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Working fewer hours would make us more productive

theguardian.com

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Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#101

Post by yason »

I worked at 50% capacity for some years. It was just great until I chose to want more money for the time being and returned to 70% capacity. That was just great, too, until I realized that I was as productive as a full-time guy without the full-time pay so I eventually went back full-time but trying to keep my output roughly on the same level as I had been getting good reviews all the time.

However, last year I got tired of the full hours and a bit depressed because of lots of factors that prevented me from getting things done, and after one realisation I took a month off. Coming back to work I figured I shall be going with working full hours for three months and then taking a month off again. So that comes to three months of spare time and nine months of work annually.

The realisation was about working patterns. For a programmer like me, the best productivity comes in bursts so I'd happily do three ~12-hour days and keep two days off as opposed to working the official 7.5 hours (in my country) every day. This has always been so, even as a kid. I could work on something really intensively for a few days and then I needed to do something completely different. The newest realization was that it works on longer timescale too. I can work three months and do my absolute best, and then relax and have time for my own things.

This sort of a contract――relax pattern is quite reminiscent to life and nature itself. I feel much at home between the pushes and pulls. I'll see how the first year will turn out to be.

Over the years I've also realised that staying productive is mostly just about conserving these important productivity patterns.

A lot of what happens at work eats away from these patterns but if you can keep them mostly intact then you'll get productivity by default. That is, assuming that you love programming. Hint: if you're known to occasionally spend hours on hacking something at work at an intensity where nobody can pull you away from it, it's a good sign that you love programming.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#102

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

rloc wrote: post #45
lmm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to change culture is through law. Look at seatbelt use: decades of public awareness campaigns did nothing, but once it became a legal requirement people switched. Also laws are the way to prevent a race to the bottom. If it's legal to work longer hours people will, and everyone else will do so to compete with them. Compare OHSA, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ .

In France working 35h/week is actually enforced by law. I personally think it's good for productivity (France is still considered a very productive country, more than Germany for instance) but this law remains regularly critiziced. Many want it removed or updated. It's very hard to measure human productivity unfortunately. It's much easier to measure the cost of an employee working less hours for the same salary.

There's a very weird and irrational belief that more hours on the job means more productivity. Projects are often goal-based now.

But management hasn't entirely caught up with the idea that jobs are no longer about clock punching - and longer clock times can mean less real worker value.

This is partly about power dynamics in the workplace. In many corporations control of time and personal freedom are perks that are only available as you move up the hierarchy. Dysfunctional cultures are much more interested in explicit displays of limited freedom for the worker bees than in true increases in productivity.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#103

Post by hatmatrix »

moomin wrote: post #5

The article makes the fundamental error of assuming that if you worked ten hours less, someone else would get to work ten hours more. But other than that, it's a pretty good article grounded in actual fact.

Yes, it would only work in sectors where the labor is more or less fungible, but these types of articles always seem to overgeneralize the effectiveness of reduced work hours.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#104

Post by moosov »

eneifert wrote: post #100
moosov wrote: post #99

I'm interested how much time people generally spend for work, let's have a small poll - https://guaana.com/quiz/hn-how-many-hours-you-work-in-a-week

Another great poll would be, how many hours do you feel you are productive in a day.

True and this question gives us much more information - https://guaana.com/quiz/how-many-hours-do-you-feel-you-are-p...

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#105

Post by pc86 »

golergka wrote: post #64
lmm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to change culture is through law. Look at seatbelt use: decades of public awareness campaigns did nothing, but once it became a legal requirement people switched. Also laws are the way to prevent a race to the bottom. If it's legal to work longer hours people will, and everyone else will do so to compete with them. Compare OHSA, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ .

> Look at seatbelt use: decades of public awareness campaigns did nothing, but once it became a legal requirement people switched. That's not true. http://web.stanford.edu/~leinav/pubs/RESTAT2003.pdf Page 835. Total average of seatbelt usage, before law: 31%, after law: 48%, in 1998: 65%.

In the interest of not citing 12+ year old studies relying on 17+ year old data, 2013 usage was 87% and since 1995 there have only been two years of decreasing average usage[0], '05-'06 (82-81%) and '10-'11 (85-84%).

[0] http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811875.pdf

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#107

Post by pc86 »

zepto wrote: post #97
sauronlord wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm "paid for" 40 hours a week. However since I'm awesome, it takes me only 20-30 hours a week to accomplish more than the output of the younger software developers. Work from home, come in late, come in early, work late, leave early. Doesn't matter, it balances out. The more I work from home, the greater productivity gains I have over everyone else that remains at the office. It's satisfying. And I get paid more tha…

How does that say anything about the labor market market mechanism?

Whether it's working well overall is mostly a matter of opinion, but it seems to be working pretty well for sauronlord at least.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#108

Post by douche »

pc86 wrote: post #96
joshuacc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done this before, but arranged my days off to be alternating Mondays and Fridays so that every two weeks I'd get a four day weekend. My bosses were very generous with my schedule. :-)

Honestly this seems like the ideal scenario. Full pay, likely no argument from superiors about the amount of work you'd accomplish, and the ability to take long weekend trips without wasting a day or two of PTO. I only see a few possible downsides: - Someone expecting you to be in the office and you're not, particularly if they're not familiar with your schedule. - For developers the same issues with 60+ work weeks o…

This is the schedule my father has, working as a mechanic in a power plant. It's pretty solid.

The only (kind of ironic) downside is that holiday weeks are kind of sucky. The holiday day only pays 8 hours, so he ends up having to still work four eight hour days those weeks.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#109

Post by yaantc »

rloc wrote: post #45
lmm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to change culture is through law. Look at seatbelt use: decades of public awareness campaigns did nothing, but once it became a legal requirement people switched. Also laws are the way to prevent a race to the bottom. If it's legal to work longer hours people will, and everyone else will do so to compete with them. Compare OHSA, see http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ .

In France working 35h/week is actually enforced by law. I personally think it's good for productivity (France is still considered a very productive country, more than Germany for instance) but this law remains regularly critiziced. Many want it removed or updated. It's very hard to measure human productivity unfortunately. It's much easier to measure the cost of an employee working less hours for the same salary.

Not entirely true (I'm French BTW). In a lot of companies if you're engineer or similar you're "cadre", and not subject to the 35h/week limitation: you have flexible work day hours. There's still a maximum limit, I think you must have at least 10h of rest a day but don't quote me on that one. To compensate for the more than 35h/week work days you do have more vacation days call RTT for "Reduction du Temps de Travail" (Work Time Reduction). It's about 8 days per years, on top of regular vacations.

Re: Working fewer hours would make us more productive

#110

Post by pc86 »

jaynos wrote: post #92
lordnacho wrote: post #75

My circle of friends are what you call professionals. They spend an awful lot of time at work, most of it on looking like they're working. There's a fair number of jobs where the work itself is not hard or time consuming, but where a culture has grown where everyone needs to justify their position. This skew incentives; if you're a junior, you end up doing a bunch of little things that can pass as a laundry list of t…

>They spend an awful lot of time at work, most of it on looking like they're working. Guilty. If I could switch to a 4 day work week, I'd get the same amount done, but spend a bit less time on Hacker News and other distractions. Hell, let me work a 2 day week and I'd cut out all distractions to finish what was needed.

Are you going to work for 80% or 40% of your current salary?
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