Stop Working More Than 40 Hours a Week

[Andy Nguyen]

According to this article, the sweet spot is 40h/week. Anything more than that may turn into negative productivity. What do you think?
http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/stop-working-more-than-40-hours-a-week.html

 

[sjain]

I think employers, not employees should read this :D

 

[enthusiast]

That is a load of bull. I think productivity tails off way north of 40 hrs / week. If u want to be a valuable and productive employee, it takes more than the bare minimum. Work hard n party harder.

 

[Barny]

It's correct, and backed by empirical evidence. Personally, I worked 80+ hours a week for 5 months once, not having a single day off (Weekends included) and by the end of it I was an utterly broken man. Certainly in the last 2 months my skill and ability to actually do what I was setting out to do dropped off a cliff. I can cope with short-term long hours, but long-term, if you want a decent life then 40 hours is an upper bound IMO.

Of course there are people who will claim they can work 60 hours a week and still be productive, which is true, but the question is, can you be AS productive? Ultimately, depending on your realm of work, it might not matter - your total production will increase even if productivity decreases, which could be all that counts. I wouldn't want my doctor or the guy repairing aircraft to be working more than 40 hours a week though.

 

[DominiConnor]

As someone who has pulled a few 40 hour days over the years, it's clear to me that any given individual has a maximum and that it varies for that person across time. Yes, your productivity goes negative, but it begs the question of what you are doing ?
One coping mechanism I develop is being more conservative, for instance I once spent over an hour typing some shit that I could have coded as a download but didn't trust my programming for fiddly work. That's a clear drop in productivity and as I was the only person around who could code that task, it meant that other people's productivity was harmed.

A self-directed worker (people like us) has to make decisions about which approach to use for a given lump of work, basically investing time for a return in units of work completed. Under increased volatility caused by fatigue, it is rational to take the long way round if it is one that has lower risk of going wrong, ie you choose to become more stupid.

Also fatigue time has a shape, the correlation I observe is not strongly with the number of hours, but their flexibility and I note a strong negative correlation between official face time and the performance of the firm.

 

[bigbadwolf]

Of course there are people who will claim they can work 60 hours a week and still be productive, which is true, but the question is, can you be AS productive?

Those people who boast of putting in 80 hours a week -- what are they doing? Sitting in meetings? Writing memos? On the road or in the air going from one location to another? With such long hours most of what they do is going to be mechanical and repetitive -- it can't be creative and intellectually demanding.

 

[John G]

Depends on how creative and stressful the task is. If you are just churning out work, then 60 hours will produce more than 40. If that work requires you to think creatively, be innovative or to work under duress, then the marginal productivity probably does fall north of 40. But it's the marginal productivity that falls, not the total output.

Also that guy's facts are wrong. The UK has an opt-out on the 48 hour week at the employees discretion. It is not illegal to work longer than that in the UK and of course most people in trading/banking in the City work longer than that.

 

[shivgan joshi]

Applicable when companies pay you for putting in more hours.

 

[Keith Tan]

good for employers to switch to pay-by-the-hour

 

[Polter]

 

[Daniel Duffy]

According to this article, the sweet spot is 40h/week. Anything more than that may turn into negative productivity. What do you think?
http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/stop-working-more-than-40-hours-a-week.html

Ah, oh Henry Ford resolved this problem in 1926.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ford-factory-workers-get-40-hour-week

There are some exceptions, e.g. if you work for yourself you can work as little or as much as you want. LOL!

 

[Daniel Duffy]

40 hours work, 40 hours music, 40 hours sleep and the rest is slack :D

 

[bigbadwolf]

Marissa Mayer (supposedly) put in 130-hour weeks.

A few months later, Mayer received a further plaudit, albeit a less lucrative one: she topped Business Insider’s list of “19 Successful People Who Barely Sleep.” “She used to put in 130 hour weeks [when she worked] at Google,” explained Insider, and “she managed that schedule by sleeping under her desk and being ‘strategic’ about her showers.”

Nary an article about Mayer goes by without wide-eyed appreciation of her miracle birth. She has achieved something greater than the Virgin Mary: becoming pregnant without losing her bonus.

To paraphrase Herman Goering, each time I hear about what long hours someone is putting in, I reach for my revolver (or rather, my plastic sword as that's what I'm practicing with to become a sellsword a la Game of Thrones).

 

[stephan acay]

According to this article, the sweet spot is 40h/week. Anything more than that may turn into negative productivity. What do you think?

I guess it depends if you like your job or not.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Confucius