<story><title>World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-21/four-day-work-week-uk-study-finds-majority-of-employers-shifting</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rebeccaskinner</author><text>Funnily enough, I find myself the exact opposite. Give me a really hard engaging problem and I can work 16 hours and barely realize any time has passed, but spending even 1-2 hours on something rote saps my energy for the entire day. My tolerant is even lower for the particularly challenging combination of tasks that are both uninteresting but also tedious.</text></item><item><author>Retric</author><text>Where these discussions trip up is different kinds of programming tasks vary in how mentality draining they are.&lt;p&gt;Some days I can spend 10 long hours working through straightforward problems and come home energized.  Other days I mentally check out after spending 3-4 hours beating my head against a really difficult problem then go home and have little desire to do anything but zone out and recover.</text></item><item><author>bavila</author><text>&amp;gt; My conclusions after observing a ton of people in technical and nontechnical jobs is that beyond working 20-25 hours a week, having people do more is useless...&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not so sure about this. I was working in a remote &amp;quot;full-stack&amp;quot; (but really 90% front-end role) for 14 months from the start of January 2021 to the end of February 2022. I tracked my hours religiously the entire time I was employed there (not required, but just for my own sake). I had a spreadsheet containing the date, start&amp;#x2F;end times (rounded to the nearest quarter on an hour), task name, and notes.&lt;p&gt;When I left the company, my team lead thought I was one of the hardest working people he had ever worked with. He thought I had to be working 60-hour weeks to be doing what I was doing. I showed him the spreadsheet and calculated the average hours worked per week - came out somewhere between 38~39 hours.&lt;p&gt;My role wasn&amp;#x27;t a senior one so, for the most part, the vast majority hours were spent coding, but of course some was spent in meetings as well. But these were all real hours of real time spent working. It was all very doable and not useless time spent futzing around (I would also stop tracking my time for any break I took - no exceptions).&lt;p&gt;Granted, I think being the type of person that acclimates well to remote work made this all doable. I would not have been this productive in office.</text></item><item><author>vouaobrasil</author><text>When was a mathematician, I worked as hard as I could until I was mentally exhausted. I actually calculated how much I worked per week over a period of two years.&lt;p&gt;On actual &amp;quot;hard thinking&amp;quot;, like working through logic, I spent about 7 hours. There was another 7 hours writing and clarifying topics, and another 6 hours or so on classes, seminars (sort of like meetings, but productive). That gives a total of 20 hours per week on work. Beyond that, I was not productive and so I didn&amp;#x27;t do any math-related work.&lt;p&gt;If you add the administrative overhead of a job, that might be another 5 hours at most, so about 3 full workdays. I think if you are &lt;i&gt;truly&lt;/i&gt; just doing productive, meaningful &lt;i&gt;technical&lt;/i&gt; work, beyond 3 full days most people can&amp;#x27;t do it. People can do it for short periods of time, but more than 3 days leads to universal burnout.&lt;p&gt;Now, I&amp;#x27;m just talking about mentally demanding, technical work. I can work longer if the work isn&amp;#x27;t very mentally demanding, but even so, not for more than 4-5 hours a day. And now I&amp;#x27;m an independent content creator, so every additional hour I work is proportional to profit.&lt;p&gt;My conclusions after observing a ton of people in technical &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; nontechnical jobs is that beyond working 20-25 hours a week, having people do more is useless, especially when it comes to fostering people in the long-term (short term is different).&lt;p&gt;I feel the only reason why we have 9-5, Monday to Friday jobs is because of infantile narcissists who have no other purpose in life than to go to work and push people like machines.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Retric</author><text>I don’t think we are talking about the same kind of difficult vs straightforward problems.&lt;p&gt;Think professional chess players. While prepping they can spend very long hours playing&amp;#x2F;studding high level chess but tournaments are another level.  Challenging is fun, the limits of human ability are always stressful.  People can run for 11 hours in an ultra marathon but they can’t do it at 13+ mph pace of a half marathon.</text></comment>
<story><title>World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-21/four-day-work-week-uk-study-finds-majority-of-employers-shifting</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rebeccaskinner</author><text>Funnily enough, I find myself the exact opposite. Give me a really hard engaging problem and I can work 16 hours and barely realize any time has passed, but spending even 1-2 hours on something rote saps my energy for the entire day. My tolerant is even lower for the particularly challenging combination of tasks that are both uninteresting but also tedious.</text></item><item><author>Retric</author><text>Where these discussions trip up is different kinds of programming tasks vary in how mentality draining they are.&lt;p&gt;Some days I can spend 10 long hours working through straightforward problems and come home energized.  Other days I mentally check out after spending 3-4 hours beating my head against a really difficult problem then go home and have little desire to do anything but zone out and recover.</text></item><item><author>bavila</author><text>&amp;gt; My conclusions after observing a ton of people in technical and nontechnical jobs is that beyond working 20-25 hours a week, having people do more is useless...&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not so sure about this. I was working in a remote &amp;quot;full-stack&amp;quot; (but really 90% front-end role) for 14 months from the start of January 2021 to the end of February 2022. I tracked my hours religiously the entire time I was employed there (not required, but just for my own sake). I had a spreadsheet containing the date, start&amp;#x2F;end times (rounded to the nearest quarter on an hour), task name, and notes.&lt;p&gt;When I left the company, my team lead thought I was one of the hardest working people he had ever worked with. He thought I had to be working 60-hour weeks to be doing what I was doing. I showed him the spreadsheet and calculated the average hours worked per week - came out somewhere between 38~39 hours.&lt;p&gt;My role wasn&amp;#x27;t a senior one so, for the most part, the vast majority hours were spent coding, but of course some was spent in meetings as well. But these were all real hours of real time spent working. It was all very doable and not useless time spent futzing around (I would also stop tracking my time for any break I took - no exceptions).&lt;p&gt;Granted, I think being the type of person that acclimates well to remote work made this all doable. I would not have been this productive in office.</text></item><item><author>vouaobrasil</author><text>When was a mathematician, I worked as hard as I could until I was mentally exhausted. I actually calculated how much I worked per week over a period of two years.&lt;p&gt;On actual &amp;quot;hard thinking&amp;quot;, like working through logic, I spent about 7 hours. There was another 7 hours writing and clarifying topics, and another 6 hours or so on classes, seminars (sort of like meetings, but productive). That gives a total of 20 hours per week on work. Beyond that, I was not productive and so I didn&amp;#x27;t do any math-related work.&lt;p&gt;If you add the administrative overhead of a job, that might be another 5 hours at most, so about 3 full workdays. I think if you are &lt;i&gt;truly&lt;/i&gt; just doing productive, meaningful &lt;i&gt;technical&lt;/i&gt; work, beyond 3 full days most people can&amp;#x27;t do it. People can do it for short periods of time, but more than 3 days leads to universal burnout.&lt;p&gt;Now, I&amp;#x27;m just talking about mentally demanding, technical work. I can work longer if the work isn&amp;#x27;t very mentally demanding, but even so, not for more than 4-5 hours a day. And now I&amp;#x27;m an independent content creator, so every additional hour I work is proportional to profit.&lt;p&gt;My conclusions after observing a ton of people in technical &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; nontechnical jobs is that beyond working 20-25 hours a week, having people do more is useless, especially when it comes to fostering people in the long-term (short term is different).&lt;p&gt;I feel the only reason why we have 9-5, Monday to Friday jobs is because of infantile narcissists who have no other purpose in life than to go to work and push people like machines.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacquesm</author><text>The payback of such stints can be brutal though, and it won&amp;#x27;t necessarily happen the next day either.</text></comment>