ways that discriminate
against older people, instead of focusing on increasing the productivity (and
health) of all the workers.

