Anyway, my weekly productivity measured in terms of actual results (software requirements implemented that actually worked as specified) in The Netherlands working 8h/day completelly blew out of the water my productivity in Portugal working 10h/day.
I don’t really like this rhetoric.
It frames time off as something that should only be given so that it makes workers more productive.
I’m Dutch too, and I used to work 8h/day 4 days a week. And my productivity became even better than when I worked 5 days a week. I could kill it those 4 days, and be rested enough the next week so I could kill it again. It worked wonders.
I like the rhetoric, because it means that my employer got something out of it too. But I don’t think it implies that was the only reason it should be given. I obviously enjoyed the time off for my own reasons.
Working 8h/day (aka 40h/week) is the normal working length around here: nothing at all to do with time off.
Also productivity does not have a liner relation to hour-of-work-per-day, so you can’t really extrapolate from the difference in productivity between 8h/day and 10h/day to working fewer hours per day.
Last but not least, even if time off gave a massive boost to productivity (which cannot be implied from my experience since the relation between hours-worked and productivity is, as I stated, not linear), logically that would still say nothing at all about the existence or not of other equally or even more valid reasons for people to “be given” time off.
What you say does not at all logically follow from what I wrote.
I think you should give more information about the relationship between productivity and hours worked. It is too difficult to understand your position.
Saying the relationship is not linear does not tell us what you think the relationship is.
My experience in my own area (software development) is that above working 8h/day people quick start getting chronically tired and tired people make more bugs and more incorrect design decisions, which have to be fixed which is something that consumes far more work than doing things right in the first place - in other words, tired people, alongside doing the work they’re supposed to do, also unwittingly create additional work that needs to be done. As the hours worked per day goes up, this effect quickly eats up the gains from working more hours a day and eventually you’re actually producing less in overall than you would working fewer hours a day.
Whilst were the sweet spot is varies from person to person, in my experience in my area 10h/day is too much for just about everybody and 13h/day would be insane.
On the other directing you get a reverse effect were you lose work done from fewer hours being worked but you gain some per-hour productivity from being rested that increases work being done. Clearly at 0h/day overall productivity is zero so there must be a point somewhere in there were the losses from fewer hours worked exceed the gains from higher productivity per-hour. Further, I have the impression that productivity gains from being rested actually plateau - as in, you can’t really get more rested and productive than a certain level.
As with the other one, I also think it varies from person to person, but I’m less experienced with working shorter hours than working longer hours so don’t really know were the sweet spot would be.
Keep in mind that all this is for long term practicing of a schedule, not for, say, people being very tired from working long hours and then switching to working short hours to rest. Recovery from overwork is a whole different ball game and in my experience the fastest way to recover and get back to maximum rest and hence productivity is to just take one (or more) whole days off work, rather than reducing hours worked per day.
I don’t really like this rhetoric.
It frames time off as something that should only be given so that it makes workers more productive.
If that is the argument that gets through to their thick management skulls, then so be it.
I’m Dutch too, and I used to work 8h/day 4 days a week. And my productivity became even better than when I worked 5 days a week. I could kill it those 4 days, and be rested enough the next week so I could kill it again. It worked wonders.
I like the rhetoric, because it means that my employer got something out of it too. But I don’t think it implies that was the only reason it should be given. I obviously enjoyed the time off for my own reasons.
Working 8h/day (aka 40h/week) is the normal working length around here: nothing at all to do with time off.
Also productivity does not have a liner relation to hour-of-work-per-day, so you can’t really extrapolate from the difference in productivity between 8h/day and 10h/day to working fewer hours per day.
Last but not least, even if time off gave a massive boost to productivity (which cannot be implied from my experience since the relation between hours-worked and productivity is, as I stated, not linear), logically that would still say nothing at all about the existence or not of other equally or even more valid reasons for people to “be given” time off.
What you say does not at all logically follow from what I wrote.
Average internet user detected. Response discarded.
User ignored.
Please be smarter.
I think you should give more information about the relationship between productivity and hours worked. It is too difficult to understand your position.
Saying the relationship is not linear does not tell us what you think the relationship is.
My experience in my own area (software development) is that above working 8h/day people quick start getting chronically tired and tired people make more bugs and more incorrect design decisions, which have to be fixed which is something that consumes far more work than doing things right in the first place - in other words, tired people, alongside doing the work they’re supposed to do, also unwittingly create additional work that needs to be done. As the hours worked per day goes up, this effect quickly eats up the gains from working more hours a day and eventually you’re actually producing less in overall than you would working fewer hours a day.
Whilst were the sweet spot is varies from person to person, in my experience in my area 10h/day is too much for just about everybody and 13h/day would be insane.
On the other directing you get a reverse effect were you lose work done from fewer hours being worked but you gain some per-hour productivity from being rested that increases work being done. Clearly at 0h/day overall productivity is zero so there must be a point somewhere in there were the losses from fewer hours worked exceed the gains from higher productivity per-hour. Further, I have the impression that productivity gains from being rested actually plateau - as in, you can’t really get more rested and productive than a certain level.
As with the other one, I also think it varies from person to person, but I’m less experienced with working shorter hours than working longer hours so don’t really know were the sweet spot would be.
Keep in mind that all this is for long term practicing of a schedule, not for, say, people being very tired from working long hours and then switching to working short hours to rest. Recovery from overwork is a whole different ball game and in my experience the fastest way to recover and get back to maximum rest and hence productivity is to just take one (or more) whole days off work, rather than reducing hours worked per day.