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."

Comments

What typical 9-5?

[b0s0z0ku]

More like 8-6 in much of the US, if not worse.

I envy people in places like France and Quebec who take their free-time seriously -- closing time is 6 pm for many business that would stay open until 8 or even 10 pm in the US.

Re:What typical 9-5?

[ShanghaiBill]

What's wrong with laziness?

Laziness has consequences. If you are willing to bear those consequences yourself, then feel free to be lazy.

The problem is that in a democracy, the lazy can vote, and they vote for bread and circuses paid for with OPM* and deficit spending.

They don't make the effort to understand the long term consequences of that because they are ... lazy.

*OPM= Other People's Money

Re:What typical 9-5?

[rtb61]

I am nothing, I am nobody and I am at peace, yeah most people have no idea what it means. You tell them the real opposite and they understand, well some of them. The actual opposite, 'I must be something, I must be somebody, I am always in conflict' (it has no finale it is a continuous demand). There is no balance between the two, choose one or the other, be at peace with yourself or be in conflict with everyone else.

Don't listen to the psyshos, they are driven by shit genes, no autonomic empathic responses (it's a social learning tool from birth) and hence disconnected from the rest of us and a reduced range of human emotions, most often incapable of our happiness but certainly and most definitely, insanely jealous of it and as a result always striving to destroy it. Attack us, attack our children and attack our 'humane' societies, creating psychopathic capitalism instead to serve the ego, greed and destructive lusts of psychopaths.

There is no happy and content for psychopaths, there is for the rest of us, either we reject them or they will strive to take away our happiness and contentment, to be content is to not need to be anything, to not need to be anyone and to be at peace (being content with who you are), bliss is being able to share that with other sane people.

Re: What typical 9-5?

[stealth_finger]

In the real world you can't just hire more people. Businesses (even non-profits like hospitals) have fixed budgets they must meet. If they hire more people the cost of production goes up and the charge for services must be increased. The same work for more money means lower productivity.

If your business isn't making enough money to pay enough people to do the job properly then you don't have a viable business and making up for it by having as few staff paid as little as possible doesn't do you any favours in the long run.

Yes but America ran with it

[SuperKendall]

You do realize that you can thank one single company for the 8 hour workday, right?

Yes I know, but the results are telling - the U.S. has been pretty much an economic powerhouse ever since, and more R&D seems to get accomplished here.

Other countries could have copied us but so far they all seem to prefer to fall into decline...

Now what DOESN'T make sense is our incredibly rigid school system.