40 Hour Work Weeks Suck

I work 40 hour weeks. Nine to five. I got into the habit when I started my PhD, because I knew that if I didn't force myself to work to a certain schedule, I'd probably slack off.

If I only worked when I felt like it, on what I felt like working on, I would never have finished my thesis because, heck, who wants to do proofreading when you could be at the beach? And if I ate whatever I felt like, whenever I felt like eating it, I'd weigh three hundred pounds.

Anyway, the point of the story: if someone forced me to work nine to five, I'd probably hate it. But since I get to pick my own hours, I've picked nine to five.

"People who hate their jobs often work 40 hours weeks, why be one of them?"

Working 40 hours doesn't make you one of them. It's not even a symptom of the real problem.

I work 40 hours weeks, and love my job. And I loved my last job. And I liked all the jobs before that. That's because I have pride in doing my job well, I've worked for people who appreciate it (even if that sometimes means the customer, and not my boss), and general have a good disposition towards getting things done.

There are things I dislike, like red tape, but in general, I accept them as part of the process so that I can get to the good stuff, like coding the backend of a complicated system.

This seems like the perspective of someone without spouse and kids. Which is fine, and I don't even disagree. But there are people for whom (and phases of life in which) a steady pace is not a bad thing at all, and not necessarily indicative of hating your job.

This article does not take into account that what happens after that weeek. A week of spent with family, outdoors, video game spree, hacking spree with no distractions all sound great, but when did the author come back to doing the same thing again, over and over again? For instance, when did he/she feel like spending another full, uninterrupted week with family/on the beach? Also, how long can you keep repeating the @ 90 hr week?

Yea binging works, only when it is a once in a while thing. But if you have a business, and customers, and a code base, and a team - shit is ongoing, you just can't get things over with.

Think of it like food. Can you eat a week's worth of food and not come back? If you have a child (a company is like a baby always keen to hurt itself), can you dress them up once for the rest of the year?

This post seems to be missing the point. When people say they work 80 hours a week, they don't mean 80 hours one week, then 0 the next. They mean 80 hours, then 80 hours, then 80 hours, then 80 hours... That is primarily what the linked posts seem to be talking about avoiding.

Since I think we all agree the post is kind of missing the point, let me ask it like this: He said he liked working a 90 hour week hacking away when he was in grad school. Is it possible to have a hacking spree that is only 40 hours a week and get the best of both worlds; spending the other 40 hours outdoors or with your family?

I guess maybe this guy is the type of person who is all or nothing. We know everyone's different in this way. But to really be devoted to a project and getting it out the door, do you have to work 80 hours a week for 3 months so you can ship, or can you work 40 hours a week for 6 months?

I have some thoughts, but I'm curious as to what others think.

Saying that 20 hour and 60 hour weeks, depending on the situation, are better than 40 hour weeks ignores one very common and important case: when the work is boring but important. The author seems to assume that 20 hour weeks can solve all boring work, but they can only really solve boring and unimportant work. If it's important and boring, you'll probably need to spend more than 20 hours a week on it. I'll stereotype a little here and guess that the author might be like a lot of professors I know, in that he assumes that boring work is the definition of unimportant work.

But sometimes you need to get some boring thing done and it just takes a while. It may not be fun, but in those cases it really helps to have the rock solid habits and discipline that come with a regular work schedule (whatever it is) to fall back on.

I feel like these types of articles where the author attempts a deft explanation as to why work isn't work when you enoy it, are just annoying.

Surely as engineers, hackers, tech-minded people, we all know what the definition of work is. Nowhere in the definition of work does emotion come into play (unless your job description is to achieve a specific emotion).

This reminds me of a high school teacher of mine who used to heckle the football players asking them why they lifted weights and would say they're not actually accomplishing work(unless you're deadlifting, I guess). Most of them didn't understand which made it even more amusing.

I know this is utterly mad, but, maybe some people enjoy working 40 hours per week, and some people don't.

My personal rule of thumb has always been: "When it stops being fun and starts being work, it's time to find something new." I try to keep my count at "zero" hours as much as possible.

A rather confusing post: does the author want to work only 20 hours? Or work 40 hours but be rewarded the same as someone who works 60 hours? Or work 60 hours doing something they love all the time? All of these seem quite unrealistic but for different reasons.

The 40 hour week was brought to America in 1938, brought about primarily by unions - the word 'weekend' didn't even exist until the 1870s. Enjoy the freedom that so many worked so hard to provide you.

I enjoy intense working binges followed by days of slacking off as much as anyone, but aside from a handful of jobs you can't get much done that way. 40 hours a week gives you eight hours of rest, eight of work and eight to live the rest of your life every workday with two days to recharge. That's probably a fairly sustainable rate.

It's an interesting question what jobs can be done that way. I don't think many programming jobs can--startups don't seem to allow for the slacking, and working for someone else probably doesn't have that much flexibility either. I guess the old days of desktop software were somewhat like that, with intense crunch periods up to release followed by long stretches of time off after release. But now that software is released continuously that's gone away.

It's interesting to think of what jobs you can get done that way, though. Off the top of my head, grad students without assistantship obligations, filmmakers (in fact, anyone in the filmmaking process), writers, in-demand freelancers, proprietors of fairly undemanding online businesses, and actual rock stars all work that way.

Great post. I worked 30 hours of the last two days, slept 9 hours total, and spent the other 9 hours in deep relaxation (2 hours getting massage, 2 hours walking, 2 hours having relaxed nice meals, 3 hours hanging out with my friends who have a cute newborn baby).

It's been an awesome couple days. Being able to gear up and gear down on workload is one of the nicest things about running your own show.

I work in a very ad-hoc sort of way, but I find the idea of an n-hour work week very useful. If I work _n+d_ hours and feel exhausted, or I work _n-d_ hours and miss a deadline, I have an immediate and intuitive insight into what the problem is (the sign) and how big it is (the delta). Essentially it's a metric that I don't have to think too hard about.

I don't work rigid hours. My n-hours approach is a patch for the otherwise vague system in which I do stuff. And I (at least theoretically) don't beat myself up if d gets too large in either direction; if I'm overworking it's a sign that my planning process is out of whack, and if I'm underworking it's a sign that I need to find a way to get motivated or get out.

I view these "do x" blog posts as interesting things to try based on other people's life experience. It might not work for everyone, but I wouldn't pull the "x sucks" card because it's a pretty subjective problem.

Measuring work in terms of hours is fine for some jobs, but not others like programming. But the main problem is that most of them are using fear-based top-down command and control and treating people as dumb automata, which is basically suitable only for industrial manufacturing (the term "corporate drone" was created for a reason).

Once you start to have more of a personal/family life, the 40 hour (or slightly more) work week becomes a lot more essential.

Kids need more consistent time from you, they can't take 20 hours one week and zero hours the next. Same with spouses/significant others.

> If I’m working on interesting things, 40 hours is not enough. If I’m working on boring things, 40 hours is far too many.

If you like you can always work more. You enjoy it after all. Hopefully you work in a place where that will be noticed and will be rewarded with promotions and bonuses.

If you _consistently_ work on boring things, then it might be a sign that something else is wrong and you need to find a new project, new company.

Some companies have 40 hours but they are flexible, can come in anytime, work from home if needed. It is good though to have core hours when most people are in (say 11 to 3 or something like that).

40 hour work week was a reaction on the employers with too much power. They pushed their employers to work beyond their physical health limits. As a rule, a more balanced work structure was introduced that protected both partys on the long run.

There have been a lot of research about most productive work rythm. But it differs a lot depending on the kind of work. But 40 hours is a general avarage for most people.

The end conclusion is, depending on the work and your personal context, you have to find a balanced life where.

There's always a point where we all feel bored about a job - even if we love the job. I think the challenge is trying to find things that you love within your current job and it helps guide towards something you feel more passionate about. Bad job or good job - I think there's always something you can learn about yourself. A job is just something that you do that helps you figure out yourself.

A lot of this comes down to personal preference.

But for me, it really resonates. I'd really like to try a job where I worked, say, 60 hours one week, and zero the next. (Yeah, that's not quite a full-time average.) And, let's say, every 5th month worked every week, and took the next month as vacation.

I think I could actually be really productive this way, but I've never had the chance to try it.

I recall reading someplace recently that it isn't about working only eight hours a day before rushing home, but rather about doing as much as you can in eight hours before devoting the remainder of your time to other pursuits you may find meaningful.

There are so many interesting things in the world; how can you shut yourself out to all of them but one?

it's not about amount of time, it's circumstance. When doing independent projects I regularly put in 80 hours a week. That's fine, it's my own schedule and decision. 40 hours having a supervisor breathing down your neck sucks, but 5 hours of having a supervisor breathing down your neck does too. The amount of time is irrelevant.

I see a lot of posts disagreeing with the OP in one form or another and I think I know why. It takes a bit of OCD and a dash of perfectionism to emphasize with the OP. Unfortunately, I know exactly how the OP feels.

My ideal work week is 1-2 hours a week!

Seriously though, 40 hours doesn't have to mean 9-5. It could be 6pm to midnight, 7 days a week.

40 hours a week sounds great!