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Wharton Professor Says America Should Shorten the Work Day By 2 Hours (cnbc.com)
Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, New York Times best-selling author, and The Wharton School's top professor, says Americans should work two hours less. Instead of the typical 9-to-5, people "should finish at 3pm," says Grant in a recent LinkedIn post. "We can be as productive and creative in 6 focused hours as in 8 unfocused hours." CNBC reports: In the LinkedIn post, Grant was weighing in on an Atlantic article about the time gap between when school and work days end, a bane for many parents. But it's not the first time Grant has given his stamp of approval to less work with more productivity. "Productivity is less about time management and more about attention management," Grant tweeted in July, highlighting an article about a successful four-day work week study. For the study, a New Zealand company adopted a four-day work week (at five-day pay) with positive results; the company saw benefits ranging from lower stress levels in employees to increased performance. In a recent blog post, billionaire Richard Branson also touted the success of a three-day or four-day work week. "It's easier to attract top talent when you are open and flexible," Branson said in the post. "It's not effective or productive to force them to behave in a conventional way."
"Many people out there would love three-day or even four-day weekends," said Branson. "Everyone would welcome more time to spend with their loved ones, more time to get fit and healthy, more time to explore the world."
"Many people out there would love three-day or even four-day weekends," said Branson. "Everyone would welcome more time to spend with their loved ones, more time to get fit and healthy, more time to explore the world."
Such ideas only work when mandated, because when you have one company where people only work four days a week, and another where they work 5+ the results are inevitable when they compete...
If you really believe it results in better work go ahead and try it out in the real world.
I do think there is something to rest and being away from a problem being helpful. However there are absolutely also times when sheer volumes of work applied over a long period of time are very useful as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you work > 40 hr/wk, you should be entitled to additional compensation, regardless of salary. Fair's fair. Should discourage employers from abusing knowledge workers.
But we elected Ronald Reagan instead.
"We can be as productive and creative in 6 focused hours as in 8 unfocused hours."
Assuming people will focus more if they only work 6 hours a day.
Also assuming when people work has no impact.
A lot of people work the hours they do because they're providing a service to customers over that time period. No matter how hard they work for 6 hours won't let them answer a phone between 3 and 5 when they're not working.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. I think this must be the most hard to learn lesson in human history. The second must be the law of supply and demand.
People keep trying to come up with ways to get around having to pay for things. Countless millions have been subject to poverty and starvation because some fool somewhere thought they could legislate there way around basic laws of economics (Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Soviet Union etc.).
You can't create something from nothing. Somebody has to pay for it with finite resources.
We humans keep trying to cheat the basic laws of economics, time and again, thinking that surely this time must be the time things will automagically work. How many millions will starve to death before this kind of foolishness is considered a crime against humanity?
We are moving to self-checkout and cashierless stores. So why close at all? My local grocery store is open 24/7. The lights are on motion sensors, so no electricity is being used unless someone is walking down that aisle. There is a skeleton crew doing restocking, but I just self-checkout so I don't bother them.
Have you ever been to a 3rd world country? You will notice many many people selling a small collection of goods spread out on blankets or tables on the side of the road. This is WHY they are poor. Retail is unproductive and an economic dead end. It is a transaction cost, not a cost of producing goods or services. The larger the retail workforce, the poorer the country.
The purpose of jobs is to produce goods and services, not "keeping people busy", and retail doesn't produce anything. The sooner we can eliminate most retail jobs, the better. This will free up labor for actual productive activities.
Do you believe that stores that are open 24 hours a day have employees that work 24 hours a day?
Sit down, and let me explain the concept of "work shifts" to you. If you'd ever had a job, you'd know what those are. Further, let me clue you in that 3 people working 8 hour shifts equal 24 hours, but 4 people working 6 hour shifts also equal 24 hours.
If you need me to walk you through the math on this, let me know. I'm happy to help.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I would love to be able to do that. I'm not an idiot who wants nuclear safety inspectors to be running at half staff and sixteen hour shifts every week, and skipping inspections completely at all two days a week.
Maybe some idiots want taxi drivers to drive twenty four hour shifts every other day, and wants to take a second taxi to the emergency room after the first one crashes, where a surgeon will be on his 47th continuous hour with his hand in someone else's guts to get the shattered windshield glass out of their eyes.
But as for me, I prefer to live in a civilization with some basic rules that make the employer criminally liable for those types of conditions, so as to deter that sort of reckless third party danger.
To the non insane, non RW snowflake , easily triggered folks reading the article, it is clear the writer means for backend/non retail type "thought" industry workers. A brick layer can't lay bricks 33% faster as skillfully in six hours to match 8 hours of output etc.
If your job is at a keyboard typing as fast as you can, with no interruptions, it doesn't apply to you either.
In the job shop / small manufacturing world I now inhabit, it takes about 1/2 hour or so to get everything going in the morning, and about the same time to shut it all down at the end of the day. So, we'd get about 70% of our current productivity if we took this approach. There are many other types of work, as stated above (ER, Medical care, Service industry), where you'd have hire 33% more workers to get coverage. Where's all that money going to come from to pay all and train all these new hires?
Some old white dude (like me) probably wrote this in a comfy office.
I can understand your view completely. Hence the way I ended the post you're answering to. The problem remains that globalisation has already progressed well beyond "factory workers", and there are now a lot of well educated engineers in places like China, who would love to do the work you would rather not do because you want to spend time with your family.
And while they're at it, they would also love to do the rest of your work. For less money than you are getting.
Do you see the problem?