[MEMORYC_RRUPTED]

This won't be valid for everyone, but I'm getting more and more convinced that most (a lot of?) people don't "work" work 40 hours anyway. I'm not even mentally capable of doing 40 intense hours of focussed work. Not saying I don't have other tasks besides coding/thinking in that time, but honestly not for the full slot of time.

It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share and pretend like it's fine, but being honest and just doing the same stuff in say 32 hours and cutting out the cruft in between would be great.

Or maybe it's just my add that likes a bit more pressure, I don't know. But what I do know is that, even with a very relaxed employer that allows you to take your time and chill, go workout or play a game for an hour, I can't fully relax or disconnect knowing that I'm expected to do those 40 hours, regardless of how often they say it's fine.

[mc32]

I agree we don't put in a full 40 hours. Unless someone is working a 1950's style assembly line (meatpacking plant for example) few will put in those 40 hours even in manual labor ---you're chatting, playing around, etc. for some time.

White collar work, is of course, way worse. There is a lot of slack time in between tasks and meetings and so on.

So during those 40 hours, let's say a person delivers 100 work units. If we were to say, from now on you only have to work 32 hours, some people will still deliver 100 work units, but many will deliver an approximation to 80 work units. Many people will automatically adjust. People have a "pace of work" that is like breathing.

[asmor]

My pace of work is burn myself out in the first 1-2 hours of every day and then procrastinate / go to meetings.

I'm so happy to be out of the office. Being able to work whenever works for me (and my ADHD brain) has probably given me at least 50% more output on average. Hours don't mean anything to me and nobody has ever complained about my work pace (rather the opposite).

Pretending to be busy in an office was torture.

[devmor]

> So during those 40 hours, let's say a person delivers 100 work units. If we were to say, from now on you only have to work 32 hours, some people will still deliver 100 work units, but many will deliver an approximation to 80 work units. Many people will automatically adjust. People have a "pace of work" that is like breathing.

Perhaps in manual labor, but I don't think this applies to white collar work. The limiting factor in output for this line of work seems to be intellectual exhaustion/burnout, not pacing.

[treeman79]

Wife’s a teacher. 40-60 hours at school. 10-30 hours outside of work doing lesson plans, report card comments etc. Always responding to emails from parents.

She Has collapsed before when total was getting above 80 for several weeks.

They want to promote her to VP. They work even more hours then she does.

I make more then triple what she does.

[newbYhrly]

Musk posted screens of his Elden Ring progress a couple weeks after launch. Given other players had to sink 60-80 hours in to get to the same point Musk was broadcasting, he was working 48 hours a day at his companies and on Elden Ring.

Bezos has given interviews about his habits. He works maybe 10-20 hours a week.

Billing 40 hours every week to run scripts that generate a Github repo structure in minutes has been profitable for me though. Not going to knock Musk and Bezos optimizing for themselves by gaming others agency.

[ITB]

Picasso offered a drawing in a napkin for $1M dollars, even though it took him 1 min to draw it. You know the gist. Bezos might do 20 hours a week of “work” because he scaffolded a giant organization around his brain, so he only needs to provide certain input. Besides, much of the non-work time, such as public speaking and so forth, is actually work.

Also the ultimate test is whether after confessing to your real contribution, people are ok. I don’t think any amazon employee was annoyed after hearing this so called interview, whereas is your company knew what you were charging them for, they would fire you.

[Tyrek]

If we "actually work" 32 hours out of 40 (80%), what is the likelihood that if we shift to a 32 hour max week, that the average person will only "actually work" ~26 hours (80% of 32) in this hypothetical future?

What if at least part of the 20% is spent doing social activities, water cooler conversations, etc. that enable the remaining 80% to flow more efficiently?

[sam0x17]

Because burn-out is the main driving factor behind the productivity changes, not the hypotheticals you are talking about. In engineering, people are burned out by friday, and even outside of engineering, people tend to phone it in by that point in the week because they are just done. They are operating at less than 50% mental or physical capacity. If you instead just give them that time to recharge, they'll get that much more done early in the week the following week. They'll also be in a better headspace because although you are only decreasing the days they work by 1/5th, you are increasing their uninterrupted weekend/family time by 1/3rd. In a more egalitarian society, you might imagine that ratio to be more like 1:1 to be fair.

At my previous startup we saw an 8% productivity _increase_ from moving to a 4-day work week, and this was across a variety of metrics like issues closed, lines of code, etc. We don't even know if 4 is optimal, it could be 3. Only way to find out is to try it.

[dustedcodes]

Reduce the hours in the day.

Most people structure their days based on what they want to accomplish (goal driven), rather than how to spread out work evenly across a fixed number of hours (time driven). So if someone knows that they are expected to deliver task A + B in one day then they will do it. If they have a 4 hour work day they'll do it in 4 hours and then happily clock off. If they have to do it in an 8 hour work day they'll do it in 4 hours and then waste time for the remaining 4 hours.

[tnel77]

I’m all for a shorter workweek, but I definitely expect that the social aspect of a job is good for overall productivity. Maybe I’m weird, but I enjoy asking my coworkers how their weekend was prior to a meeting starting or (back when I was in the office) as we ran into each other in the hallway.

[diffeomorphism]

About 0% probability.

They will work more than 80%, less than 100%, say 87%. And that is what you want: keep some off time for conversation, recovery, etc..

You don't want 100% (very short hours) and you don't want too low a percentage (long hours). There is some balance in between and no slippery slope.

[wil421]

Because I’ll have a week day to do everything I need to do. Also I would push back or not attend meetings where I’m not needed. Team meetings and collaboration would still happen. A lot of people have to do late or weekend deployments and it would take the stress off of a lot of IT workers in all areas.

[ericmcer]

I mean someone could gather this info, the average working hours in China are ~10 more than the US and some European countries average lower.

Given humans are highly adaptable I imagine we will adjust to the new normal and keep finding time to mess around at work.

[eurasiantiger]

I don’t think that would happen if there is actually a job to be done.

[fourseventy]

Exactly. The whole modern trend of working less hours will somehow equate to more work being done is ridiculous.

[lucasyvas]

Most remote jobs I've worked at, I can't reach anyone on Friday. Probably not a coincidence.

Even years ago when I was in the office, everyone would go on insanely long lunch breaks on Friday instead. If you work an office job, I can assure you that the number of people actually working on Friday is statistically irrelevant.

[vidanay]

"Never buy a car built on a Friday or a Monday."

[badrabbit]

People don't work for 40 hours but they are available for 40 hours, being available is also "work".

[jghn]

My most recent job is billable and time is tracked in tight increments. Because I now pay much more attention to when I am and am not 100% engaged, it's been eye opening how much 40 hours really is. I've found that I'm about 2/3 efficient. So if I designate 6 hours for "work", I'm really working (and thus billing) for about 4 hours.

[jermaustin1]

I would bet those 2 hours you aren't billing for are still actual work. You are available, you are probably thinking about the company/the job/the work. That is all WORK, and should be billed.

I used to do a lot of walks (before I moved from Upstate NY to Houston) where I would escape the code and think about the product. That was all billed time, and understood by my clients. Just because my fingers are not furiously typing, doesn't mean I'm not actively engaged in my work.

[elvis10ten]

I disagree based on personal (anecdotal) data.

When I get into a “flow” on a project I can work 12+ hour days. My productivity dwindles as the day gets old for sure, but I don’t think it ever gets to zero or close. I dream/think about the project and the first thing on my mind in the morning is the next step on the project.

Last time I was in flow, I single handedly built the next generation of a tool in 2 months. It’s currently taking the other team about 6 months to do the same but for another platform. The complexity is roughly the same and I think the engineers are as smart, if not smarter than me. I think the difference was that I did 12-16 hours for 2 month (including weekends).

This is not sustainable of course. I developed my back and wrist pain at the end of the 2 months. This is something I consciously stop myself from doing ever again because health is all you got at the end of the day.

[suralind]

Very realistic, I one had a different idea of how we would build a retool-like tool for a company I worked at. I spent 4 days to reimplement our app from scratch, I didn't include even 10% of what we had, but the framework was much more powerful.

I typically code for like 3-4 hours a day, maybe 6-7 when I'm super into what I'm doing. BUT, I very frequently think about my work when I'm not working.

[banannaise]

I've also done this before. After I was done, I couldn't focus properly for several weeks. Turns out I was largely just pushing back rest that I desperately needed, and I had to pay that back in the end.

[gilbert_vanova]

The more your work is in creative output, the more likely you are to be working 100% of the time you're on the clock. Cognition is complex and most of it happens under the covers. Once you wake up, you load up your brains with concerns and don't stop thinking about it just because you aren't in meetings or actively coding. Your conscious thoughts are only one layer in a dense system.

Arguably, you can't turn it off when you clock out either. It's why I argue for a retainer model on intellectual workers.

[urthor]

Spot on.

Do you have any books you'd received recommend that have any additional tricks?

[thenerdhead]

You're probably not wrong. The data supports it.

> In October, the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was 34.5 hours for the fifth month in a row.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm

[Arrath]

The pessimist in me has to wonder how much of this is employers manipulating schedules to keep employees from classifying as full time?

I see the report calls out part time workers at 3.7m yet still I wonder.

[welshwelsh]

That doesn't mean they actually work for 34.5 hours, that's just how long they get paid for.

A UK company did a study which showed the average office worker, who is in the office 40 hours a week, is only productive for less than 3 hours a day.

https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/office-worker-product...

I would guess the average workweek, only counting the time people are actually productive, is 10-15 hours a week. The rest of the time people waste procrastinating, posting on social media etc.

[vjk800]

And this is the time they at least pretend to be working. The amount of hours they actually do something productive is going to be much less.

[wollsmoth]

I'm at least online 40 hours. Actively doing effort is harder but it's easier if I'm doing something interesting. I try to not beat myself up if I'm having trouble focusing some days. Some days it just ain't happening. Get a coffee read a magazine and try again a little later.

[vlunkr]

> It just feels to me like some sort of secret we all share

Yeah this is a pretty interesting phenomenon. I feel like as a kid I had no idea it would be this way, but every job I've worked, blue and white collar, has involved a lot of "time wasting." It's very surprising at first.

[willio58]

This is why Remote is great. You have the flexibility, and as long as you get the work you say you'll get done done, who cares if you're literally sitting in a chair from 9-5?

[AuryGlenz]

Which is exactly how salaried work was supposed to work, not “40 hours is the minimum and we won’t pay you if we pile so much work on that you need to work 60 hours instead.”

[fourseventy]

Cruft will build back up in the 32 hours though. In 10 years people will be saying "does anyone else feel like they don't work the full 32? We should cut it down to 24!" There is always going to be some percentage of working time that isn't fully productive.

[kelseyfrog]

I'm not sure what the problem with this is. It sounds like utopia.

[diffeomorphism]

Eh, diminishing percentages.

40 -> 32 -> 30 -> 29.5 -> 29.3 -> 29.2 -> really, we are talking about minutes(?). Just keep 29-ish and check again in a century.