
Laws of Productivity - fotoblur
http://www.lanceramoth.com/blog/2011/09/laws-of-productivity
======
ghartnett
Here's a link to the original 2008 blog post by DanC
[http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-
pres...](http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-
presentation.html)

------
hga
A couple of comments:

Studies have shown that people who keep time cards start ... fudging them when
they (have to) report more than 45 hours per week. Not outright falsification,
but they start applying more things they'd previously accounted for as
personal overhead into the official hours.

I personally have never been able to work for an extended period more than 7
hours a day for 6 days. That's 7 hours of _real_ work, head down on the
display and keyboard and if I'm debugging something hard I'll mostly ignore
all but the most NMIs from others ^_^ (vs. any meeting time, which could often
be added to the time I worked). Add 20-60 minutes for lunch and that's it, but
I could keep this up for months.

No matter how massively productive I am in this mode (I can provide an clean
example or two if desired) this often got me into trouble with sub-par
managers who measure input vs. useful output (avoid the D.C. area in
particular if you don't like that sort of thing). E.g. I was purged from one
company because I looked horribly unproductive compared to my peer programmer,
who was furiously coding _and_ debugging since he brand new to the field and
not (yet) very good vs. my 7 years of experience by then (it was a Lisp
implementation where I did my unit testing on the fly so my final work
required little debugging).

------
adamc
There are some assertions in the deck that need a bit more explanation. For
example, how applicable are Ford's experiments, concerning manual work on an
assembly line, to office work in a comfortable chair?

~~~
kenxle
Pg 15 of the deck notes that "Performance for knowledge workers declines after
35 hours, not 40." There's no clear evidence other than "studies show," but it
does briefly address it.

------
snikolov
It's scary how much this describes me at the moment. I'm way overcommitted and
yet unwilling to give up any one of the things I am working on. I have a
project I've collaborated on for more than a year and it would be incredibly
difficult to give up on it before it is in any kind of finished state.
Meanwhile, other opportunities have come along that I couldn't pass up. I know
that rationally the best thing to do is to prioritize and cut down my
commitments, but I also want to see things through because I would like to see
the project live and because I hate giving up. I am also irrationally averse
to screwing over the other people involved. I know I can't possibly work this
much effectively but part of me still refuses to admit it. I had plenty of
time to test my limits in school and get myself into mental and emotional
disasters because of that. I don't want it to happen again.

------
mchusma
Havent had a chance to read all, but most if not all of these studies likely
apply to averages, so don't overstate this 40 hour snippet. In other words,
the individual with average capabilities and motivation may be able to work
40. People may vary significantly off the median.

~~~
azulum
exactly. there are superhuman freaks of nature: albert pujols and michael
phelps come to mind. in addition, this study necessarily discounts the
contribution of those that have actually changed entire industries. a single
person might have one hour of production that creates a huge amount of wealth,
maybe the ten years of research that culminates in a solution that, to get
hyperbolic, changes everything. i think the key take away here is to not force
people to work more than that want and need to.

------
juliendsv-mbm
How many really effective hours do you have a day? for me if you can stay
focused 4 to 5 hours per day it's already great, at least for developers. Rest
of the time can be spent reading your emails, tech news, meetings etc .. Work
can be a really subjective word too ..

------
pestaa
Perceiving ourselves as accomplishing more than in reality may not have a good
impact on productivity in my opinion.

12+ hour grinds exist primarily because of distorted perception, and I'd argue
both direction of this distortion contribute to momentarily increased job
satisfaction, but similarly both are dangerous in the long term (though with
different consequences.)

There's no need to sacrifice either health or business, but let's just not
keep a distance from a harmful trend only to fall into another.

~~~
chalst
This self-perception disorder might, on the other hand, have positive effects
on one's commitment to success. The person with the balanced life might be
more creative and reliable, but be less willing to make sacrifices.

~~~
Silhouette
If they are able to be more creative and reliable _without_ making those
sacrifices, does a lack of willingness to make them matter?

~~~
chalst
For an executive of a company, creativity and reliability will matter more
than the willingness to make heroic sacrifices. For an entrepreneur, I am not
so sure.

~~~
Silhouette
I guess I count as a multiple entrepreneur at this point, and I'm absolutely
sure: starting your own business does not make you superhuman any more than
anyone else, and trying to put in a silly number of hours over an extended
period will still make your work rubbish just like everyone else.

I would not be surprised if the entrepreneurial mindset exaggerated the effect
mentioned in the article where people who put in crazy hours _feel_ very
productive as a result, though. Perhaps that's one of the differences from
just being a geek working for someone else: if it's your business, you are not
only the geek who thinks he's being super-productive by working too hard,
you're also the manager who has to tell the geek to stop being foolish.

------
azulum
in aggregate, i would say that everything in this study is on point. but there
is a caveat— _in aggregate_. just as there is human variation in size,
strength, appearance, so is there variation in intelligence, endurance and
work ethic. try as i might, i will never be able to function well deprived of
sleep, but my dad is a different story (he's 60, been through chemo, has
migraines all the time and can still work longer than me—it's quite
infuriating). the point is that all statistical methods which discount
outliers, and productivity in aggregate would adhere to the gaussian bell
curve†—the so-called normal distribution which by definition discounts
outliers, will not show the work of the _exceptional ones_ , whether they
exist or not. given my own experience with my old man, i would say

1) it depends on the work 2) it depends on the type of production 3) it
depends on the person 4) it depends on the time scale

i believe that those who think they are superhuman are mostly wrong, but some
of them are right. wasn't it kahneman and tversky who measured confidence and
for people over-estimated their skills? i'm pretty sure 95% of swedes believe
that they are better than average in sweden (read taleb's the black swan#).
and then there is the Dunning-Kruger effect^ which describes the
underestimation of skills by the skilled and the overestimation of skills by
the unskilled, the n00bs as it were. so i consider self-selection specious. i
want to see a measure of the guys who didn't toot their own horn, or more
appropriately, those recognized by their peers as being exceptional.

† production on long time scales does not fit to the bell curve because it can
be 'bumpy', but normalized for innovation it should

# [http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-
Improbable/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-
Improbable/dp/1400063515)

^ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect>

------
jonathanjaeger
The way that Rework is quoted seems a little out of context. I think it should
be more clear that they DON'T endorse that style of work.

------
Joakal
I wonder how well it applies to schooling?

------
michaelochurch
I think it's possible to work 60 hours per week productively. In order to do
so, you need not only passion but a proper life setup. At least, it's
important to have diversity not only in the work (more than one project) but
in work environments. I would shrivel up and die if I had to spend 12 hours
straight in an office building, especially in the winter when the days are
short and 30-60 minutes/day of daylight outside time (yes, even when it's 25
F) is a mental-health necessity.

The issue with work hours is that most people work 55-60 hours per week
including housework, commuting, in-office time, communication and lunches.
That's a normal total (paid and unpaid) work week and it doesn't usually lead
to burn out. (Yes, I count lunch as "work": there are usually social
expectations that make it a lightweight form of networking.) The danger of
pushing to 60 hours of "work time" is that the real work week becomes 75-85
hours, a level that's not sustainably productive for anyone. Personal errands
go undone, housework falls behind, and these "time debts" pile up until
they're unmanageable.

If you're going to work more than 40 hours per week, you have to outsource the
housework. If you're doing your own cleaning and working six 10-hour days,
you're destined for burnout. Car commutes, as well, are deadly. Sitting in
traffic can incinerate 5-10 hours per week easily. The solution (if available)
is either to get some of that work done on public transit, or replace the
boring, stressful car commute with a bike commute, getting physical exercise
on the way.

Also important is attention paid to the fact that burnout (and avoidance
thereof) are not only functions of how much one works, but what one is doing
outside of work. Physical exercise, keeping up friendships, leisure reading,
travel, variety of cuisine, and some sort of spiritual focus (this needs not
be tied to supernatural belief) are essential in order to keep perspective.
_Not_ doing these things, even at a 20-hour work week, is going to produce
burnout over time.

~~~
techdmn
I think this is a very good point, one I had not considered before. The
executive team may think everyone below them is slacking if we don't hit 60
hours, without realizing that we also have to cook, clean, and be our own
accountants. On the flip side, maybe the top level aren't the workaholics I
thought, they simply have the resources to devote nearly 100% of their working
time to the office.

~~~
michaelochurch
_On the flip side, maybe the top level aren't the workaholics I thought, they
simply have the resources to devote nearly 100% of their working time to the
office._

That's precisely it, borne out by repeated studies. The average big-company
CEO works 58 hours per week. That's not slacking, but with the magical ability
to buy one's way out of most out-of-office responsibilities, it's not that
impressive either. It's what average people work, all included. CEOs just have
the luxury of being more focused.

People don't _actually_ vary that much in how much they can work. You're
better off learning how to "work smart" than trying to work more hours. Most
"hard working" people are just more focused, not more sacrificial.

To be cynical: the "power career" people are just another mechanism through
which an elite class sustains an illusion of superiority. People whose bitchy
daily needs are taken care of can work 1.5 times harder and learn 1.5 times
faster and, because of nonlinearity and network effects, they get 10 times the
results. It performs the same function as being a 6-foot-tall nobleman in 800
AD, when the average peasant was under 5 feet due to malnutrition. People of
height now considered average were "obviously" physically superior and
deserved their status of lordship.

Ten or fifteen years from now, I'll probably be running my own company. And
I'll be leaving at 5:00 pm every day and "stealth" working from home. I don't
want people with less income trying to compete against me on hours. That's
stupid. I'd rather they do a good job and keep their personal lives in order
at the same time.

