There was a recent article I read online about how working working over 40 hours a week makes you less productive.

http://www.inc.com/margaret-heffernan/the-truth-about-sleep-and-productivity.html

I’m really really skeptical about over-reaching claims that say you shouldn’t work over 40 hours a week or you should spend 8 hours sleeping. While I think sleeping is important and can be debilitating, I still have a hard time believing that there is some magical number of hours that you can work per day or per week.

Too much work or not enough sleep?

I don’t think not working overtime makes you stupid. Perhaps working all night and not sleeping does but working over 8 hours a day and sleeping less than 8 hours a day is quite different. There are a whole other 8 hours in a 24 hour day. Technically if you did nothing but work and sleep you could work 16 hours a day and still get 8 hours sleep. We all know this is simply impossible because you at least need to shower, brush your teeth, eat, socialize etc. in order to have a sustainable lifestyle. But I think the two ideas are mutually exclusive.

What is work?

A problem also arises in what you consider work. I tend to write blog posts, study, read documents, and decide what tasks I’m going to work on the next day during what would be considered non-work hours. These are all things that affect my work. Is this working overtime?

The Zone

I have found that continuing to work while I am in “the zone” is more productive that cutting myself off arbitrarily when I’ve reached 8 hours of work and going home. Stopping a piece of work in progress means that I have to deal with a large context switch. I need to record in my brain or elsewhere where I am, what has been done, what needs to be done etc. and this all needs to be recalled when I start work the next day. Invariably some of this information gets lost.

The cost in any lost productivity because I worked a little longer to reach a more natural stopping point is much less than the lost productivity in getting back up to speed on what I was working in the previous day and getting back in the zone.

Why do I feel this way? Because I tried it. I worked 9 to 5 every day for 6 months and got about as much work done as I normally get done in 3 or 4 months. It took an inordinate amount of time to finish the project I was working on. I would say the quality was mediocre to good but not my best work. I found I needed to cut corners in order to finish within a reasonable time frame.

I’m an ill-natured crotchety old man

It feels like most people read these articles too reinforce their biases and would use this kind of thing as an excuse to go home even when their work isn’t done. For them it’s a win-win. They can look smart and hip to new ideas and act like they have their employers best interests in mind when in reality they are probably spending too much time reading crappy articles online when they should be working and then going home early even though their work isnt done because it will “make them more productive”.

Everything is a balance. If you want to go home to see your family or use that time for something else then, fine, get work done and go home on time but don’t waste my time telling me you’ll get more work done by going home when you just want to balance your time better.

The moral of the story is that people who start their own business and work long hours, or work long hours because of their workload are likely doing it because it enriches their lives, or because they like it. And they probably get more work of better value done than you. The world is a complex place and you can’t simply say that working more than 8 hours a day is bad.

Now get off my lawn.