The Compelling Case For Working Less (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report from the BBC, written by Amanda Ruggeri: As we fill our days with more and more "doing," many of us are finding that non-stop activity isn't the apotheosis of productivity. It is its adversary. Researchers are learning that it doesn't just mean that the work we produce at the end of a 14-hour day is of worse quality than when we're fresh. This pattern of working also undermines our creativity and our cognition. Over time, it can make us feel physically sick -- and even, ironically, as if we have no purpose. Think of mental work as doing push-ups, says Josh Davis, author of Two Awesome Hours. Say you want to do 10,000. The most 'efficient' way would be to do them all at once without a break. We know instinctively, though, that that is impossible. Instead, if we did just a few at a time, between other activities and stretched out over weeks, hitting 10,000 would become far more feasible. "The brain is very much like a muscle in this respect," Davis writes. "Set up the wrong conditions through constant work and we can accomplish little. Set up the right conditions and there is probably little we can't do." Many of us, though, tend to think of our brains not as muscles, but as a computer: a machine capable of constant work. Not only is that untrue, but pushing ourselves to work for hours without a break can be harmful, some experts say. Ruggeri goes on to highlight the negative health effects associated with working long hours. "One meta-analysis found that long working hours increased the risk of coronary heart disease by 40% -- almost as much as smoking (50%)," she writes. "Another found that people who worked long hours had a significantly higher risk of stroke, while people who worked more than 11 hours a day were almost 2.5 times more likely to have a major depressive episode than those who worked seven to eight."

Comments

Honestly

[GeekWithAKnife]

From working cash in hand jobs as a teen to a couple of decades later, the less I work the more I earn.

I was always led to believe the inverse is true.

Re:Work less

[Anonymous Coward]

Six hours per day, five days a week is considered "full time" here.

I could never understand why Americans burn themselves out working eight or more a day. They live to work, whereas we work to live.

Re:Work less

[TheRaven64]

There was a study a little over 10 years ago that measured productivity in a variety of 'knowledge worker' applications and concluded that productivity peaks at about 20 hours per week, then plateaus to about 40, and then drops off. This is particularly noticeable in something like programming, where a small mistake made when tired and not thinking straight can lead to 10 hours of debugging the next week. People who work a solid 4-5 hours a day are likely to be a lot more productive than people who are physically present and trying to work for 10.

Re:Humans can work, so they will

[Baron_Yam]

The last time I am aware something similar happened was when women entered the workforce in significant numbers post-WWII.

It used to be very common for women to not enter the workforce, and families did OK (for the times... poor buggers didn't have Internet, home theatres, or microwave ovens!). After women entered the workforce, it didn't take long for two incomes to become standard (even if it took a long time for women to commonly start doing the same kind of work as men after the war effort).

And what's happened since? Having one person stay home is now the exception rather than the rule, and it's generally considered a strain on the family finances if only one person in a couple is working.

Society adjusted to the near-doubling of the work force to ensure all the little cogs were kept turning for as much of the day as possible.

Re:Work less

[EndlessNameless]

The 40-hour work week was established by law. We can just as easily establish a 30- or 35-hour work week.

We could also remove the overtime exemptions so that managers, programmers, etc are all eligible for overtime. Companies only have the power to treat people like garbage because we let them do it.

Those laws should apply equally to immigrants too. Even if you're more concerned with limiting immigration rather than want to protecting immigrants, it's still a good idea to give them full legal protections. This eliminates some of the incentive to hire them in the first place.