Why the 9 to 5 workday is tough on creative workers (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Why the 9 to 5 workday is tough on creative workers (2013)

theatlantic.com

70 pointscdvonstinkpot27 comments

It’s been about a century since the economist John Maynard Keynes first touted the six-hour workday, predicting that by 2030 only extreme workaholics would work more than 15 hours a week. Still waiting for flying cars too.

Realistically, many workers do about 15 hours of actual solid work in a week. It's likely represented as a 10-20 range, but still much closer to ~15 than ~40.

The rest of the time is filler spent on lunches/meetings/communication and 'butts-in-seats' dog and pony show for bad managers.

So I wouldn't say the prediction is that far off-base. Plus we have another 12 years to go.

It is generally held that this is because of a rapid change in standard of living. If we were willing to live with less, we could have a job of only 15 hours a week. It would be interesting to compare standard of living to today and estimate how many hours would be required to meet the old levels.

Except even if you are willing to have less, the jobs that will accept 15 hours a week and pay well are very few and far between. Most that pay in that range are minimum wage, and even then they usually want more like 30+

It's not just standard of living. There's a lot of safety net you forego. In the US, you won't qualify for employer health insurance, and in most states you won't qualify for unemployment.

You won't be eligible for promotions, career advancement, or vacation benefits. It's remarkable how many policies are in place to ensure a 40 hour work week.

Nothing to do with the standard of living, it's about exploiting as much surplus value from the workers as possible.

A century again. People didn't have cell phones, cell phone plans, TV, internet, computers, high-end cars, student loans, and other luxuries. All that is at least an additional 12,000 USD a year.

I feel like we totally could, and because of politics and lifestyle inflation, we don't. Take for example, doctors. We don't have enough doctors, they're overworked, and to incentivize that system, we pay them quite a bit (at least in the US). 15/40 is 37.5%, and that "magic number of salary" that doesn't increase happiness is like $75k (I'd offer a better number here but this is one people tend to cling to), so if anyone makes over $200k/yr (most doctors, some lawyers and engineers), they could choose to work 15 hrs a week, still make a "satisfying" $75k/yr, and by being part-time, allow for more positions for the same work. This would especially be useful for doctors since there is a lack of them and their very nature is around the clock, so it would be useful to have more in the rotation. We have the means and the capital, but our society willfully chooses not to adopt this, and it seems a big part is because there is a stigma against being a part-time worker, as if only working part-time makes you a lower class citizen.

Take out holidays, early retirement, extended education, part-time working and unemployment and you'll find the overall figure isn't much higher than that.

Jeffrey Sachs has an interesting talk on this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1AAdZnF7xQ

I don't agree that cognition is best during the afternoon. I have my best concentration and work effort from 9-noon.

I think at least part of this is age and habit. In college my best period of concentration and work was roughly 11-3 or so. I was also ~20 years old and had trouble going to bed before midnight or waking up before 9.

A decade later and after military service the lion's share of my day job work is done between 7 and 10 in the morning, and it's rare that I'm not up, dressed and showered by 6:30am or asleep by 10pm.

Individual experiences vary widely; I am 41 now and still have just as much trouble going to bed before midnight or waking up before 9 as I did in my 20s. It still takes effort to restrain my impulse to stay up all night, in fact, whenever there's something remotely interesting or creative I could be working on instead of sleeping. It is not simply a matter of habits, either; I spent most of seven years getting up in time for a 7 AM conference call every work day, and it never got any easier. As soon as that was over, I went right back to my old schedule.

Perhaps it's less of a struggle to fit my life into normal business hours now, after years of experience trying to do it, but that's really just a matter of coping skills; my body clock remains as stubbornly nocturnal as it has ever been.

I know a lot of people who feel the same as you. That said, I can't really think until around 2 in the afternoon.

May I suggest you look into intermittent fasting?

I stopped eating from 10pm until 2 pm, and it has changed my relationship to mornings entirely. It took a couple of days to for the hunger urgency to subside, and about a week before I started feeling more energetic and focused.

Most mornings, my breakfast is a cup of black coffee now.

Why must we make everyone fit the mold of a morning person. Working better in the afternoons/evenings is not a moral failing.

This doesn't. However, I'm now effective in the mornings, >and< afternoons. I do a great deal of programming in the late evenings too, these days.

I read somewhere that the best time to learn something is right when you wake up. I tested that theory when I was picking up ObjC a few years ago and it seems right (perhaps a placebo).

"I read somewhere that" I can justify anything by that, especially anectodally.

Exactly. After I eat a real meal (lunch), my caveman brain declares 'Mission Success' and I'm done for the day.

Very much agreed. I'm iffy from 5-7 (some days great, some days too tired), fairly productive 7-1230, nearly worthless 1230-2, then pretty effective until 4 or 5.

Creative workers as a group would definitely do something about this if they were concerned so much.

Software developers mostly work noon to 8PM where I live. Go figure.

Interesting that you separate creative work from software development.

Constraints like time are a forcing function. They aren't necessarily good or bad. You could argue many creations wouldn't have happened had someone not been stuck in a job they created something to liberate themselves from.

The linked study about when to sleep is on ReasearchGate and can be found via your search engine of preference.

(Not linking directly because I am not sure if that page is legal, Taylor & Francis Online charges for access).

> (Not linking directly because I am not sure if that page is legal, Taylor & Francis Online charges for access).

Obviously you don’t owe anyone an explanation, but do you mind discussing your objective here? Is it to make it harder for someone to find the study? Or you don’t want to promote the page by linking to it? Are you worried you’d be breaking the law by adding a direct link? What are your thoughts on the legal vs moral impact of the study being publicly available?

I don’t have an agenda, it’s just clear you’ve put some thought into the whole thing. Cheers.

Thanks for asking! The thread's article links to NCBI which links to Taylor & Francis providing the paper. They charge for access to it, though. As I was interested in reading it, I searched for it on Google and found it on the aforementioned ReasearchGate site, accessible for free.

As I was not sure if free access to it is legal but I also wanted to enable others to find it, I named the name of the page allowing everyone with the paper's name to find it, without getting into trouble because of linking to it directly.

Indeed.

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