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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

France is more productive per capita (edit: the reference I found was from 2009, France is currently slightly less productive than the US per capita[1]) and has a higher quality of life than the US. Consider improving your mental model and recognizing you are not as well off and productive as you believe. Japanese workers spend a lot of time at their desks too, but not that productive! Data > emotions, work to live don’t live to work, all that jazz.

Recent on topic thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31690239

[1] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/02/25/french-workers...

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Really? US seems to be more productive: https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm

Comment edited to reflect I used an older data source. Thanks for correcting me!

Follow up: where does the majority of US productivity go (short answer: shareholders).

What on earth are you on about? I said nothing about per capita productivity or quality of life. I said I'd rather have more free time at home instead of an additional hour of lunch time.

Why can’t you have both? That is my thesis, and I’m attempting to support it with data using a first principles approach. If productivity is high enough, why does that time delta warrant material consideration?

If an employer wants me to be in the office for X hours, I'd prefer those hours not to be spread out by ninety minutes. If they don't want me to be in the office for X hours I'm probably working from home.

Consider that aggregates may not scale down to every individual. Data > Statistics

Also true! But we have to have an agreement on foundational facts to have a cogent debate of ideas. Preferences aren’t facts, but are still welcome.

If you want to eat at your desk while I have a 90 minute lunch with wine and good company, that’s okay, life is about choices. We are optimizing differently.

It’s interesting that you seem to take the OP as trying to optimize productivity.

I assume this because you first point out that French culture is more productive, and then link to the discussion about toxic productivity.

But to me, it sounds like they just prefer to defragment their day regardless of productivity.

I think the whole idea of escaping toxic productivity is to not worry about maximally optimizing it in the first place. I’d bet you’re both on the same page about that.

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