
Wharton professor says America should shorten the work day by 2 hours - strict9
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/17/whartons-adam-grant-on-linkedin-6-hour-work-day-can-be-as-productive.html
======
geniviOS
22 years ago I worked for company that gave us Friday afternoons off. We
worked 8-5pm and on Friday 8-1pm. That gave employees time to schedule doctors
or dental appointments, leave early for the weekend, or run errands. Best job
schedule I ever had. This kept employees at work and not taking time off mid
week. Working with his schedule insured a very productive group of employees.

~~~
TheAdamist
my dentist also takes fridays off.... foiled my plan of using off fridays to
schedule things.

~~~
standerman
I believe that most dentists are only open 32 hours a week so that they don't
have to provide benefits for their employees. It's an efficient, if
uncompassionate, way of running a small business.

~~~
fjsolwmv
So you have any evidence for that brazen accusation?

My dentist is open 43hrs/wk.

Legally, 30hrs is full time for benefits, so it's hard to see any truth at all
to anything you wrote.

~~~
jzoch
Its hardly a brazen accusation. He said "I believe" and then made a fairly
innocuous statement. Relax. Even still, just because your dentist is open 43
hours it does not disqualify his statement.

~~~
djrogers
Accusing people of being ‘uncompassionate’ on zero evidence is not exactly
innocuous - it’s sadly common on the internet, but it’s still a pretty jerk
move.

------
mrfusion
In all the workplaces I’ve seen it seems like everyone is on Facebook or
reddit half the day. Why not give some of that time back to them?

~~~
CalRobert
Not trying to justify slacking off, but I know that some times I just can't
get in the zone in the morning. I could have the best of intentions, block
FB/reddit in hosts, but I never really did get a whole lot done. It's why
meetings are generally best in the morning (in my view), since meetings are
mostly a waste anyway. Come 3 or 4:00 though I'm really getting in to the
groove, but then the workday's nearly over (and since I wasn't able to arrive
late to compensate, I wasn't about to stay until 8 or 9).

That was my last job, though. Now I work my own schedule and it's nice. WFH
though so focus is even tougher. I find that if I start to tire in the
afternooon a workout does wonders..

~~~
anonu
I find my focus and attention has the same rhythm you describe. I thought I
was the only one!

I make sure I get a solid amount (7+ hours) of sleep every night and try to
maintain consistency with sleep times - but I feel like I don't really "wake
up" until after lunch. Even though I'm fully awake all morning - I feel like
my mind doesn't focus or get into the groove, as you put it, until well after
4pm - and then its time go home.

~~~
jzoch
7+ hours may not be solid enough sleep for you. 8-9 for many people is a bit
more par for the course, though a lot of neuro research is coming out
supporting the fact that regardless of quantity the "when" of sleep matters
more. So, sleeping from 1 am to 10 am is much worse than 10pm-6am.
Anecdotally, I had a friend who lost fine motor control of his trombone
playing muscles in his mouth due to his sleep schedule and had to have a
10pm-5am sleep schedule for about 6 months before he could play trombone
again. Its a special case but illustrates a similar point.

~~~
jdotjdot
Can you include links to some of this research? That is fascinating.

I have a friend who is an extreme night owl who has long said then when he
sleeps matters far more than how much—but in a negative sense. Even if he gets
as much as 10 hours of sleep, if he has to go to sleep early in order to wake
up early (6-7am), he’ll be miserable. If he goes to sleep at 3am and wakes up
at 9:30am, he’ll feel great despite having gotten much less sleep.

------
JDiculous
The whole idea of a standard work week for salaried knowledge workers is
stupid. Anybody who's worked a typical 9-5 office job knows that getting your
work done faster doesn't give you permission to leave earlier, you're just
rewarded with more work and maaybe a promotion with a slight pay bump 1-3
years down the line. There's no incentive to be as productive as possible
because you're not adequately rewarded for it (eg. via more time off or
increased compensation), and it raises manager expectations such that they now
expect this higher output of work going forward even though it might not be
sustainable over the long term without burnout.

So we enter this comfortable medium where we're productive enough to look busy
until 5pm, even if we could've worked at 100% capacity and finished everything
by 1pm.

Productivity and optimum working hours vary drastically across individuals -
Some are most productive in the morning, others are night owls, others work
best with a gym break in the middle of the day, others work best from home or
coffee shops, others work faster/slower than others. Adults should be allowed
to work in whatever manner is most effective for them, not babysat like grade
school kids.

At the end of the day one should be paid by results. Time may equate to
results in a factory or retail store, not in mentally intensive knowledge
work.

But of course none of this will change because employers have all the
leverage, and any sort of organized labor movement has been completely
decimated. We're supposed to be happy with the status quo because our
ancestors had it worse. Asking for the drastically increased productivity due
to technological advancements to translate to increased freedom equates to
"entitlement". It's archaic thinking and it needs to die.

------
fpoling
In Norway there are also suggestions to shorten the working time to 6 hours.
But why not to give an extra day-of instend? Petsonally i strongly prefer the
latter as with 6 working hours one still spends substantial time to get
to/from work.

In Moscow where some people spends over 4 hours just to get to work companies
started to offer 10 hours of work time in return to extra day off.

~~~
knodi123
Imagine you worked only two days a week, but 18 hours a day. Assume you're
young and flexible enough to survive that, and you have a cot in the office.
Would you want to do that? How much dread would you feel the day before your
shift started?

I think the point of the linked article is that the same reason that makes you
recoil at that, and the same reasons that would make these coming hell-days so
dread-inducing- those same reasons apply to an 8-hour day, just to a lesser
degree.

It's not about extending the weekend as much as possible, it's about
shortening the part of each workday that you're "working", and reducing the
mental burden of each individual workday.

~~~
fpoling
18 hours does not work. But 10-11 is ok, as long as it is not 5 days per week.
The trick is to have a long pause in the middle, like 1 hour for lunch and
small walk (perhaps to a nice restaurant nearby).

This is how it works in Moscow. A person comes to work at 9, has a long
lunch/pause from 2 to 3 and then leave at 8. As an added bonus late in the
evening traffic jams are reduced and the underground is no longer overcrowded
so it is faster to get home.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Not for me, there is no way I can produce anything for 11 hours at a time, no
matter how rested I am.

~~~
fpoling
But this is not 11 hours at a time. It is 5-6 hours of work, long pause for 1
or 1.5 hours and then work for another 5 hours.

------
vondur
I’m fairly certain we could shoten the work week to 4 days and productivity
wouldn’t be affected. I’d also surmise the economy would get a large jolt from
people having an extra day off and spending more money on entertainment.

~~~
gaius
_I’d also surmise the economy would get a large jolt from people having an
extra day off and spending more money on entertainment_

That only works if you get 5 days pay for 4 days work and everyone else gets 4
days pay for 4 days work. Because where are you going to spend the money if
everyone else is chillaxxing too?

~~~
shoobie1
That doesn't make any sense. With that logic you never go anywhere on Saturday
or Sunday because since you have Saturday and Sunday off that means everyone
in the country does.

~~~
gaius
Well that is exactly my point. If everyone gets an extra day off then there
will be 20% fewer opportunities to spend money with them, or 20% fewer staff
in the shop to make sales, 20% fewer chefs in the kitchen, yadda yadda

~~~
undersuit
Sounds like 20% more demand for chefs.

~~~
gaius
Chefs willing to work 6 days a week instead of the 4 everyone else is doing?

I am not anti the concept but it isn’t going to work if it becomes leisure
class vs service worker class

~~~
undersuit
No, if the chefs are working more than the new full-time amounts then there
won't be a need for 20% more chef jobs.

------
Dowwie
How many hours a day do you think Adam Grant has worked to get to where he is
today? How many do you think he'll work to accomplish his next goal? Do you
think he's taking his own advice?

------
curuinor
This is Adam Grant, who wrote a book about relationships ("Give and Take") and
admitted in it that his own relationship with his wife was sometimes rocky
because he worked too much?

~~~
Apocryphon
Sounds like empirical verification of his thesis.

------
vinceguidry
Forget a college professor.

Jesus himself could come down from Heaven, bring the Ark of the Covenant out
of hiding, join forces with Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, get the
endorsement of the Clintons and the Bushes, and we still wouldn't do squat
with the workday or workweek. It'll still be 8 hours 5 days a week 100 years
from now. Probably even 500.

8 hours is a convenient fiction we tell ourselves. People with no leverage
work more or less depending on if they are salaried or hourly. People with
leverage and the willingness to deploy it work what they want to work.

No employer is going to willingly increase their own costs. The employer-
employee relationship grew out of the old serf-lord relationship. Most firms
_still_ think of their employees as 'resources'.

We've been prophesizing the coming of a brave new world of material plenty and
leisure since the Industrial Revolution. It didn't happen then and it's not
going to happen now.

~~~
mdpopescu
You do realize the 5-day workweek is a relatively new invention even in the
US, right? Let alone in my country, Romania, where six days was the rule until
1990 or so.

~~~
jimmy1
Also, once again this is the HN bubble rearing it's ugly head again. Suffice
to say here most people have never worked in a customer facing job or manual
labor job (food service, delivery, retail, sales, construction, landscaping).
Most of my "off" days I spent worrying about whether or not my boss would call
me to come in anyways because some lazy ass decided not to come in so they
were short staffed -- and I needed the money so couldn't say no. My father
before me worked 10-13 hours a day, every day, _for years_ without having a
day off. I'll take 8/9-5 with regular weekends, thank you, no complaints for
me. What people need here is perspective, to realize just how good you have
it. If you feel like it, I bet most people here could leave work right now
with relatively no issue, and just make up the work later at some other
location, say a coffee shop or something -- even that is a privilege.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Having it better than our parents is no reason to stop improving workers'
lives.

~~~
jimmy1
My larger point is, we already are, miles and away, a much bigger improvement
than what most of our parents had. If we want to improve workers lives, let's
start with the vast majority of workers, and not the top 5%. Isn't that the
rhetoric around here these days? In essense, "we are the 1 percenters",
metaphorically in this scenario. Restaurant workers, warehouse employees,
factory workers, retail employees, delivery drivers, the vast majority of the
US workforce doesn't even come close to the type of privilege and benefits we
receive, we should probably start there if we really want to improve workers
lives.

While SF/NYC/Austin type firms complain that they can't bring their dog to
work, the mother/father/brother/sister over there working as much as they can
and just had their benefits cut (and their employer gives them some catchall
excuse like "because Obamacare!") because their hours were reduced from 40 to
35, and anytime they even get remotely close to 40 hours, they get sent home,
let's start with them.

------
sbradford26
There is a great Hidden Brain episode that talks about similar topics. Why
there is this requirement that people to need to work more when there might
not be enough work for them.

[https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-
radio/hidde...](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/hidden-
brain/e/56087005)

------
nhebb
What about truckers? Should they transport 25% less miles per day? Should
elementary schooldays be shortened by 25%? Should companies cut their customer
service hours by 25%? Should manufacturing companies drop their daily output
by 25%?

It might work well for some fields (e.g., programming), but for the general
labor force this idea doesn't seem like a very well thought.

~~~
x220
>Should elementary schooldays be shortened by 25%?

I don't recall a source, but I'm fairly sure that American school classes last
longer than what data shows is effectual, i.e. teaching a class longer than X
minutes (I think it's 30 or 40) has no demonstrable effect.

~~~
kungtotte
This is anecdotal but we had a rather particular schedule when I was in our
equivalent to high school. We had two classes/subjects per day. So the day was
divided into a morning block of 2.5 hours, then lunch, and then an afternoon
block of 2.5 hours. 20 minutes of break time was included inside each block,
and we got some input in how to distribute those 20 minutes. Typically you'd
do 2x10, or 1x20 with the 20 being either in the middle or at the end (go home
earlier or longer lunch).

I found it worked out great for all subjects. You could have a mini lecture
first to learn something new, have a break, then have a bunch of time applying
what you just learned.

Or if we had lectures we had the lecture first then just as much time after
for questions.

You could watch a documentary and then have a follow-up discussion.

We also didn't start classes until 9 AM, because the school knew that
teenagers in general aren't at the top of their game in the morning.

I really liked that setup.

------
PeOe
There are studies which say that people can only focus on work six hours a
day. Others say you need time to relax to become better concentrated at work.
So why should people be forced to work 8 hours when 6 hours get the same
result but the employees are more motivated.

I wish it would be common in Germany too...

~~~
wallace_f
I like to watch some professional gamer's Twitch streams (particularly before
bed, it's relaxing) and I've noticed some have expressed that they can only
play 3-4 hours of ranked games a day, while others can play 8-10 with success.

Point is, it seems like I keep hearing about studies which tell me x,y,z etc;
but if humans dropped into a zoo on another planet and a study was done to see
how long humans could run, I'd bet you'd get some wild answers until you just
let the people who like to run go out and run marathons, ultra marathons, etc.

Modern work has some aspect of captivity to it that we certainly subject
ourselves to, when in reality we are all individuals with each our own
strengths and struggles.

~~~
PeOe
Could be, but if you are working, you need time to relax and build up new
"power". I think for professional gamers, playing is work and free time at
once. Maybe that's the point why they are able to focus for a longer period of
time.

------
tootahe45
Employees/employers are free to negotiate this (and frequently do in tech), I
don't see why it would apply for other jobs though.

~~~
fraudsyndrome
Definitely free to negotiate at mine but with reduced pay then I start to
think whether it's worth it..

------
stevesearer
Shortening the work day by 25% is an interesting idea in theory though
unfortunately it is a pretty big leap for most companies to actually
implement.

A smaller and more manageable idea which I am trying to instill in my company
is to create a culture where it is not necessary to check in while on vacation
or once you are off the clock.

~~~
phil248
"...create a culture where it is not necessary to check in while on vacation
or once you are off the clock."

In other words, what a job is supposed to be for most people.

~~~
pwaivers
Unfortunately this is not always realistic. In smaller businesses, one person
may know a system or process far better than anyone else. So if that person is
on vacation, he should be available. You may disagree, but I think this is a
good thing that technology enables.

~~~
phil248
I don't disagree at all! But this tendency has crept its way into being the
norm, as opposed to circumstantial or role-specific, and I applaud any
manager/employer trying to lessen the off-hours workload of the rank and file.

------
danieldeklotz
Here's the problem I have with this argument. If you are bored and disengaged
at your job for 8 hours, you are likely to be just as bored and disengaged for
6 hours if all you change is the amount of time you spend there. The better
approach would be to get your organization to sit down and diligently work out
why so many of their jobs are so boring and disengaging and go after that. If,
in the process, we determine that those jobs can be done in fewer hours, then
great. Sure, maybe there are some jobs that are inherently boring, but maybe
through diligent analysis, we could find ways to minimize the need for that
type of work, and maybe create more compelling jobs in the process. But just
shortening the work week doesn't seem to address the problems most people have
with their jobs.

Even at 6 hours a day, we spend enough time at our jobs that job satisfaction
is a significant portion of your overall life satisfaction. I'm all for 6 hour
work days, but the more important point by far is making the content of our
jobs engaging and enjoyable.

------
SubiculumCode
I'd rather have a three-day weekend and work 10 hours in a day.

------
bitxbit
I think these research based on hours is misguided and useless. What matters
is production. Not everyone is in consulting milking billable hours.

------
Fjolsvith
I had a nice work schedule at a company that had the first shift start at 6am
and end at 2:30pm. I got a lot of stuff done in my afternoons.

------
gdubs
How about a four day workweek?

------
phendrenad2
So if you work at a startup, does that mean 10 hours a day? ;)

------
aglavine
How these kind of changes were implemented before?

------
iyw
6 hour work days 3 or 4 days a week

------
iyw
6 hour work days 3 or 4 days.

------
prolikewh0a
Even just 1 to bring most hourly employees back to 8 hours (7hr + 1hr lunch)
instead of 9 hours (8hr + 1hr lunch) would be great. Employers should be
forced to pay for 1hr lunches as it's time you're still away from home.

~~~
ergothus
I was crushed when I discovered the typical 9-5 wasn't typical at all.

~~~
prolikewh0a
8-5 or 9-6 now!

------
tw1010
How much lower must immigration-overhead get before employers feel like half
productive US workers are not worth the tradeoff against desperately dedicated
internationals, geez louise.

~~~
sctb
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18008468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18008468).

------
jchanimal
“People will need to be paid more for working less time, so they can afford
more leisure time.” - Richard Branson giving a glimpse into the actuarial
world of the super-rich, where leisure is doled out to peasants for
productivity reasons.

~~~
MrEfficiency
Has anyone seen a lazy 'Super Rich' person?

I only have 2 super rich(1M+/yr) in my life, and they are always working. I
only see them during holidays and the occasional grad party.

Their son told me that his dad worked so many hours that he totaled 2 cars in
a week due to sleep deprivation.

Maybe second generation is lazy, but I'm not sure where this idea that 'super
rich' dont work come from.

~~~
taurath
That's because you only see the super rich with responsibilities, and those
who are likely to be active in workplaces and be responsible for the people
and companies under them. There's plenty of idle or retired super rich to fill
up the highest end yacht clubs all summer.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Dragging the retired into a debate about how rich people spend their time
seems like a stretch to me. You can't fault someone if they want to laze about
in retirement.

~~~
ultraluminous
What if they retired at 35 after selling their parents company or inherited
real estate? Or do you think that's rare in a country that doesn't believe in
inheritance taxes?

------
pentae
Coming from someone like Richard Branson this seems obnoxious. If it's so
revolutionary why have you not implemented it in your workplace?

As for the New Zealand study thats frequently cited as a 'success' it was only
an 8 week trial.

It reminds me of universal basic income - populist ideology that appeals to
people who want more free shit.

~~~
0xfeba
> It reminds me of universal basic income - populist ideology that appeals to
> people who want more free shit.

Who are these 'I want free stuff' people? I keep hearing them mentioned as
some sort of strawman, but no one can really find me any large groups of these
people demanding free stuff. Most people realize taxes pay for welfare
benefits.

It also appeals to people who want to eliminate 20 government and various
state agencies for a single entity. We already have many convoluted forms of
welfare, why not simplify it?

The whole point of a government is to benefit the welfare of its civilians.

~~~
jerf
"Who are these 'I want free stuff' people?"

It's pretty much everyone. It's just that everyone also knows you can't
actually go into a political debate with "GIVE ME FREE STUFF" and expect to
get very far. But of course we all want free stuff. I want free stuff. I've
got the discipline to know better than to vote for it (because for one thing I
know there is no such thing as "free"), but I damned well want it.

But of course there's plenty of BI advocates who want free stuff. You can find
plenty of people musing on how they'd live on nothing but the BI in any
conversation on HN, if they could.

~~~
derefr
> one thing I know there is no such thing as "free"

In the US, given the production-yields of present agricultural technology,
only 1% of the population would need to be employed to feed 100% of the
population. That seems pretty "free."

I don't know how it would work out for other things (housing, clothing, etc.)
but I expect it would be similar (with e.g. at most 10% of the population
_needing_ to work to support 100% of the population, which is less than the
percentage of people who _want_ to work regardless of personal necessity.)

In other words: we've already nearly reached post-scarcity. We should probably
figure out a way to take advantage of that.

~~~
mdpopescu
Well... the US already has the cheapest food of all the countries I've been
in. Without cooking, I managed to eat with $2 a day (and I'm around 200
pounds). Small town in Georgia, maybe NY food is more expensive. (I know I was
surprised at how expensive food was in London.)

~~~
mwerty
What do you eat?

------
yters
No one ever argues we should work more...

If both are valid possibilities, this suggests a selection bias regarding the
arguments.

~~~
sp332
Not sure what you mean by "valid". If longer hours lead to less productivity,
why would anyone argue for it?

~~~
deckar01
There are professions that have 12 hour shift. There are also companies that
allow their employees to work 9 hour days and take Friday off every other
week. Employees may even prefer these schedules for personal reasons despite
potentially increased health risk.

~~~
Retric
Medicine is famous for 12+ hour shifts. However, it's demonstrable that this
costs peoples lives as people make more mistakes in hours 8-12+.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4629843/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4629843/)

~~~
cdcfa78156ae5
Hospital shifts in the United States should be used as a warning for what not
to do:

"Halsted promoted several very important concepts and practices in residency
training: graded responsibility, a variable and lengthy training period, a
pyramidal system of promotion, a resident's ward service, and, most pertinent
to this article, a restrictive lifestyle. This last concept of a restrictive
lifestyle meant that residents truly resided in the hospital. They received
little or no pay, were discouraged from marriage, and worked 24 hours a day, 7
days a week, 365 days a year. At first, the Halstedian model was more the
exception than the rule but gradually became more common, especially after
World War II when more surgeons wanted to be trained and certified for both
the prestige and financial rewards."

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/392...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/392566)

The Halsted is William Halsted, a workaholic lifetime cocaine addict:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stewart_Halsted)

