
People Who Claim to Work 75-Hour Weeks Usually Only Work About 50 Hours - ekovarski
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/people-who-claim-to-work-75-hour-weeks-are-lying.html
======
yibg
Many years ago I was working for a small consulting firm and had a stretch of
time with a lot of overtime; aka "crunch time". Since these were billable
hours, time was tracked daily, even if they weren't all actually billed. The
tracked hours varied over the ~6 month span, but ranged from 55 hours a week
to 93 for one week. Of course not 100% of the time was spent on actual work
but it was pretty close.

The 93 hour week was pretty much: go to work, eat meals at desk, go home, work
from home until bed time, go to sleep, then repeat. But in general weird
things happened during that time, probably due to a combination of stress and
unhealthy habits. For example:

\- I've never been a morning person and struggled to wake up before 9 all my
life. During this time I woke up early to meet with the client early in the
morning. After some time I'd habitually wake up 15 minutes before 6, which was
when my alarm was set at. Also due to lack of sleep I'd always be pissed that
I was missing out on 15 minutes of sleep too.

\- I was sleep deprived but didn't feel sleepy at all during the day. Granted
I did consume a lot of coffee, but still. Adrenaline?

\- Got drunk really easily. Part of client facing work is drinks with clients
every so often. I used to be able to drink 4-5 beers and not show much effect
externally. Towards the end of this period 1-2 drinks and I'd be slurring.

\- Perversely, things were often times "fun". The team got really close to
each other and we actually looked forward to going to the client office to do
"battle".

Definitely not sustainable nor healthy. I got pats on the back and some token
raises / bonuses but I've since learned that going above and beyond like this
is not worth it. The hit to mental and physical health is just not worth the
small amount of extra money and (possibly) career advancement.

~~~
radicalbyte
Make that 6 months into two years and the sleep time to an average of 5 - 5.5
hours a night and you have parenthood of a crybaby.

You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming
at you to the mix.

~~~
gwbas1c
As a parent who added a second child when my first was 2 and a half, I think
you're doing it wrong.

A year later, both children are still extremely demanding. It's all about
setting limits and knowing when to bend them, like last night when my daughter
finally figured out how to wake herself up in the middle of the night to go
poop. That's one of the rare sleepless nights that's worth it.

Otherwise, knowing how you sleep is also important. I fumble around in the
dark, use extremely dim lights, and have no problem letting my kids sleep with
me for an hour or two. A full night's sleep is vital. I'm really good at
falling asleep after giving a bottle because I make them before going to bed,
turn on no lights, and keep my eyes closed once I'm in the rocking chair.

> You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming
> at you to the mix.

You really need to learn modern discipline techniques. We use 1-2-3 magic.
When our toddler screams at us, it's usually an immediate "ONE!" If it's
really bad, there's a time out with no counting. It really works.

I even help my wife learn by shouting "ONE!" "TWO!" ... when I'm out of the
room and hear my toddler get tough. The 1-2-3 magic technique requires a lot
of disciple to not get sucked into a toddler argument.

See [https://www.amazon.com/1-2-3-Magic-Effective-Discipline-
Chil...](https://www.amazon.com/1-2-3-Magic-Effective-Discipline-
Children/dp/1889140163/ref=sr_1_3?crid=X0IAN6HFZNBZ&keywords=1+2+3+magic&qid=1556228008&s=gateway&sprefix=1+2+3+magic%2Caps%2C140&sr=8-3)

~~~
NotHereNotThere
As a parent of multiple children (3+), your comment really rubs me the wrong
way.

It comes off as judgemental ("you're doing it wrong", "you really need to
learn to"), and you're generalizing your own children's behavior as if it
applied to every child.

Every child is different, their sleep cycles, reactivity, personalities, etc.

I'm not even going to comment on the 1-2-3-timeout technique apart from saying
I think it's disrespectful towards children; it is basically conditioning them
to fear certain words you say and to force them to do something. Isolating
them when they "misbehave".

You're free to raise your children how you want, but perhaps be mindful of how
you.. "give advice"

~~~
jacobolus
Moreover, not all parents/families are the same. Some are heavy sleepers, some
are light sleepers. Some get to sleep easily, some have difficulty getting to
sleep. Some families have everyone on the same schedule, other families have
everyone on shifted schedules. Some have generous parental leave or a non-
working parent and can devote significant direct time/attention to kids,
others are working full time with little parental leave and not much support.
Some are extremely relaxed and are unfazed by noise or mess, while others are
anxious and have trouble controlling physiological responses to stress. And so
on.

------
mwfunk
In my experience, when a workplace has a perpetual crunch time culture, little
if any additional work gets done that wouldn't have gotten done if everyone
stuck to 40 hour weeks. I'm very curious how true this is in 996 places. When
someone knows that they're going to spend 12 hours in the office regardless of
how much work is actually required, that time gets padded out a LOT with non-
work stuff, both to preserve their own sanity and out of resentment for the
expectation of 12 hour days.

~~~
TheOperator
In my experience 996 is a scam to get compensated for doing tons of hours of
work while often doing no more work than the employees on a regular schedule.
I've seen plenty of people working two jobs who just do the needful and rest
every minute they can who do far less work tha their "less hardworking" peers.

You CAN take a 40hr week worker, make them work extra, and their productivity
will spike pretty hard. It's just that people eventually adapt by resting more
at work. Employers end up seeing little additional work done even if they
schedule somebody for an extra 20hrs a week.

The only jobs where more hours = more work sustainably are jobs like trucking
where the work is actually very easy and its just a matter of staying awake at
the wheel. Long work weeks are mostly a form of virtue signalling which you
recieve money for doing. The only reason the 24/7 crunch time companies don't
immediately go broke from sheer inefficiency is because they don't pay their
staff overtime. Everybody would be better off in the long run with a culture
that was focused on hiring a greater number of people to work more reasonable
hours with strongly encouraged breaks. This 996 crap is a reflection of the
egos of people like Jack Ma who would rather have employees with his work
ethic rather than employees that get a lot of work done in little time.

~~~
jammygit
I know of two truckers personally who fell asleep at the wheel because of that
attitude/culture/expectation, leading to crashes. They were okay but it was
scary stuff.

~~~
TheOperator
Oh yeah but you legitimately can get more work done. It's just every now and
again it causes a trucker to plow through a schoolbus because they're half
awake at the wheel. This is why Truckers are hired as independant contractors
to limit the liability of companies making them work unsafely. So they can
argue they don't need to pay for little Billy's wheelchair.

Yet for the companies involved this arrangement is highly profitable. They
don't pay any of the externalities. I'm not saying it's a good thing. It's
merely a profitable thing.

------
jnbiche
I worked 60-70 hours a week for 6 months and destroyed by health ( _actually_
programming for 50+ of those hours, tracked time since it was billable hours
for a consulting firm). Finished the project by the deadline I was hired for,
but quit soon afterwards and within 2 months I was in the ICU, and then in and
out of the hospital several times with some serious chronic health issues that
I'm still recovering from 2 years later. I made a lot of money but spent the
next year barely working and recovering my health. Doctor's weren't 100% sure
it was stress/work related("possible" it contributed), but I was pretty sure.
All things considered, it was a losing option despite the pay. I could have
done it at age 25 but not at age 45.

Now I work 40-50 hours and week, make even more money(for where I live,
average by SV standards), but it's still a high pressure job. I'd gladly work
25 hours a week for 1/3 the pay.

Why isn't there someone disrupting software development paying experienced
people like me a low salary for 20-30 hours a week? I'd still get over half as
much done as I do working 50 hours a week, I'm sure.

~~~
freetime2
> Why isn't there someone disrupting software development paying experienced
> people like me a low salary for 20-30 hours a week? I'd still get over half
> as much done as I do working 50 hours a week, I'm sure.

I've seen many, many developers working 30 hours a week. It's generally not
acknowledged openly or written into the contract, but it takes the form of
coming in late in the morning, "working from home" at least one day a week. Or
leaving work early "to beat traffic", pick up the kids etc.

The key in my experience is finding a manager who is willing to evaluate you
on your performance rather than time spent at your desk, and to be a little
flexible about accepting a job that doesn't pay top dollar. An experienced
engineer should be able to get more done in 20-30 hours anyway than a junior
engineer can in 50 hours. As long as you're reasonably productive and you
don't cause trouble for anyone, I have seen people sustain jobs like that for
more than a decade.

~~~
stjohnswarts
I'm in this situation. I spend about 30 hours on real development and 10 hours
on self improvement (trying new stuff/learning new techniques) . I easily get
as much done as my co-workers who go to every meeting and work overtime.
Difference is I'm not burned out like the ones who try to look like "company
men" by putting in 50 hours a week and attending every little corporate
meeting and event that happens.

------
arosier
This happened to me. I was working 40 hours per week but saying I was working
75 hours per week (without really measuring it). Then I got a second job which
made it more important to manage my time effectively (including measuring my
time). With the second job, I actually started working 72 hours per week and
realized how hard it is to work that much time due to the necessities in life
(sleeping, eating/shopping, bathing, commuting, ect) not to mention all the
distractions that come up during work when you think you have more then 40
hours to complete all your work.

I recommend anyone try to work that much for a few months, it really puts
perspective on how limited our time is and the value of time management.

~~~
notfromhere
Also puts into perspective how much of a mental wear working 70+ hours is.

I did it for a few months - really starts breaking you down as a human being.

~~~
Gibbon1
30 years ago I did 70 hours a week for 12 weeks and have RSI in one of my
wrists as a result.

------
bryanlarsen
And even if they do spend 75 hours at their workplace, they're probably
spending far less than 40 actually working.

(says the guy posting on HN instead of actually working).

~~~
seppin
> And even if they do spend 75 hours at their workplace, they're probably
> spending far less than 40 actually working.

Interesting, in Europe the hours are less but you are expected to work every
minute you are there. In America you are expected to physically stay longer
but being on FB/Reddit is no big deal.

Sounds like a bad way of doing things.

~~~
balfirevic
> Interesting, in Europe the hours are less but you are expected to work every
> minute you are there.

No, you're not. Also, Europe is large and diverse. Source: European.

~~~
drilldrive
Most people unfortunately refer to Europe when they mean north-west Europe or
even the Nordic countries alone.

~~~
seppin
Yes sorry I was being sloppy with language, I was describing northern/Germanic
Europe. Southern Europe has their own rules

~~~
balfirevic
I still find it hard to believe that it's universal across all or even most
companies in (for example) Germany. Do software shops there not have
Playstation/table tennis/table football or whatever that people use to take a
break during working hours?

------
Theodores
What is work anyway?

If you are a programmer then work is different. Sure you are not on your feet
all day at the beck and call of customers, however, if you are not working
then your computer is. Waiting is not supposed to be part of the job. Learning
on the job is also verboten. Very little time that is on the company clock is
spent travelling.

I have colleagues in sales that do lots of travel, then, when they are back in
the office they spend the morning filling in expenses. Sure this is all work
that the company needs someone to do and someone has got to go on those
planes. I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but
is it strictly work?

On the plane they could have the laptop out and be working on spreadsheets. Or
they could be playing Angry Birds. Would one activity count as working and the
other not?

If you are a security guard and are mostly monitoring the TV and kettle, how
does that compare to the secretary that occupies the same desk by day,
juggling phone calls with a constant stream of people needing assistance?

Or if you are a taxi driver working with half the day spent waiting for a
fare. You could easily put in long hours doing that but how much of this work
is actual work and how much of it is reading the newspaper?

With every long hours job in the Western world there are these job-specific
factors to consider. If someone is doing extra shifts in a factory where there
is a production line then I am far more willing to believe claims of long
hours worked.

~~~
clubm8
> I also know from experience that time spent travelling is tiring, but is it
> strictly work?

If I'm someplace other than where I want to be, it's work.

A lot of comments in this thread don't seem to understand - even if you're
free to read HN during downtime, if I need to be in by 9am and am unable to
leave until 7pm, the period in between was work. If I would have suffered
professionally if I'd left at 5 regardless of how much "work" was done, the
performative behavior is also "work".

Labor law in the states uses "engaged to work" and similar language often,
mostly in the context of hourly employees. You can't tell someone "you must
show up to the jobsite and wait to see if you're needed" under threat of no
future work... that's being engaged to work.

~~~
FiddlyPack
The confusion is because many of us work many days remote, and/or have
flexible hours. For many of us, our entire existence is oriented around
improving a bottom line...so when we have down time, we are recreationally
reading about how to do that better, whether we are on the clock or not. So,
if you are a remote worker, and you produce 3 proof of concepts for your
company for fun, and none of them pan out, how many hours did you work? Nobody
knows, including you.

~~~
clubm8
Why does the concept of being salary always seem to go one way (more than 40)?

I worked in a place where people "worked long hours".

A typical day would go like this: around 4pm they'd declare they had a
"conference call" and call a friend from a meeting room. Then they'd watch
some Netflix til 7ish, then go out to dinner (probably with the friend they
called), where they'd fire off several drafted emails. If someone actually
responds, they'd draft a reply then send it while getting ready for bed.

When the definition of "good work" becomes subjective, "work" becomes art,
specifically performance art.

~~~
FiddlyPack
I didn’t think I suggested this necessarily went “more than 40,” only that
“on” time might be hard to differentiate from “off” time, and that some
activities that look like “off” (having dinner with teammates) might have real
value while others that look like “on” (researching some tech framework that
is irrelevant to the problem you are trying to solve) might be worthless.

------
cletus
So this is something you learn sooner or later. People lie. And I don't mean
maliciously. I mean they lie to themselves and to other people. Some prime
examples:

\- How much they get paid. Honestly you need to see a W2 before you believe
what anyone tells you.

\- Commute times. "It's 15 minutes door to door". No, it's not. It's like 35.
This isn't even a "perfect circumstances" type deal. I honestly don't know
what this is but it's so common for me to hear outright falsehoods for this I
just take any estimate and double it and then go from there.

\- How much they work. Most people who work 70, 80 or 100 hours a week just
don't. I mean they may work a lot but not that much. Kudos to this study for
using a diary allocating time rather than self-reporting.

\- The article mentions this one but I'd forgotten about it: how much people
go to the gym and how long they spend there.

There's a weirdly large amount of self-delusion and presenting a particular
image that honestly I could never be bothered with (which isn't to say I don't
have my own foibles of course). Sometimes I wonder what I missed out on here
in terms of social norms. But it just seems so exhausting and pointless.

------
osrec
Investment bankers will often claim this, while also lying about their salary.

I was often surprised by my colleagues claiming extra long work weeks, all
while looking remarkable fresh. I couldn't work it out - I mean, if I worked a
solid 14 hour day, you could see it clearly on my face, yet if they do it,
they seem to develop a healthy glow. Turns out a lot of them were in the
building, but not at their desk. Oftentimes they were in the gym/steam/sauna.
That explained the healthy glow!

~~~
haolez
On the other side, I know some investment bankers and they work more than 60
hours per week. They look unhealthy to me :)

~~~
osrec
I too was one of those unhealthy looking, overworked bankers. I was promoted
at a young age and had a lot to prove, so I overdid it for a year or two. Then
I understood the secret the other MDs had known for years - you just have to
look busy, not actually be busy!

~~~
Thlom
When I was working construction many years ago there was an urban legend about
a guy that always looked busy running around with some tools, but no one ever
saw him actually working. Turned out he used to find himself a hidden spot at
the site and sleep there most of the day. Just making sure to walk across the
site with tools once in a while.

~~~
KC8ZKF
I learned as a young sailor that if you always had a broom in your hand,
nobody would find something for you to do.

------
deadbunny
I recently started turning up at around 10 and leaving at 4:45 and I get just
as much done as when I was in the office 9-6.

I've also started giving more fucks about work, which is amusing as I started
showing up late and leaving early due to my lack of fucks.

So in my unsanctioned (and I'm sure time limited once someone complains)
experiment with a sample size of one I can say shorter days definitely keep me
more engaged and don't seem to slow down my work.

~~~
war1025
This has been my standard work day for ~4 years. I've found people don't
complain as long as you get things done.

~~~
osrec
If you work in a large corporate, people will complain, _especially_ if you
get this done. It sorta highlights the inefficiencies of the punctual, yet
less productive employees, and they don't like it.

------
yingw787
I think selling time for money, more than anything, is why I don't want to be
an employee forever. It's good for learning the ropes and knowing what it's
like in the trenches, but ultimately there are only so many hours in the day
and the human body evolved to require a good number of hours for self-
maintenance.

The path to sustainable growth is through automation, increasing your market
rates/prices/value, and owning capital (money and assets that generate more
money/assets).

You can see this analogy play out on an international scale during the Cold
War. The Soviet Union reached its peak during the 1970s, where it could not
find any more resources (whether labor or raw materials) to use. "They pretend
to pay us and we pretend to work" is a famous Soviet joke. The U.S., by
contrast, invented new blue oceans of productivity (e.g. computers) and
increased GDP and GDP per capita. It played out in foreign policy; the U.S.
invested in and traded with Western Europe to make it more productive; the
Soviet Union cannibalized Eastern Europe for parts. The result was that the
U.S. won the Cold War and the Soviet Union died.

At no scale does throwing more resources at a problem change the nature of the
game. Devising more efficient ways to use the resources you have changes the
game.

------
rogerkirkness
Actually working more than ~55 hours in a week is soul crushing and physically
very hard. At a certain point you would need an escalation of stimulants or
risk not being able to get out of bed if you actually worked 75 hours.

~~~
mdorazio
I can confirm. In the consulting world I've had several instances of either
being doubled up on projects or having to hit extremely demanding deadlines
for milestone payouts that required legitimate 60+ hour weeks. One week is
doable, 2 is a stretch, beyond that people (myself included) generally had to
turn to things like modafinil to keep going and there's a noticeable toll on
general health and wellness.

On the flip side, people who say they work stupid hours are _usually_ just at
the office stupid hours, not necessarily working all the time. But so are
people who say they work 40 hour weeks. From working with hundreds of "normal"
employees at clients over the years, I'd say the average actual productive
time per person is around 25 hours.

~~~
okmokmz
>But so are people who say they work 40 hour weeks. From working with hundreds
of "normal" employees at clients over the years, I'd say the average actual
productive time per person is around 25 hours

Agreed, I'd be surprised if I spent more than 25 hours a week actually
actively working

------
S_A_P
I’m currently working legit 65-70 hours per week. We have a hard stop that
costs millions if we miss. It basically means 6am-6pm Monday through Saturday.
I’m not as productive as when I work less but there is a net win in
productivity. I don’t think I can do this for much more than a few months. I
can already tell it has markedly harmed my health. Being stressed for months
at a time is hard.

~~~
FiddlyPack
No shade here, but how can you possibly be on HN right now? Or do you consider
this kind of commenting activity to be part of your job? I consider myself to
work maybe 15 hr per week, but according to my contract I work 40, and
sometimes my timesheet says 60. Nonetheless, I am “on-call” quite a bit, at my
own discretion.

I just can’t imagine how I could stay in deep concentration and be “legit
65-70 hours per week,” unless I was also counting chatting on HN, Slack, meals
with coworkers, research...ie the things that make my actual “work” time (of
maybe 15 hours per week) truly productive.

I guess it would be totally reasonable to include some of those activities as
“legit work time,” but then how do you decide what is and isn’t legit? I
require a lot of adjacent “down” time to provide very high-value “on” time for
my company, but how could you possibly know if 20 hours spent researching
something you are excited about will have any value whatsoever for your
company? Should it be “billable?” This is the unsung benefit of being a
salaried worker: you don’t have to concern yourself about whether your
research and exploratory development is “on task” or not, you just need to
bring the benefits back to your company.

~~~
S_A_P
I actually posted this during a change management meeting. I was required to
be there despite my portion of the meeting being 10 minutes of the hour. There
are varying descriptions of "work", but my day usually lines up like so:

4:30am wake up 5:30 leave 6 arrive at the office 6-9 heads down coding 9-11
status, project, and various other meetings and help/administrative work 11-12
take lunch at the desk while I code 12-2 any follow up various other meetings
2-6 more code/tech work

Or course Im not 100% utilized. Nobody is. If I were to work 8, I would have
no time to actually work on the project I have deliverables due on. Meetings
are toxic, but also necessary, and Im manager and technical in this role so I
have to split my time. Saturdays I usually get a solid 8-10 hours of work in
with few interruptions.

I don't feel badly at all for posting here during billing hours, and if
anything my invoices are conservative on real hours worked.

~~~
FiddlyPack
Oh, yes, I hear you on being present for 10 min of a 1 hr meeting. Your
presence is absolutely valuable for the entirety of the hour meeting, even
though it’s not clear from the outset where precisely during that time those
10 min will be valuable.

I guess that’s what I mean; it’s not necessarily obvious when is work time and
when is not. Even as you’re posting on HN during your meeting as you
understand it is not valuable for you to be 100% “present” and it would be
more valuable to explore ideas and culture on HN as you listen, so it is also
true that many will be working on ideas as they eat dinner with their
families, solving problems while they sleep, and planning their dependency
graph during their commute. I just don’t think “hours worked” is an honest
metric any more than 4 years at college shows that you were anything more than
present.

Those 4 years could have been rigorous and honest and intense and valuable
with a B average to show for it, or you could have been partying and have an A
for your effort. Time spent _might_ be required, but it also doesn’t matter.

------
polote
In the last year, I had two jobs,one at the office, and one at a startup I was
working with.

I managed to make more than 75h a weeks only 3 weeks of the year.

During these weeks, my life was, sleep, go to the gym, go to work, go to
second work sleep, every weekday, and on week-ends gym + work.

75h per week is 11h per day EVERY day. when you do that, your body is tired,
and if you want to be productive your have to sleep a lot, and you have no
social life.

(I track my time with an app, so it is not fake numbers, my max is 78 hours)

------
agumonkey
There's something about work.. I always felt better at low level producing
jobs (bakery, burgery) because I knew that my work was quantifiable (and
predictable). It felt like a robot to many but to me it felt like the
difference between superstition and arithmetic. There I couldn't say I worked
N but in reality only worked M because there was no way to be confused; it was
obvious and there were traces of my work that were function of time.

------
warp_factor
I met a couple subgroup of people that were weirdly proud of working a lot.
And I caught a lot of them inflating their work hours (for example pretending
they work 70 while they work a normal 40). To them it was a way to show off
how important they supposedly are.

I really think that most people that pretend to work > 40 hours a week are not
really working those hours. They might stay a lot at the office but are
usually the least productive people ever

------
bitL
I think 75+ productive hours are doable if:

1) you start early

2) keep focus 100%, no browsing/distractions etc.

3) after 7 hours you make a 2-3h long break and do something completely
different, like taking a walk outside, sunbathing, biking, sauna or whatever
makes you happy

4) when you return, you work on another task/for another company, never the
same stuff you worked on in the morning

5) you take only one day off, i.e. depending on your location/culture/religion
one of Fri-Sun is strictly no-work

6) you are single & healthy

~~~
munk-a
Why do you want to work 75+ hours? What are you working for - what value are
you receiving from life?

These are serious questions, I've worked crazy overtime (defined by me as
anything over 50 hours a week) and never want to return to it, consistently
doing 10 hour days is draining and significantly lowered my productivity, it
was just bad times all around.

~~~
bitL
I managed to work like that for ~9 months; when you work on some bleeding edge
stuff like inventing some new Deep Learning method you can actually have fun
and be eager to keep doing it. If it's just usual treadmill caused by silly
decisions from the top and inability to push back to customer, then it's hell.

~~~
stjohnswarts
that type of work is < 0.1% for most of the use cases we're talking about
here. Generally it's just a huge corp abusing their employees.

~~~
bitL
Sure. I summarized rules that helped me when I needed to do that. Somebody
might find that useful (e.g. while starting their own business or going
through exponential growth).

------
bob33212
People like this generally consider seat and monitor warming as work. Is a
butt keeping the seat warm and the mouse moving enough to keep the computer
from going to sleep? If so, it is work.

------
danieltillett
I worked for a period of my life (around two years) a sustained 100+ hour
workload (real work). I literally did nothing but work, eat and work, and
sleep seven days a week. The only times I didn’t work was in the bathroom.

I didn’t get physically ill or burn out, but I slowly started to drift away
from reality. The quality of my judgment calls started to decline and while
never doing anything outright crazy, I did and said things that in hindsight
were very strange.

One of the side effects of this is I had no idea what happened in the world in
that time. To this day I am still learning about historical events that
happened in that two year period that continue to amaze me.

------
impostir
I know my productivity plummets passed 7-8 hours of work. Many times I would
say it becomes negative, I.e. I make a lot of sigbificant mistakes and/or
break something. More work is rarely an actual solution.

------
epicureanideal
How many hours are people who say they work 40 working?

~~~
wnissen
That was the most interesting part of the Mother Jones article to me. If you
compare people who average 43 hours a week (but claim they are averaging 50),
the folks who think they are working 70 should be working about 20 hours more
a week. But it's only 12. Pretty amazing.

[https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/most-of-us-
do...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/most-of-us-dont-work-
more-than-40-hours-a-week/)

~~~
stjohnswarts
But on average they died within 5 years because of stress/cardio incidends and
mcdonald's cheese burger being their primary source of sustenance. So over a
10 year span the normies were 50% more productive.

------
pattisapu
Interesting caveat that people also overestimate leisure time.

I suppose the takeaway may simply be that people are not good at
remembering/estimating quantities of time?

------
smallgovt
The nature of this topic is that:

\- Those who don't work long hours will want to understate how many hours hard
workers work (to avoid being labelled a slacker)

\- Those who do work long hours will want to overstate how many hours they
work (to accrue more perceived clout)

The reality is almost certainly in between. There are certainly people who
both claim and do work 75+ hour weeks on a persistent basis. I've done this
for 4.5 years straight as a founder.

------
croh
When I got my first job, I did similar. 9 am to 2 am straight for 2 weeks with
6-days week. Reaching home back around 3.30 am. Then waking up at 7.30 am and
reaching office again at 9 am.

I was replacement for senior dev, who was leaving on very short notice.
Noticeably, I used to eat very little than usual. Caffeine and nicotine helped
me go thr' it. But now I feel like stupid for being so naive that time.

------
cascom
Seems to me that people tend to get anchored by their high-water marks rather
than average... for example I will definitely have 110hr weeks and have the
occasional 35hr weeks, my "generic" week is probably 55hrs, but not sure where
the true average is (probably closer to the generic week), but the mean of my
extremely good weeks and bad weeks is 72.5 hrs...

------
neilv
Some kinds of work are easier to do than others. At one point, I decided that
60 hr/wk of active work seemed the approximate sustainable limit for some
typical mix of both hard&easy work, over a period of weeks or months. But even
if you can schedule the hard&easy parts for fatigue, 60 hr/wk still has extra
costs (e.g., stresses to health, outside relationships, outside activities,
internal morale as people get irritable).

I've also done my share of all-nighters and 80-hour weeks, and it's
rarely/never worth every hour. I've learned to manage projects and tasks
better.

I also have some sense of how performance degrades severely by the 30 hours
awake mark, and a sense that there's a ramp up to that impairment before it
becomes obvious.

Most recently, I advised a developer to try for 40 productive hours of work
per week, and to emphasize being sharp and non-fatigued for any task that
would benefit from that. Almost all of their work required them to be sharp.
Keep the 60-hour heroics in reserve for emergencies only. (Or for occasional
easy flow work, like sketching out a UI skeleton in some new framework. But
don't work all night on something easy, and then throw off your sleep cycle
for a week when you need to be sharp for harder stuff.)

(The last time I did a weekend work marathon, which required some meticulous
reverse-engineering-ish work that I think was already the work-smarter way and
couldn't be sped up further, I imagined the focus and pace of an astronaut who
was calm and all-business about solving some critical problem in time. That
was both inspirational and also set a simple internal watchdog on my mood and
how progress was going. Had I been burning stressful 60-hour weeks for months
before, I might've been too fatigued/stressed to pull it off without error or
poor decisions. Had I not had much experience with working long hours, I might
not have appreciated how much discipline they require, and the costs.)

------
secfirstmd
I recently starting using a training a productivity tracker that has a decent
mix of tracking but keeping the data local. It's really amazing to see how
time is spent in the office. If on a very unusual and rare day of say 10
hours, I might be lucky to get 6 hours of actual work (with maybe an hour of
deep work in there).

~~~
drjesusphd
What software is this productivity tracker?

~~~
secfirstmd
Qbserve

~~~
nullandvoid
Thanks this sounds like something I'd like to try - are there any others you
considered whilst looking around as that is mac only and I'm Windows
unfltunately ( or any one else in this thread do something similar )

~~~
secfirstmd
Yes I think I remember RescueTime but that doesn't store your data locally I
think?

------
nprateem
I've recently been working a lot, but not all of it has been desk time. I
think it's fair to include time spent thinking about work as work time - once
I've worked out how to solve a task I can churn it out, but something
particularly complicated might take a few days of thinking (fast and slow) to
work out.

A survey like the one in the article may be too simplistic because I could be
in the gym while mulling over a problem, out for a walk, doing my shopping,
playing games, etc. but in the background I'm still mulling things over. It's
not pure relaxation time like when I'm not trying to work something out, but
still leads to that "Aha!" moment, even if it happens in the shower or while
doing the washing up.

I think it's reasonable to include all that thinking time as work time.

~~~
krageon
It's not work time in the sense that you will be paid for it though, which is
_usually_ the metric people use. Unless I am missing something.

~~~
nprateem
True, but then a lot of people in permanent jobs don't get paid extra for
overtime anyway. I mean it more from the perspective of how much of your day
you're "on", and that leisure/other activities aren't necessarily mutually
exclusive to thinking about work related tasks, which can make you more
productive during your usual paid hours.

~~~
krageon
> True, but then a lot of people in permanent jobs don't get paid extra for
> overtime anyway.

Can you specify what countr(y|ies) this applies to? It is most certainly not
the case where I am.

> I mean it more from the perspective of how much of your day you're "on"

I'm firmly of the belief that if you spend a lot of your leisure time thinking
about work, perhaps you have an unhealthy work/life balance. You are of course
correct that it is possible to still do so. I don't agree with the point that
this should be counted or even is work time. It is free time you have
sacrificed to your job, without compensation. Work with no compensation
doesn't satisfy the conditions for what I consider to be employment.

------
speedplane
I used to be a practicing attorney, where we tracked our time meticulously. My
craziest month was 360 hours. I remember it well, I didn't cheat on a single
hour, if anything I may have under-reported. That was a hell-month, but I do
think many other people could do it for one month.

I later started a company, where I also worked insanely hard, but did not keep
track of my hours. The big difference is that with my startup, I loved every
second of it. On countless nights, I would get upset whenever I saw the sun
start to rise because it meant I probably ought to go to sleep soon. Five
hours can go by without looking up from what you're doing.

All that said, without a time sheet, it's impossible to know for certain which
job I worked more hours.

------
luminati
Well Marissa Mayers claims to have worked 130 hour work weeks[1]

[https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-
on-1...](https://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-on-130-hour-
work-weeks-2016-8)

~~~
seppin
> "the hardest working CEO in Silicon Valley, bar none."

i'm sorry but she was early stage at Google, what since then has all that hard
work gotten her?

~~~
coryrc
hundreds of millions of dollars?

------
rjblackman
I've noticed quite a few very unproductive workers, send emails and pretend
they are working at 11pm kind of hours. Worker output is the only thing that
matters. The problem is in our field how do we measure this?

------
stjohnswarts
I have worked 75 hour weeks but only like a couple times a year, people who
say they work that much are usually filling their time with worthless filler.
I bet less that 1% of them actually do it. The rest is meetings, web surfing,
wasting time on the phone. However business owners can easily do this when
profits are down.

------
biql
Isn't it weird to lie about how long you sit on your butt? I could understand
lying about output of your work. But hours? The perception is that it doesn't
matter what you did, but rather, how much you suffered for it.

------
sys_64738
50 hours? I work to live and value my free time. Avoid the water cooler talk
and stick to 40 hours a week. Non work chatter with co-workers is what slows
you up.

------
maxgiraldo
Hours spent at the office do not equate to hours worked.

