<story><title>Working fewer hours would make us more productive</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/09/fewer-working-hours-doctors-eu-negotiations</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JohnCarmack</author><text>Following up on the links you gave me on Twitter.&lt;p&gt;These two fall into the awful pop-sci writing category:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;freeexchange&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;working-hours&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;freeexchange&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;working-...&lt;/a&gt;
“And it seems that more productive—and, consequently, better-paid—workers put in less time at the office”
“So maybe we should be more self-critical about how much we work. Working less may make us more productive.”&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oecdobserver.org&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;fullstory.php&amp;#x2F;aid&amp;#x2F;3841&amp;#x2F;Productive_hours.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oecdobserver.org&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;fullstory.php&amp;#x2F;aid&amp;#x2F;3841&amp;#x2F;Prod...&lt;/a&gt;
This points out that the average worker in Greece works more hours than the average worker in Germany.&lt;p&gt;These are clearly confusing correlation with causation, and I doubt very much that any of the actual researchers involved, as opposed to op-ed writers, would even imply that if only the workers in Greece would ease up a bit, they would get the productivity of Germany.  Would you make that statement?&lt;p&gt;This one covers a lot of actual research, but mostly on the relationship between overtime and worker health and safety:
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;niosh&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;2004-143&amp;#x2F;pdfs&amp;#x2F;2004-143.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;niosh&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;2004-143&amp;#x2F;pdfs&amp;#x2F;2004-143.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don’t find much to argue with here.  I don’t dispute the premise that working very long hours can have a health impact in some cases.&lt;p&gt;It was interesting to see the clear step function in the leading graph of average annual work hours by country with the US at ~1850 as the highest of the mostly-western countries, but Thailand, Hong Kong, and South Korea in a distinctly different class, topping out at ~2450 for South Korea.  That made me smile, because one of the Samsung people we work with referred to us at the Oculus Dallas office as “honorary Koreans” because of how hard we work.  I do note that the chart in the Economist link with more recent data has them still at the top, but down to ~2100 hours in 2012.&lt;p&gt;A couple interesting (unrelated) counterpoints from the studies:&lt;p&gt;Sokejima and Kagamimori [1998] observed a U-shaped relationship: as compared with 7 to 9 hours of work per day, higher risk (for cardiovascular problems) was associated with both shorter hours (less than 7 hours a day) and longer hours (more than 11 hours a day)&lt;p&gt;Nakanishi et al. [2001b], however, published the opposite results: white collar workers reporting 10 or more hours of work per day had a lower risk for developing hypertension when compared with workers reporting less than 8 hours of work per day&lt;p&gt;There are some small bits directly discussing performance:&lt;p&gt;3.2d Extended Work Shifts and Performance
Two laboratory studies reported deterioration in performance with extended shifts.
In contrast, four field studies reported no differences in their performance measures during extended shifts.&lt;p&gt;3.4b Very Long Shifts and Performance
A study in Ireland by Leonard et al. [1998] reported declines in two tests of alertness and concentration in medical residents who had worked 32-hour on-call shifts. They reported no significant declines in a test of psychomotor performance or a test of memory. A New Zealand survey of anesthesiologists linked long working hours to self-reported clinical errors [Gander et al. 2000].&lt;p&gt;I glanced at the other links, and they look potentially interesting, but non-responsive as far as giving actual data showing that working more than 40 hours a week makes you less productive.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps there is confusion about my position, so let me clarify:&lt;p&gt;Average productivity per hour will decline with extended work.  The highest average hourly productivity could be with shifts as short as six hours for many people; I have no particular thoughts on this, as I have never had reason to care to optimize it.  An assembly line job that is embarrassingly parallel with minimal communication overhead may well be better served to have shorter shifts and more workers.&lt;p&gt;Total net productivity per worker, discounting for any increases in errors and negative side effects, continues increasing well past 40 hours per week.  There are a great many tasks where inefficiency grows significantly with additional workers involved; the Mythical Man Month problem is real.  In cases like these, you are better off with a smaller team of harder working people, even if their productivity-per-hour is somewhat lower.&lt;p&gt;This is critical: it isn’t necessary to maintain performance on an extended shift to still contribute value.  Productivity per hour can deteriorate, even precipitously, and still be non-negative.  Only when you are so broken down that even when you come back the following day your productivity per hour is significantly impaired, do you open up the possibility of actually reducing your net output.&lt;p&gt;There are cases where the consequences of an increased error rate can be a dominant factor -- airline pilots and nuclear plant operators come to mind.  I had to work under FAA mandated crew rest guidelines while operating the Armadillo Aerospace rockets, and I made no complaints.&lt;p&gt;I believe most research that people glance at and see “declines in productivity with longer hours” are talking about declines in productivity-per-hour, and people jump to the incorrect conclusion that you can get just as much done in less time.&lt;p&gt;You called my post “so wrong, and so potentially destructive”, which leads me to believe that you hold an ideological position that the world would be better if people didn’t work as long.  I don’t actually have a particularly strong position there; my point is purely about the effective output of an individual.  If we were fighting an existential threat, say an asteroid that would hit the earth in a year, would you really tell everyone involved in the project that they should go home after 35 hours a week, because they are harming the project if they work longer?</text></item><item><author>glyph</author><text>The Guardian:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Research shows&lt;/i&gt; that shorter work weeks are just as effective.&lt;p&gt;John Carmack:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I feel&lt;/i&gt; like longer work weeks are more effective.&lt;p&gt;Does anyone else see the problem with this?&lt;p&gt;Of course, pop-sci writing is often terrible.  Of course, headlines can wildly misrepresent the research they&amp;#x27;re covering.  Of course, there may be issues at stake (such as, in this case, personal freedom) beyond the simple phenomenon being described.&lt;p&gt;However, if you have an issue with the research&amp;#x27;s methodology, explain it.  It might even be a little interesting to hear a new conflicting hypothesis from your own anecdotal experiences.&lt;p&gt;As it happens, regarding the quality of pop-sci journalism, on this particular issue, the research on the starkly diminishing returns of overtime and the negative impact it has on work (especially creative work) is all pretty consistent.  For those who do not have the luxury of working in cushy chair-sitting industries like Mr. Carmack and myself, overtime is strongly correlated with an increase in industrial accidents, both fatal and otherwise.&lt;p&gt;I really wish that high-status people in the software industry would stop thinking that their success exempts them from cognitive bias and the need to make a rational argument, or that their experience writing software somehow transfers, with no particular education, to social science or management.&lt;p&gt;The problem with this opinion is neatly summed up by this statement:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Given two equally talented people, the one that pursues a goal obsessively, for well over 40 hours a week, is going to achieve more.&lt;p&gt;which has been all but &lt;i&gt;proven&lt;/i&gt; wrong by repeated scientific studies.  In the general case, it is not true.  In the specific cases of outliers where it appears to be true, my understanding of the research indicates that the &amp;quot;People with the psychological makeup that allows them to productively pursue a goal obsessively for well over 40 hours a week will tend to be extremely successful&amp;quot;.  But this attribute is highly unusual, and it may not be something you can cultivate; people who are taller also tend to do better in life, but that does not mean that the average person should torture themselves on the rack for 80 hours a week in the hopes of getting taller, either.</text></item><item><author>JohnCarmack</author><text>I find these “shorter work weeks are just as effective” articles to be nonsense, at least for knowledge workers with some tactical discretion.  I can imagine productivity at an assembly line job having a peak such that overworking grinds someone down to the point that they become a liability, but people that claim working nine hours in a day instead of eight gives no (or negative) additional benefit are either being disingenuous or just have terrible work habits.  Even in menial jobs, it is sort of insulting – “Hey you, working three jobs to feed your family! Half of the time you are working is actually of negative value so you don’t deserve to be paid for it!”&lt;p&gt;If you only have seven good hours a day in you, does that mean the rest of the day that you spend with your family, reading, exercising at the gym, or whatever other virtuous activity you would be spending your time on, are all done poorly?  No, it just means that focusing on a single thing for an extended period of time is challenging.&lt;p&gt;Whatever the grand strategy for success is, it gets broken down into lots of smaller tasks.  When you hit a wall on one task, you could say “that’s it, I’m done for the day” and head home, or you could switch over to something else that has a different rhythm and get more accomplished.  Even when you are clearly not at your peak, there is always plenty to do that doesn’t require your best, and it would actually be a waste to spend your best time on it.  You can also “go to the gym” for your work by studying, exploring, and experimenting, spending more hours in service to the goal.&lt;p&gt;I think most people excited by these articles are confusing not being aligned with their job’s goals with questions of effectiveness.  If you don’t want to work, and don’t really care about your work, less hours for the same pay sounds great!  If you personally care about what you are doing, you don’t stop at 40 hours a week because you think it is optimal for the work, but rather because you are balancing it against something else that you find equally important.  Which is fine.&lt;p&gt;Given two equally talented people, the one that pursues a goal obsessively, for well over 40 hours a week, is going to achieve more.  They might be less happy and healthy, but I’m not even sure about that.  Obsession can be rather fulfilling, although probably not across an entire lifetime.&lt;p&gt;This particular article does touch on a goal that isn’t usually explicitly stated: it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from working longer hours.  Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world for that goal.</text></item><item><author>xiaoma</author><text>I just finished reading &lt;i&gt;The Masters of Doom&lt;/i&gt; and really got the impression that working &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; hours made Carmack more productive than nearly everyone else in the field.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bustervill</author><text>Okay, let&amp;#x27;s ignore all them pesky negatives of overworking, like killing a patient from time to time or messing with the wrong piece of data somewhere. Let&amp;#x27;s also ignore the issue of personal freedom vs. the hours mandated by your employer. Let&amp;#x27;s focus only on maximizing the total output you can generate. As I understand, this is your case.&lt;p&gt;The metric productivity-per-hour is stupid. It&amp;#x27;s useless trying to optimize it - just like you said. The natural cycle for humans is a day. The body requires rest and is tuned to have an optimal performance if the do&amp;#x2F;rest cycles are loosely synced with the day&amp;#x2F;night cycles of the sun. You need to optimize that cycle, in the long run, to maximize your total output.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;... when you come back the following day your productivity per hour is significantly impaired, do you open up the possibility of actually reducing your net output.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I do. The burnout today at work has an effect on your productivity tomorrow. In attempt to get a little extra done today, tomorrow you won&amp;#x27;t be that efficient at your peak, and you&amp;#x27;ll be more tired and unproductive at the and of the day, compared to the previous. This way your average productivity per day, from both days, can easily be lower than if you had worked 3 hours less the first night and the second day were just as efficient and productive as the first.&lt;p&gt;This effect extends in a long run. Fatigue accumulation and sleep debt are real phenomenons. Poorly managed day-to-day cycles can render people incapable of doing any meaningful work. The remedy is rest&amp;#x2F;vacation, which kills your averages even more.&lt;p&gt;You should know, even better than me, that working people don&amp;#x27;t only produce output. They are learning too. The work that you&amp;#x27;ll be required to do in a year or two is not the same as the one you do today. Mental fatigue impairs learning new stuff a lot more than it impairs &lt;i&gt;doing&lt;/i&gt; stuff you already know.</text></comment>
<story><title>Working fewer hours would make us more productive</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/nov/09/fewer-working-hours-doctors-eu-negotiations</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JohnCarmack</author><text>Following up on the links you gave me on Twitter.&lt;p&gt;These two fall into the awful pop-sci writing category:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;freeexchange&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;working-hours&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.economist.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;freeexchange&amp;#x2F;2013&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;working-...&lt;/a&gt;
“And it seems that more productive—and, consequently, better-paid—workers put in less time at the office”
“So maybe we should be more self-critical about how much we work. Working less may make us more productive.”&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oecdobserver.org&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;fullstory.php&amp;#x2F;aid&amp;#x2F;3841&amp;#x2F;Productive_hours.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oecdobserver.org&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;fullstory.php&amp;#x2F;aid&amp;#x2F;3841&amp;#x2F;Prod...&lt;/a&gt;
This points out that the average worker in Greece works more hours than the average worker in Germany.&lt;p&gt;These are clearly confusing correlation with causation, and I doubt very much that any of the actual researchers involved, as opposed to op-ed writers, would even imply that if only the workers in Greece would ease up a bit, they would get the productivity of Germany.  Would you make that statement?&lt;p&gt;This one covers a lot of actual research, but mostly on the relationship between overtime and worker health and safety:
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;niosh&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;2004-143&amp;#x2F;pdfs&amp;#x2F;2004-143.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cdc.gov&amp;#x2F;niosh&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;2004-143&amp;#x2F;pdfs&amp;#x2F;2004-143.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don’t find much to argue with here.  I don’t dispute the premise that working very long hours can have a health impact in some cases.&lt;p&gt;It was interesting to see the clear step function in the leading graph of average annual work hours by country with the US at ~1850 as the highest of the mostly-western countries, but Thailand, Hong Kong, and South Korea in a distinctly different class, topping out at ~2450 for South Korea.  That made me smile, because one of the Samsung people we work with referred to us at the Oculus Dallas office as “honorary Koreans” because of how hard we work.  I do note that the chart in the Economist link with more recent data has them still at the top, but down to ~2100 hours in 2012.&lt;p&gt;A couple interesting (unrelated) counterpoints from the studies:&lt;p&gt;Sokejima and Kagamimori [1998] observed a U-shaped relationship: as compared with 7 to 9 hours of work per day, higher risk (for cardiovascular problems) was associated with both shorter hours (less than 7 hours a day) and longer hours (more than 11 hours a day)&lt;p&gt;Nakanishi et al. [2001b], however, published the opposite results: white collar workers reporting 10 or more hours of work per day had a lower risk for developing hypertension when compared with workers reporting less than 8 hours of work per day&lt;p&gt;There are some small bits directly discussing performance:&lt;p&gt;3.2d Extended Work Shifts and Performance
Two laboratory studies reported deterioration in performance with extended shifts.
In contrast, four field studies reported no differences in their performance measures during extended shifts.&lt;p&gt;3.4b Very Long Shifts and Performance
A study in Ireland by Leonard et al. [1998] reported declines in two tests of alertness and concentration in medical residents who had worked 32-hour on-call shifts. They reported no significant declines in a test of psychomotor performance or a test of memory. A New Zealand survey of anesthesiologists linked long working hours to self-reported clinical errors [Gander et al. 2000].&lt;p&gt;I glanced at the other links, and they look potentially interesting, but non-responsive as far as giving actual data showing that working more than 40 hours a week makes you less productive.&lt;p&gt;Perhaps there is confusion about my position, so let me clarify:&lt;p&gt;Average productivity per hour will decline with extended work.  The highest average hourly productivity could be with shifts as short as six hours for many people; I have no particular thoughts on this, as I have never had reason to care to optimize it.  An assembly line job that is embarrassingly parallel with minimal communication overhead may well be better served to have shorter shifts and more workers.&lt;p&gt;Total net productivity per worker, discounting for any increases in errors and negative side effects, continues increasing well past 40 hours per week.  There are a great many tasks where inefficiency grows significantly with additional workers involved; the Mythical Man Month problem is real.  In cases like these, you are better off with a smaller team of harder working people, even if their productivity-per-hour is somewhat lower.&lt;p&gt;This is critical: it isn’t necessary to maintain performance on an extended shift to still contribute value.  Productivity per hour can deteriorate, even precipitously, and still be non-negative.  Only when you are so broken down that even when you come back the following day your productivity per hour is significantly impaired, do you open up the possibility of actually reducing your net output.&lt;p&gt;There are cases where the consequences of an increased error rate can be a dominant factor -- airline pilots and nuclear plant operators come to mind.  I had to work under FAA mandated crew rest guidelines while operating the Armadillo Aerospace rockets, and I made no complaints.&lt;p&gt;I believe most research that people glance at and see “declines in productivity with longer hours” are talking about declines in productivity-per-hour, and people jump to the incorrect conclusion that you can get just as much done in less time.&lt;p&gt;You called my post “so wrong, and so potentially destructive”, which leads me to believe that you hold an ideological position that the world would be better if people didn’t work as long.  I don’t actually have a particularly strong position there; my point is purely about the effective output of an individual.  If we were fighting an existential threat, say an asteroid that would hit the earth in a year, would you really tell everyone involved in the project that they should go home after 35 hours a week, because they are harming the project if they work longer?</text></item><item><author>glyph</author><text>The Guardian:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Research shows&lt;/i&gt; that shorter work weeks are just as effective.&lt;p&gt;John Carmack:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I feel&lt;/i&gt; like longer work weeks are more effective.&lt;p&gt;Does anyone else see the problem with this?&lt;p&gt;Of course, pop-sci writing is often terrible.  Of course, headlines can wildly misrepresent the research they&amp;#x27;re covering.  Of course, there may be issues at stake (such as, in this case, personal freedom) beyond the simple phenomenon being described.&lt;p&gt;However, if you have an issue with the research&amp;#x27;s methodology, explain it.  It might even be a little interesting to hear a new conflicting hypothesis from your own anecdotal experiences.&lt;p&gt;As it happens, regarding the quality of pop-sci journalism, on this particular issue, the research on the starkly diminishing returns of overtime and the negative impact it has on work (especially creative work) is all pretty consistent.  For those who do not have the luxury of working in cushy chair-sitting industries like Mr. Carmack and myself, overtime is strongly correlated with an increase in industrial accidents, both fatal and otherwise.&lt;p&gt;I really wish that high-status people in the software industry would stop thinking that their success exempts them from cognitive bias and the need to make a rational argument, or that their experience writing software somehow transfers, with no particular education, to social science or management.&lt;p&gt;The problem with this opinion is neatly summed up by this statement:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Given two equally talented people, the one that pursues a goal obsessively, for well over 40 hours a week, is going to achieve more.&lt;p&gt;which has been all but &lt;i&gt;proven&lt;/i&gt; wrong by repeated scientific studies.  In the general case, it is not true.  In the specific cases of outliers where it appears to be true, my understanding of the research indicates that the &amp;quot;People with the psychological makeup that allows them to productively pursue a goal obsessively for well over 40 hours a week will tend to be extremely successful&amp;quot;.  But this attribute is highly unusual, and it may not be something you can cultivate; people who are taller also tend to do better in life, but that does not mean that the average person should torture themselves on the rack for 80 hours a week in the hopes of getting taller, either.</text></item><item><author>JohnCarmack</author><text>I find these “shorter work weeks are just as effective” articles to be nonsense, at least for knowledge workers with some tactical discretion.  I can imagine productivity at an assembly line job having a peak such that overworking grinds someone down to the point that they become a liability, but people that claim working nine hours in a day instead of eight gives no (or negative) additional benefit are either being disingenuous or just have terrible work habits.  Even in menial jobs, it is sort of insulting – “Hey you, working three jobs to feed your family! Half of the time you are working is actually of negative value so you don’t deserve to be paid for it!”&lt;p&gt;If you only have seven good hours a day in you, does that mean the rest of the day that you spend with your family, reading, exercising at the gym, or whatever other virtuous activity you would be spending your time on, are all done poorly?  No, it just means that focusing on a single thing for an extended period of time is challenging.&lt;p&gt;Whatever the grand strategy for success is, it gets broken down into lots of smaller tasks.  When you hit a wall on one task, you could say “that’s it, I’m done for the day” and head home, or you could switch over to something else that has a different rhythm and get more accomplished.  Even when you are clearly not at your peak, there is always plenty to do that doesn’t require your best, and it would actually be a waste to spend your best time on it.  You can also “go to the gym” for your work by studying, exploring, and experimenting, spending more hours in service to the goal.&lt;p&gt;I think most people excited by these articles are confusing not being aligned with their job’s goals with questions of effectiveness.  If you don’t want to work, and don’t really care about your work, less hours for the same pay sounds great!  If you personally care about what you are doing, you don’t stop at 40 hours a week because you think it is optimal for the work, but rather because you are balancing it against something else that you find equally important.  Which is fine.&lt;p&gt;Given two equally talented people, the one that pursues a goal obsessively, for well over 40 hours a week, is going to achieve more.  They might be less happy and healthy, but I’m not even sure about that.  Obsession can be rather fulfilling, although probably not across an entire lifetime.&lt;p&gt;This particular article does touch on a goal that isn’t usually explicitly stated: it would make the world “less unequal” if everyone was prevented from working longer hours.  Yes, it would, but I am deeply appalled at the thought of trading away individual freedom of action and additional value in the world for that goal.</text></item><item><author>xiaoma</author><text>I just finished reading &lt;i&gt;The Masters of Doom&lt;/i&gt; and really got the impression that working &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; hours made Carmack more productive than nearly everyone else in the field.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gnarbarian</author><text>&amp;quot;If you don’t want to work, and don’t really care about your work, less hours for the same pay sounds great! If you personally care about what you are doing, you don’t stop at 40 hours a week because you think it is optimal for the work, but rather because you are balancing it against something else that you find equally important.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This is spot on.  I think motivation is a huge factor here. Motivated workers are more capable of remaining productive over longer periods. Switching projects&amp;#x2F;tasks when you run out of gas is usually reinvigorating. Also, some people seem to have more innate motivation like an extended &amp;quot;honeymoon&amp;quot; phase when new people start a job and they are more tenacious and eager to prove themselves.&lt;p&gt;A cool project is an external motivating factor, or an existential threat ranging from potentially losing your job to being wiped out by an asteroid. As terrible as it is, fear is a great motivator.  I&amp;#x27;ve worked on projects so mind numbingly boring and pointless that I&amp;#x27;ve had to change tasks after a couple hours because I found myself staring at my editor hating what I was doing. I&amp;#x27;ve also worked on projects where I could stay motivated and productive 16 hours a day for two weeks at a time trying to meet an important deadline.&lt;p&gt;Bottom line in my opinion is there&amp;#x27;s no such thing as a broad rule of thumb for how long someone can stay productive.</text></comment>